In two previous essays, I explored the nature of national identity through God’s work creating nations at the Tower of Babel, forcing the children of Noah to fulfill His command to fill the earth, and then His crafting of a single nation from the man Abraham. Though we could draw much more from the Old Testament on the nature of nations (I recommend giving attention to the book of Isaiah), we turn to Acts 2 in the New Testament in this post. Here, we find God moving forward His plan for redeeming all peoples to Himself by completing His work begun at Babel and fulfilling His promises to Abraham. Significantly, this redemption occurs through the mediation of nations.
Pentecost and Babel
Luke records in Acts 1 that the disciples returned from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension into Heaven. They met in an upper room of a building to draw lots to replace Judas. Then Luke explains that they were all gathered in one house when the day of Pentecost arrived, beginning the harvest feast.
The sound of a mighty wind filled the house and “divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them,” at which point they were “all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:3–4, ESV). At the time, “devout men from every nation under heaven” were gathered in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost (2:5). A large crowd, representing every nation, gathered around the Galileans, who had a reputation for being ignorant hill people and were bewildered to find that their native languages were being used to praise God’s mighty works (2:6, 8, 11).[1] The reference to nation is not incidental but rather has great significance. However, before examining that theme further, we will consider several clear allusions to the Babel narrative.
Location
Luke does not specify where the disciples were meeting on this day other than to say they were all gathered in a house in Jerusalem. However, just prior to relating the events of Pentecost, Luke explains that the disciples were meeting in the upper room of a building. While the meeting to replace Judas was likely prior to the day of Pentecost, its proximity to the upper room in Luke’s narrative is suggestive of an allusion he is teasing out. Whereas the descendants of Noah were trying to build a tower to connect themselves with God in the heavens, the disciples of Jesus were gathered in a much humbler structure after He has ascended into Heaven when God chooses to dwell with them through His Holy Spirit.
Division
The Spirit’s arrival is attended by the appearance of “divided tongues” of flame (Acts 2:3). As Biblical scholar G. K. Beale notes, the language of “divided tongues” echoes the “traditional way of referring to the nations spreading out from Babel as the nations being ‘divided.’”[2] In this case, however, the division of the flames is attended by a gathering of devout Jews from “every nation under heaven” (2:5).
Language
When the presence of God descends on the disciples, it filled them with the Holy Spirit so that they began speaking in languages they had not previously spoken. This event reminds us of God’s presence at Babel as He effected the division of the single language of humanity into many languages that attended the birth of the diverse nations. Yet we should also note several crucial differences at Pentecost. Whereas the new languages at Babel caused confusion because persons could not understand their neighbors so that the crowd was driven apart, the appearance of new languages at Pentecost facilitated communication and draws the nations together into a single crowd. The only confusion at Pentecost was related to how the ignorant Galileans could have learned these languages from around the world.[3]
As theologian Stephen G. Dempster aptly sums up this pericope, Christ’s “church is first formed, not by human pride attempting to unite earth and heaven with a tower, but rather by humbly waiting on the gift of the Holy Spirit—the river of life. Thus, Pentecost reverses Babel and shows that this Davidic Messiah is bringing about the harmony that was lost among the nations (Acts 2:1–21; Gen. 11:1–9).”[4]
Language as Invitation
Though interpreters give significant debate to the question of the purpose of the gift of tongues in the New Testament, I want to narrow our discussion of this passage considerably. Specifically, I want us to consider the miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages as a sign of God’s fulfillment of His promise to Abraham that the “curse of Babel [would] be reversed,” that “many nations would name Abraham as their father,” and that the nations would retain their identities.[5] This last point is frequently lost by interpreters who interpret nations to mean merely a collection of individuals when it also refers to a collective body with a national identity. Thus, a person’s identitiy is invariably related to his or her nationality according to God’s design. In this case, the disciples’ praise of God in the various languages of “every nation under heaven” served as an invitation to the nations in their unique nationalities.
