Acts 16:30-31 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved–you and your household.”

This is a justly famous passage, being influential in many coming to salvation and many more being encouraged to believe for the salvation of their families. However, I think it bears a good bit more analysis than it usually gets. In the first place, the jailer had come to a place of extreme crisis, and his initial response had been to take his own life. Stopped just in time, his question here is desperate. I have heard this passage used countless times by well-meaning evangelists with people who had little if any sense of crisis, and it has naturally been ineffective. We have to know we are lost before we will accept salvation! The awareness of need must be there, and on top of that, a willingness to admit that need. That last is often the sticking point. I have dealt with numbers of men, particularly, who were unable to confess their need of salvation because they saw such confession as weakness. They literally preferred hell to such confession. That shows how little understanding they had of hell! That said, however, I think it is verse 31 that gets the most misunderstanding. Some people take this as an unconditional promise, ignoring the verses that immediately follow. With a “name it and claim it” mentality, they think that their faith will automatically save everyone in their family. If that were the case, the whole world would be Christian! What Paul and Silas were saying was that the offer of salvation by faith wasn’t just open to the jailer, but to his household as well. As it turned out, they didn’t have the extreme crisis the jailer did, but when the Gospel was explained to them, they too chose to accept it and believe, and so were baptized. This passage in no way negates the need for individual repentance and faith. That said, it should indeed encourage every believer that the Gospel is just as much for their family as for them.

This is an issue of great importance in my ministry, because the majority of the believers here (in our church) are the only Christians in their families. Tomorrow’s message, and indeed the verse for 2012, is, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) Such commitment is of great importance, but we can’t force anyone to be saved. I need to impart hope without giving any false promises. The Bible is loaded with promises and every one of them is true, but they must be received in context, understanding the conditions connected to them, or we will be in danger of destroying faith rather than building it. I must not be guilty of “cherry picking” Scriptures, but at the same time I must not deny the reality that God sometimes imparts special faith through verses taken completely out of context. I don’t have the wisdom to get it all straight, much less keep it that way, so as always, I must rely on God. I am to watch my mouth so that I don’t proclaim something on the basis of wishful thinking, but neither am I to draw back from speaking out anything the Lord is saying, no matter how impossible it might seem, humanly speaking.

Father, I am reminded of the medically impossible prophecy You had me share about 31 years ago, that was fulfilled in a way that neither I nor those to whom I was speaking could have imagined. Keep me from squashing faith with logic! Help me direct my hearers’ eyes to You, so that their faith may have a sure foundation. Help me also walk by faith and not by sight, trusting Your Holy Spirit to take the words from my mouth and use them to implant faith in my hearers. May we be a people totally committed to You, so that You may do in and through us all that You desire and intend, today and every day, though all eternity. Thank You. Hallelujah!