Friends: This is about finding love you didn’t know existed.  Blessings, Bob

(P.S. Our close friend Cheryl Cowden passed away last Monday, Nov. 10. A link to her obituary appears after the column. Cheryl and Pam were in a small group together for more than 40 years.)

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Spirituality Column #992

November 18, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Newly Found Love

By Bob Walters

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:38

It is Pentecost fifty days after the Passover that witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, and now Jesus has ascended and the Holy Spirit arrives. Acts 2 presents us with the Apostle Peter’s first sermon and the changing of the holy guard forever after.

The traditional Feast of the Pentecost celebrating the ancient arrival of the Torah at Mount Sinai – God’s covenant with the Jews – now marked the arrival of the new covenant of faith in the Messiah; the Spirit’s promise that brings new life in Christ for all.

This was horrifying news for the Jews who, through Peter’s preaching, just then understood who Jesus was and what they had done to the Messiah Christ: calling for the murder of their savior. For forty days the resurrected Jesus appeared to, and spoke and ate with, his disciples and hundreds of others. Then, He ascended to heaven.

As Jesus promised at the Last Supper and again in His resurrection, the Holy Spirit would be God’s gift of understanding and comfort from the Father who loves the humanity He created. The assembled Jews, who had seen tongues of fire above them and mysteriously heard Peter’s sermon in many languages, were “cut to the heart;” The Holy Spirit had arrived.  Panicking, the Jews begged Peter, “What shall we do?”

On that Pentecost, the Law was past and so arrived “a new covenant with the house of Israel” (Hebrews 8:8, 13). The Jews were told, “Repent and be baptized!”

“Repent,” the Greek metanoia, means, “think anew.” It means, here, stop thinking like a Jew in the Law and start thinking like a Christian in faith. Salvation no longer resides in obedience and behavior, but in faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died for our sins.  In His forgiveness we have the hope, the promise, of eternal life with God in heaven. In our faith, Jesus saves us; baptism in the Spirit declares our faith.

Where the Law instructed Jews on the impossible task of being perfect before God, salvation in Christ is now a gift in this life revealed in love and peace knowing our relationship with the father is restored “for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). Our lives lived in faith can be seen by the spiritual fruits of our faith: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22).

Notice that these fruits not only bring us closer to God and others; they are the road markers of purpose and joy in the life we live now. Sin will always present challenges to these temporal fruits, yet our works and attitudes reflect our eternal faith.

Neither the Jews nor the entire world knew of either the presence of, or our human need for, the saving grace of Jesus.  Nobody had asked for it, nobody saw it coming despite hundreds of scriptural prophecies, and nobody at first knew quite what to do with it. Generations of “fear the Lord” became a new world of “fear not” … for the Lord has saved us: from our sins, and into eternal life with God. We had no idea.

Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God delivers his love to all of us. What a blessing when, in the here and now, we find it, believe it, join it, and live it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was baptized November 18, 2001, 24 years ago. Then on November 18, 2007 had his first conversation with Pam, whom he married in 2009. These are two great examples of newly found love Walters never expected.

LINK: Cheryl Cowden obituary