The Salvation of the Philippian Jailer

Recognizing the earthquake as a supernatural confirmation that Paul and Silas did indeed proclaim the way of salvation, the Philippian jailer asked what he needed to do to be saved (Acts 16:30; see v. 17). Of course, the jailer did not necessarily know all that salvation would entail; nevertheless, he understood that he did not possess salvation and was in desperate need of it.

Paul and Silas responded to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (v. 31). The way that we receive salvation is actually quite simple. We do not need to live morally upright lives before God will save us. There are no works that we can produce that will merit our salvation. Instead, we need only to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul would later write to the church at Ephesus: “By grace [we] have been saved through faith. And this is not [our] own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

What does it mean to “believe in the Lord Jesus”? At minimum, it means believing those things of first importance—that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose from the dead on the third day (1 Cor. 15:3–4). It means believing that He is Lord of all and the promised Christ (Acts 2:22–36). That is the core of the message that the Apostles preached as they traveled throughout the Roman world, planting churches, as we have seen in our study of the book of Acts. Certainly, those truths were included in the “word of the Lord” that Paul preached to the jailer and the members of his household (16:32).

When Paul and Silas announced the promise of salvation to the Philippian jailer, they told him that by believing on Jesus, he and his household would be saved (v. 31). God takes interest not only in a believer as an individual but also in his or her household. One is not guaranteed salvation simply by belonging to a family whose parents trust in Christ. Christian parents, however, can have a rightful, hopeful expectation, not an absolute guarantee, that God will save their children, as long as they seek to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord without provoking them to anger (Prov. 22:6; Eph. 6:4). Parents who do not teach their children the Christian faith in the home, who do not bring them to church, and who do not exhort them to receive the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ should not be surprised if their children never believe the gospel.