In his analysis of the gift of tongues in the apostolic church as depicted in the book of Acts, Robert E. Picirilli emphasizes the negative symbolism of God’s rejection of unbelieving Israel. In What the Bible Says about Tongues, he writes “The gift of tongues . . . has as its purpose to testify against the unbelief of the Jews and their rejection of Messiah.”[6] That is, its purpose testifies against a nation, not just the people in a nation. For him, the disciples speaking in non-Jewish languages symbolizes that the time of God’s patience with unbelieving Israel (a nation) had come to an end and, consequently, “Unbelieving Israel would no longer be God’s special people.” Multiple times Picirilli clarifies that he sees this event as a sign that the “unbelief of Israel had now reached full measure, and God was turning to those nations whose languages He chose as miraculous instruments of His message on this crucial day.”[7]
Picirilli’s negative approach to the symbolism of glossolalia at Pentecost makes sense in the light of Paul’s explanation that unbelieving Jews (individuals belonging to a collective nation) would be encouraged to seek God in response to Gentiles being grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11:11–24). However, I think the positive implication of the sign of tongues at Pentecost is the primary message. When the Spirit gave the disciples the ability to speak in the languages of the nations, He was signaling that the nations were being welcomed into God’s kingdom without being required to abandon their national identity. In fact, God expected them to work to bring His kingdom’s sensibilities to bear on their nations. Only after the gospel enters these nation groups can they bring their national cultural wealth to Christ (Isaiah 60:5) and serve as His inheritance (Psalm 2:8).
To be clear, this careful interpretation of nation is not contrary to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers (Hebrews 7:23–28). Neither is it contrary to Paul’s notions that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ (Galatians 3:28) or that our citizenship is heaven (Philippians 3:20). We are saved in Christ not because we belong to a particular people but because we confess Him as Lord. Yet also we are not saved in Christ absent our identities within larger groups, which is demonstrated by the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:1–31), which is debating this very question, concluding that we are individuals who simultaneously have national identities that are subservient to yet integrated with our spiritual citizenship. God intended this nuance from the beginning when He instructed the human race to fill the earth (Genesis 1:28); in an unfallen world, distinct societies would have arisen around different geographies and customs, invariably shaping the identities of people within those groups, yet each would have been subservient to the Creator God.
In the Abrahamic covenant, God promised to bless all nations through Abraham (Genesis 12:3) and even to make him the father of many nations (17:4). Nations, which, again, signify much more than merely a collection of individuals, therefore occupy an important mediatorial role in God’s distribution of His benefits. Pentecost is a partial fulfillment of that covenant and the foreshadowing of the throne room of God where all nations will praise Him (Revelation 7:9). The literary scholar Paul Borgman emphasizes this interpretation of Pentecost by referencing Peter’s speech from Solomon’s portico in the temple recorded in Acts 3:11–26: “The inclusion of non-Jews within saved Israel and God’s family proves, for Peter, a fulfillment of the ancient vision of God, expressed to Abraham, that through his nation God would provide blessing to ‘all the families of the earth.’”[8] Pentecost is thus a sign of God’s fulfillment of His promise to Abraham in the wake of the destruction of Babel to bless people through their nations, and it is the beginning of the church’s work to carry out the Great Commission given by Jesus (Matthew 28:16–20).
In conjunction with this welcoming message to the nations comes the inauguration of Christ’s global kingdom. As Dempster rightly reminds us, the “kingdom of God . . . includes geography.” This point is obvious in the Old Testament as Israel miraculously takes the Promised Land replete with houses filled with good things they did not bring with them from Egypt, cisterns they did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves they did not plant (Deuteronomy 6:11). But this promise of land is also true of the New Covenant. God’s kingdom is now global and eternal while still preserving national identity. Dempster explains that this new kingdom is the “emphasis at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in which a suffering Davidic Messiah has been exalted and given authority over not just an Israelite kingdom but the globe. He commands his subjects to go into this domain and disciple all nations (Matt. 28:18–20; cf. Dan. 7:13–14).”[9] Significantly, the reference to nations in the Great Commission is not a reference to abstracted humans who happen to belong to nations but more specifically to nations.
