Mark 1:8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
Luke 3:16 I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
John 1:33 He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is the baptizer.
Acts 1:5 [Jesus says,] John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Acts 11:16 [Here Peter refers back to the same words of Jesus that were quoted in the previous verse. He says,] I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
These passages refer to the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit fell in power on the disciples and those with them, they spoke in other tongues, and about three thousand people were converted (Acts 2:14). In all of these I understand Jesus to be the one who baptizes and the Holy Spirit is the element in which one is immersed.
This leaves 1 Corinthians 12:13; For we were all baptized in one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Some would argue here that it is the Holy Spirit that baptizes and it is into one body that we are immersed. But if so, that would defeat the Pentecostal argument for a second baptism. The timing of this passage is when one becomes a member of the body of Christ. That is, all believers receive this upon rebirth. A better argument from the original language and how the believer at that time would have understood this is that the element is still the Holy Spirit and that the body of Christ, the Church, is the location the believer finds themselves in after the baptism.
If this is correct, the real question is what is significant about the baptism of the Holy Spirit that occurred at Pentecost versus the baptism of the Holy Spirit received by every believer at the time of entrance to the Church? Wayne Grudem uses the diagram below to help.
In this he attempts to show that the working of the Holy Spirit in all believers is in a way and at a level that is significantly different in terms of frequency and concentration than prior to Pentecost. Grudem explains:
This new covenant power gave the disciples more effectiveness in their witness and their ministry (Acts 1:8; Eph. 4:8, 11–13), much greater power for victory over the influence of sin in the lives of all believers (note the emphasis on the power of Christ’s resurrection at work within us in Rom. 6:11–14; 8:13–14; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:10), and power for victory over Satan and demonic forces that would attack believers (2 Cor. 10:3–4; Eph. 1:19–21; 6:10–18; 1 John 4:4). This new covenant power of the Holy Spirit also resulted in a wide and hitherto unknown distribution of gifts for ministry to all believers (Acts 2:16–18; 1 Cor. 12:7, 11; 1 Peter 4:10; cf. Num. 11:17, 24–29). These gifts also had corporate implications because they were intended not to be used individualistically but for the corporate building up of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:7; 14:12). It also meant that the gospel was no longer effectively limited to the Jews only, but that all races and all nations would hear the gospel in power and would be united into the church, to the glory of God (Eph. 2:11–3:10).20 The Day of Pentecost was certainly a remarkable time of transition in the whole history of redemption as recorded in Scripture. It was a remarkable day in the history of the world, because on that day the Holy Spirit began to function among God’s people with new covenant power.
But this fact helps us understand what happened to the disciples at Pentecost. They received this remarkable new empowering from the Holy Spirit because they were living at the time of the transition between the old covenant work of the Holy Spirit and the new covenant work of the Holy Spirit. Though it was a “second experience” of the Holy Spirit, coming as it did long after their conversion, it is not to be taken as a pattern for us, for we are not living at a time of transition in the work of the Holy Spirit. In their case, believers with an old covenant empowering from the Holy Spirit became believers with a new covenant empowering from the Holy Spirit. But we today do not first become believers with a weaker, old covenant work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and wait until some later time to receive a new covenant work of the Holy Spirit. Rather, we are in the same position as those who became Christians in the church at Corinth: when we become Christians we are all “baptized in one Spirit into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13)—just as the Corinthians were, and just as were the new believers in many churches who were converted when Paul traveled on his missionary journeys.
What's the bottom line then? Again, Grudem summarizes as follows:
the disciples certainly did experience “a baptism in the Holy Spirit” after conversion on the Day of Pentecost, but this happened because they were living at a unique point in history, and this event in their lives is therefore not a pattern that we are to seek to imitate.
What shall we say about the phrase “baptism in the Holy Spirit”? It is a phrase that the New Testament authors use to speak of coming into the new covenant power of the Holy Spirit. It happened at Pentecost for the disciples, but it happened at conversion for the Corinthians and for us.
I can accept this position as the Biblical one but I struggle for language to describe the second experiences later found in Scripture and through-out history. I have referred to these as baptism in the Holy Spirit but I see the confusion that can cause. Therefore I will make some future posts to give better language to these experiences.
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1 comment:
Rick, I agree, and that's why I find it strange that you use the phrase baptism of the Holy Spirit in the way you did. Perhaps you can say that the person has grown deeper in experiencing God, or something like that? After all, it's not like we have only one special experience of God, but multiple experiences.
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