Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 2:39

"For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, [even] as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him." — Acts 2:39 (ASV)

The “promise” (GK 2039) of which Peter speaks includes both the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Both are logically and indissolubly united in applying Christ’s redemptive work to the believer, and they were only separated chronologically, it seems, for what could be called circumstantial reasons. The promise, Peter declares, is not only for his immediate hearers (“for you”) but also for succeeding generations (“for your children”) and for all in distant places (“for all who are far off”). It is a promise, Peter concludes, that is sure; for it has been given by God and rests upon the prophetic word of Joel 2:32: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Two issues need to be discussed regarding the expression “for all who are far off.” (1) Some prefer to see this as a temporal reference to future Jewish generations, paralleling the phrase “for your children.” But the word “far off” (GK 3426) in Greek is used exclusively as a spatial rather than as a temporal word in the NT. (2) Does it refer only to Diaspora Jews or also to Gentiles? The two OT passages alluded to here (Isaiah 57:19; Joel 2:32) are probably referring to Diaspora Jews. But this is one of those situations where a narrator like Luke has read into what the speaker said more than was originally there and so implied that the speaker spoke better than he knew. Peter himself was probably thinking of Jewish remnant theology, of God’s call to a scattered but repentant Jewish remnant. But Luke’s desire is to show how an originally Jewish gospel penetrated the Gentile world so extensively that it came to enter “without hindrance” (cf. 28:31) into the capital of the Roman Empire. Very likely, therefore, in recounting Peter’s words here in Acts, Luke meant them to be read as having Gentiles in mind .