Acts 16:29

And he called for lights and sprang in, and, trembling for fear, fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

What must I do to be saved? ... This question occurs at three places in Acts, identically in each instance as to meaning, and varying only slightly in form: (1) "What shall we do?" (Acts 2:37), (2) "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30), and (3) "What shall I do, Lord?" (Acts 22:10). The answers as given in each instance are: (1) "Repent and be baptized every one of you, etc." (Acts 2:38), (2) "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31), and (3) "Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts 22:16). Why this diversity in the answers?

As the late J. H. Childress said, "If one were to ask how to get a Ph.D. degree, a college graduate might be told one thing, a high school graduate another thing, and a boy in grammar school something else, with all of the various answers being strictly true." It is exactly such a thing which is in view in these passages. Salvation, as proclaimed in the New Testament, requires, absolutely, that sinners should:

(a) Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

(b) Repent of their sins and transgressions

(c) Be baptized into Christ for the remission of sins.

In (1), above, the people on Pentecost had already met requirement (a), and were therefore told to fulfill (b) and (c). In (2), above, the jailer had fulfilled no requirement at all, so the apostles told him to fulfill (a), not with any view of exempting him from (b) and (c), but as the thing to be done first. Proof that he fulfilled the other two is seen in his repentance and baptism "the same hour of the night." In (3), above, Saul of Tarsus was already a believer and had been in penitent prayer for three days and nights; therefore, the inspired preacher told him to fulfill (c), "Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, etc." (Acts 22:16).

The advocates of "faith only" as God's plan of redemption for alien sinners take their stand upon the filmsiest of foundations when they attempt to make Paul's instructions to this jailer as to what he should do first a statement of ALL that he was commanded to do. The narrative itself effectively refutes the "faith only" theorists.