Joel 2:32 speaks about ‘the survivors’, the same word as in Isaiah 1:9. The verse is quoted by Peter in Acts 2:39, and in verse 40 we still hear echoes from it. What is this ‘remnant’ in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and what is its application?
‘Be saved’ is a more accurate translation of the verb in Acts 2:40, presuming that Luke deliberately used a passive voice rather than a middle voice (‘save yourselves’). But what it implies in koine Greek and how this form is used in other instances, we will have to further investigate. This is the only instance in the New Testament. A passive imperative sounds a bit odd, but in the case of the verb ‘to save’ the passive and middle voice forms are different and here Luke has chosen the passive voice. Maybe it is grammatically comparable with ‘be filled’ in Eph. 5:18, but the verb ‘to fill’ does not have a passive form that is distinctive from the middle voice and here it is in the present tense. ‘Be saved’ is in the aorist tense. Anyway, Peter seems to exhort the people to be saved. But we have to consider the context. He says, ‘Be saved from …’ Now we would expect him to say something like ‘the wrath of God’, ‘God’s judgement’ or ‘eternal condemnation’, but instead he says, ‘… from this crooked generation.’ By this he either means to be saved from its direct bad influence and wickedness or from its inevitable lot of God’s condemnation. To me the best option seems to be the former. In that case the exhortation is to see how we should change our lives, our customs, our behaviour, our associates in such a way that the unbelieving community cannot draw us away from our devotion to God. Here ‘salvation’ could imply protection, rather than the promise of eternal life. Apparently we need God’s help to do so. So ‘withdraw yourselves, with God’s help, from the wickedness of this world.’ We are in the world, but not of it. We ‘abide in Christ’. ‘Be saved’ could also have a soothing and comforting implication: be saved from its tyranny, cruelty and injustice, its suppression and its corruption, everything that makes victims and causes suffering, abuse of power and position.
These devout Jews and proselytes in Acts 2 were witnessing a different kind of worship. It was worship under the direct authority and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There was no temple service involved, no high priest or other priests or Levites. Here was a fresh start of a new community of the people of God in the midst of a society that claimed to be the people of God but was in fact utterly corrupt. So the first hearers may have heard the exhortation to ‘be saved from this crooked generation’ as to make a fresh start as people of God, the direct authority of the Holy Spirit being the exclusive way of true worship instead of temple service. They must have known its grip on society and how it served as an excuse for power, comparable with pope Leo X’s project of building the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Kingdom of God is the only answer to corrupt society, including religion.
The idea in Joel is that if God would indeed pour out His Spirit on all flesh prophetic ministry as a call to God’s people to return to God would no longer be necessary or even wanted. ‘To prophecy’ would get a different meaning, a much more positive purpose. Jeremiah’s prophecy was to break down and to build, to plant and to pluck up. The prophet’s message under the New Covenant was to be more on the planting and building side.