Whoever calls

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved – Acts 2.21

We have here a part of the first sermon ever preached to the church. Pentecost has come. The Holy Spirit has come. And then Peter gets up to preach.

He preached from the book of Joel about the ‘day of the Lord’ and announced to his hearers that the day of the Lord had arrived and that it would be accompanied by signs and wonders.

At the very end Peter quotes Joel message of great hope ‘all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

We are so accustomed to that phrase that we are tempted to just read over it and go on. But we can’t miss the importance of it.

Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

‘Whoever’ – anyone. That means that no one is left out of the possibility of salvation.

‘Calls.’ Not does great works, not is really religious, not happens to be born into the right family – just ‘calls.’

‘On the name of the Lord.’ -  Jesus Christ, the one who had just given His life to pay the penalty of sin for ‘whoever.’

‘Shall be saved’ – forever and for all eternity from the penalty of sin.

With this one phrase at the very first ‘church service’ the Lord gave us His plan for salvation. The Law had done its job; it had shown us our need of salvation. We couldn’t match up, no one could. So now ‘whoever’ could simply call on the Lord for salvation.

Praise His wonderful name that ‘whosoever surely meaneth me.’