To make this point perfectly clear, the Abrahamic covenant and the Great Commission demand a continuation of the nations. Nowhere does God suggest that the nations will disappear after they are brought into His kingdom. Rather, they will retain a sanctified semblance of their identity. For his part, Picirilli notes this important point when he engages with the positive symbolism of Pentecost. He recognizes that the Gentiles have been “freely welcomed into the family of God without having to become Jews first.”[10] That is, they remained Greek or Roman or Syrian or whatever, which is demonstrated by the phenomenon of language.
One of the key characteristics of nationality is a common language.[11] So, when the disciples spoke of the glorious works of God in the languages of “every nation under heaven,” they were communicating that Gentiles no longer needed to become proselytes with the attending circumcision, ritual practices, and adherence to Jewish law in order to become part of God’s kingdom.[12] Instead, they were to apply Scripture to the cultural sensibilities and governmental orders of their own nations.
Still, as Picirilli remarks, the “disciples did not learn, overnight, that the gospel was for all nations freely.”[13] In fact, the early church had a very difficult time learning that the “old Jewish system was no longer that under which God’s family would live, and that Gentiles could be saved without becoming Jewish proselytes.” The Jerusalem Council (referenced above) is evidence of this point. “The gift of tongues was the sign repeated over and over in the early church until that lesson could finally sink in.”[14]
In modern America, we find two common errors regarding the relationship between God and national identities. Some interpreters are like the early disciples and overemphasize a single nation’s connection with God. For example, some make so much of America’s Christian foundations and past that they merge America with Christ’s kingdom. These well-meaning but misguided Christians are vehemently opposed by others who, informed by liberalism, think of Christians as abstracted individuals without national identity or responsibilities. However, what we find at Pentecost is that our national identities remain firmly established and honored by God and that they are being drawn under the lordship of Christ. Christians of every nation are called to embrace their national identity and take part in Christ’s work of renewing all things to Himself (Colossians 1:20; Revelation 21:5). Their national identity will be with them in some form for all of eternity, although we do not now know the full extent of what it will look like.
Conclusion
When God divided the languages of the earth at Babel, He simultaneously created the nations. Through Abraham, God began working to restore the nations by calling the rebellious people of Babel to join the faithful and true nation of Israel. He prepared them for that work by dispersing them throughout the Mediterranean world prior to Jesus’ birth. Finally, at the harvest feast God’s labor began to bring forth fruit. The nations were welcomed into the kingdom that now spans the globe and will continue forever.
[1] A. T. Lincoln, s.v. “Pentecost,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 902–03; Robert E. Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues (Nashville: Randall House, 1973), 6–7.
[2] G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 596, EbscoHost Ebrary.
[3] Some Pentecostal scholars have argued that all instances of glossolalia in the New Testament were an ecstatic language that could not be understood without a miraculous act of hearing, but I agree with Picirilli that “such a strange interpretation of the record would [n]ever have been thought of had there not been a need to justify some kind of ‘tongues’ other than real languages” (What the Bible Says about Tongues, 7). John Stott also does a good job of highlighting that Luke clearly describes the disciples as speaking in other human languages as the Spirit enabled them (The Spirit, The Church, and the World: The Message of Acts [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1990], 66).
For articulations of various Pentecostal interpretations of this passage, see George W. Marston, Tongues Then and Now (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1983); and Charles R. Smith, Tongues in Biblical Perspective (Winona Lake, IN: BMH, 1972).
[4] Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, New Studies in Biblical Theology series 15, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 233.
[5] Peter J. Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2000), 68.
[6] Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues, 10.
[7] Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues, 11.
[8] Paul Borgman, The Way According to Luke: Hearing the Whole Story of Luke-Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 294.
[9] Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, 233.
[10] Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues, 11 (emphasis mine).
[11] See Azar Gat with Alexander Yakobson, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 21; and Nicholas Atkin, Michael Biddiss, and Frank Tallett, The Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789, s.v. “nationalism” (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
[12] For more on the expectations for Gentile proselytes, see Phillip T. Morgan, “Blessing the Nations: Biblical Nationalism II,” Helwys Society Forum, September 21, 2022, https://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/blessing-the-nations-biblical-nationalism-ii/; and Picirilli, Paul the Apostle, 71.
[13] Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues, 11.
[14] Picirilli, What the Bible Says about Tongues, 12. See also John F. MacArthur, Jr., The Charismatics: A Doctrinal Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 93.
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