Unity

Acts 8:14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. 15When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into[a] the name of the Lord Jesus. 17Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Samaria had long been the area the Jews had written off. Samaritan were second rate, undeserving and just an avoided people. Samaria had been a place of great debauchery, sorcery, magic, and occult. So when the people of the land, the Samaritans, accepted the word of the lord….they were baptized. Yet they didn’t receive the Holy Spirit.

My question this morning was why.

Some suggest that Phillip, not being an Apostle (but only a disciple), couldn’t convey the Holy Spirit…but could only baptize. I don’t agree with this.

I believe, as I saw in another commentary, that the fact that Peter and John going to lay hands on the Samaritan people…was more for ‘the church’ than it was for the Samaritans. Therefore the withholding of the Holy Spirit wasn’t a testament to Phillips inability as much as it was an act toward church unity. The church was made up mostly (at this point) of Jews, and they were so racist…toward the Samaritans. Peter and John physically laying hands on them was an outward sign of us all being one body and of acceptance.