THIS UNTOWARD GENERATION
By Elder Mark Green
“And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2.40).
I want to focus upon two words in this verse: “untoward” and “save.” The word translated “untoward” in this verse indicates something crooked or curved – something that is not straight. Metaphorically it means something that is wicked or perverse. That was a wicked generation, and unless God’s children who were listening to Peter took heed to his admonition, they would be consumed and damaged by it.
They were to take steps to deliver themselves from the potential injury which an association with that generation could cause them. This is a wicked generation, and the things that applied to Peter’s hearers certainly would apply to us.
That which is crooked is not going in the direction it should be going. It is going the wrong way. An “untoward” generation is not going the right way; it has turned aside to other things. If we do not take care, we may be swept along with the tide of this world to our own temporal destruction.
We need to be very clear that, although not one of God’s elect will lose his eternal salvation, it is entirely possible that he may be captured in the tide of the mass of humanity walking in the broad way, to his great hurt in this life. The apostle speaks of those that “oppose themselves.”
They are doing things that are not to their advantage, but to their hurt. They are working against their own interests by going the wrong way. They are following this generation.
Peter told these people that they ought to save themselves. No verse in the Bible sets forth the principle of Time Salvation more clearly than this one. Peter is talking to regenerate people and telling them to “save themselves.”
Is he in opposition to Paul, who said that it was “not by works of righteousness that we have done?” If we “save ourselves,” it certainly is by something that we do. Unless we understand the difference between an unconditional Eternal Salvation and a conditional Time Salvation, we will never untangle the apparent contradiction in this verse. Peter was not telling unregenerate people to save themselves from hell to heaven and immortal glory, but was telling men who already had tender hearts toward God that they could and should save themselves from this generation.
As is always the case in such verses, we must ask, “Who is being addressed,” and, “From what are they being saved?”
Most of us have met some person who manifestly loves God and His cause, but whose life has been laid in tatters because he has followed an “untoward generation.” It is the most insane and self-destructive of doctrines to say that such were predestinated to be in that situation and could not have done otherwise. We can do otherwise. When we were unregenerate we could not please God, but upon regeneration we became able to please Him, and we should do it; and we will find untold blessings in that obedience. May God help us to walk in the strait and narrow way to His glory and to our good. April, 2007.