And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation."
Acts 2:40
Peter’s follow up comments to his Pentecost sermon included these words, "Be saved from this perverse generation." Let’s think through these words.
First, salvation as we normally think of it is salvation from sin (Matthew 1:21). From sin’s penalty (justification), power (sanctification), and one day its presence (glorification) (Romans 8:30). Peter was not ignoring this ultimate salvation, but he appears to be speaking of breaking away from the world his hearers were otherwise “lost in.” The people standing there were Jewish who were in Jerusalem for Pentecost (one of the three major feasts of the Jewish religion). Their hearts and minds were held captive by the religious and sociological worldview they knew. And note that the problem was not the generation, meaning race or age group. The issue was the perversity of that generation’s worldview.
That worldview included, but was not limited to, the idea of Jewish exclusivism. Because they were God’s chosen people, they believed they were God’s only people. The Jewish religious leaders were predominately self-righteous, and hated Jesus, their Messiah. They not only twisted the scriptures to fit their biases (Matthew 22:29), they used the scriptures to manipulate the very people they were called to spiritually shepherd (Matthew 13:15). These (and others) were a part of the people’s worldview. Peter exhorted them to break away from the false worldview that held sway over them.
Every generation is blighted with perverse worldviews, and ours is no exception.
It is important that when we are born again and become followers of Jesus, that we breakaway from every worldview that is not in sync with Christ, the Gospel, and the Word of God. Most of us do not realize just how “worldly” our thinking is because it is all we know. But as we grow in grace and in our knowledge of Christ, the Gospel, and the Word, we must weigh every thought against God’s truth, and be willing to jettison every thought that exalts itself against the mind of the Lord (2 Corinthians 10:5).
The Apostle John wrote of this in 1 John 2:15-17: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
Let us “be saved from this perverse generation.”