Wayne Grudem uses the below diagram to help us understand. The horizontal axis is time and it is expected that we mature as we move through time. While this maturity should be progressive, it may increase at different rates through our lives and it is even possible probable that we will have set-backs.
Relative to "baptism in the Spirit", it is commonly taught the "receiver" should confess all known sins, repent of any remaining sin in their lives, trust Christ to forgive those sins, commit every area of their lives to the Lord’s service, yield themselves fully to him, and believe that Christ is going to empower them in a new way and equip them with new gifts for ministry. Then after that preparation, they are encouraged to ask Jesus in prayer to baptize them in the Holy Spirit.
How can that ever be a bad thing? What does this preparation do? Grudem rightly puts it this way:
It is a guaranteed prescription for significant growth in the Christian life! Such confession, repentance, renewed commitment, and heightened faith and expectation, if they are genuine, can only bring positive results in a person’s life. If any Christian is sincere in these steps of preparation to receive baptism in the Holy Spirit, there will certainly be growth in sanctification and deeper fellowship with God. In addition to that, we may expect that at many of these times the Holy Spirit will graciously bring a measure of the additional fullness and empowering that sincere Christians are seeking, even though their theological understanding and vocabulary may be imperfect in the asking. If this happens, they may well realize increased power for ministry and growth in spiritual gifts as well.
Therefore, using the diagram below, it could be said that a person has moved from point A to point B and has made one very large step forward in the Christian life. That's a good thing. Prayer and Bible study and worship begin to seem more meaningful. Fruitfulness in evangelism and other kinds of ministry increases.
The key point however is that this person that moves from A to B is not now in a separate category of Christians called those who have been “baptized in the Holy Spirit”.
As an example, Grudem explains that there may be other Christians in the same community who has never had such a large step of growth but who has nonetheless been making steady progress for the last forty years of his or her Christian life and has come to point C on the chart above. Though that person has never had a single experience that Pentecostals would call a “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” he or she is still much farther along the path of Christian growth than the younger Christian who has recently been “baptized in the Holy Spirit” (according to Pentecostal terminology) and moved from point A to point B. Although the Christian who moved from point A to point B is not farther along in the Christian life than another person who is at point C, the person who moved to point B is certainly farther along than he or she was before and this is certainly a positive result in his or her life. Thus, with this understanding of the Christian life, we have no divisions of Christians into two categories.
All of this however still leaves me with the dilemma of what to call that thing referred to as "the baptism of the Spirit". I see that the use of this term implies a two-category Christianity, and worse for this to be seen as a common experience that can and indeed should happen to Christians at one point in time, and, once it has happened, does not need to be repeated.
So far I have opted to continue to use the phrase. What help can you offer me? Especially to describe this step-change in maturity when accompanied by a powerful, intimate encounter with God?
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