What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? - Part 6

 

Picture from Wallpapers.com - twodazza

 This is the sixth and the final instalment in my series of articles about the baptism by the Holy Spirit. If you have somehow found yourself here without having read the previous articles, I would encourage you to start with the first article and work your way through so that you will get to follow the entire process by which we have found ourselves here, as this has been an exploratory exercise for me and not just a treatise of what I understood when I started writing these articles.

In this series, we have seen that, while a Believer will receive the Holy Spirit upon the confession of faith in Jesus and His gift of salvation, this is an indwelling of the Holy Spirit for guidance and comfort, but this does not seem to include an empowerment of the Believer to perform works to advance the kingdom of God. The receipt of the Holy Spirit is a first experience, while the baptism by the Holy Spirit is a second experience. We see this example at the baptism of Jesus. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus with the water baptism of repentance, then immediately afterwards, Jesus receives the baptism by the Holy Spirit as a second event, after which He goes into the wilderness to be tested, and then He begins His ministry in power.

While we believe that Jesus was fully man and fully God while He walked on this earth, I think that the Scriptures show us that His miracles and teachings were made possible through the power of the Holy Spirit and not through His God-nature alone. Jesus also alludes to this when He tell His disciples that "he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do" (John 14:12), and He then goes on to tell them that they will receive the Holy Spirit after Jesus has left them. We see the Holy Spirit come upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, which we read about in Acts 2, and from that day forward we see the disciples, all of whom were uneducated, simple men, work in power to teach and to heal and to build the Church of Jesus in the earth.

We noted in the previous articles that Jesus says to His disciples, "he who believes in Me" will accomplish these greater works. This is not a statement that only the disciples will do this, but those who believe in Jesus will be able to accomplish these things. So the question is, why do we not see Christians teaching and healing with the power that the disciples did? My conclusion is that we have forgotten about the baptism by the Holy Spirit, and so we have not been living in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The church has placed a lot of emphasis on the Fruit of the Spirit which we read about in Galatians 5:22-23, as well as the deeds of the flesh which we read about immediately prior. Unfortunately, teaching about the baptism by the Holy Spirit, and the correlating Gifts of the Spirit, has been lacking or missing altogether, so the church has been functioning under human power instead of under Holy Spirit power. Is is any wonder that the world is the way that it is? We are so focused on the Fruit of the Spirit that we have forgotten about the Gifts of the Spirit.

I want to re-quote something from the Introduction to Christian Theology, which I stated in a previous article: "The gifts of the Spirit...are gifts of grace. They are the divinely ordained means and powers with which Christ endows His Church in order to enable it to properly perform its task on earth." "The gifts of the Spirit are supernatural endowments for service, and are determined by the character of the ministry to be accomplished. They are vital to the successful achievement of the mission of the Church. Such gifts are distributed as the Spirit wills. They are related to, but distinguished from, natural gifts and abilities. Not all members of the Church are similarly endowed. There is a diversity of gifts in the Church (1 Cor. 12:29-30). These divine bestowments upon individual members determine their functions in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:21-25), and constitute essential factors in the spiritual progress of the Church in every age." [a]

The Gifts of the Spirit are endowed to the Church by the Holy Spirit, in order to enable the Church to properly perform its function on earth. These Gifts are supernatural and fitting the character of the ministry that the Spirit wants to accomplish. These Gifts are given according to the will of the Holy Spirit to individuals within the Church in order to determine what their functions in the Church will be towards to goal of progressing the domain of the Church throughout the ages. And for clarification, I am not referring to the corporate church congregation as we meet together, but rather, I am referring to the global Church of Believers.

So it seems that we all have the opportunity to be working in the power of the Holy Spirit; so why are our churches dead and ineffective in the world? It is because we have failed to pursue the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I may have failed to address this properly in previous articles, so I need to make sure that I talk about this here. The Holy Spirit will act upon the willing. He will not impose Himself upon those who are not interested in walking in the power that He offers. At the same time, He will not empower those who are seeking His baptism merely for their own benefit. The preachers that you see on T.V. and the internet performing "healings" and "driving out demons" in dramatic fashion, and then begging you to send them money are not Holy Spirit empowered; they are charlatans and they are damaging the image of God and the Church.

The Holy Spirit chooses whom to empower and in what way they will be empowered. He is looking for a submissive soul that seeks closeness to God to a greater degree than what we are seeing among most of the christians that we are surrounded by. And yes, this is a judgment on christians in the western world particularly. We have been so blessed that we are able to provide for all of our needs without God, so we have not learned what it means to rely fully on God.

The Holy Spirit is looking for those who are willing to submit fully to Him, to the extent of forfeiting all that they have if they are called to do so. He looks at the heart condition and determines if the Believer is truly in love with God and not just the idea of God. He will baptize and empower those who He knows will accomplish the things that He wants to accomplish through them.

So one should consider the nature of our own relationship with God and the Holy Spirit, taking into account what our faith walk looks like, in order to determine if we are walking according to the leading and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, or if we are merely living with Him as an acquaintance. Then, depending on what we determine is the case, we need to also determine how far we are willing to go in our service to God.

To be clear, Holy Spirit baptism does not mean that the Holy Spirit makes one faultless or sinless, nor does this mean that the Spirit necessarily remains with us for the rest of our lives, regardless of our walk with Him. In an earlier article in this series, I mentioned that King Saul was baptized by the Holy Spirit for a time after Samuel had anointed him to be the first king of Israel. Saul prophesied under the leading of the Holy Spirit (1 Samuel 10:10), which is evidence that he was, indeed, baptized by the Holy Spirit. Yet, during his reign as the king of Israel, Saul acted in outright disobedience to God against the word that Samuel had delivered to him. We read of this failure in 1 Samuel 15, and we read of Samuel's rebuke of Saul for this failure.

And what is the result of this disobedience to God? We read in verses 10-11a that, "Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands.” Further, in verse 26, we read as Samuel delivers God's decision to Saul, saying, "you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel." 

Then we see, in the very next chapter of 1 Samuel, that God asks Samuel why he mourns over Saul and tells him to go and anoint the next king in God's line of succession. This ends up with the anointing of David to be the next king of Israel, and we read that "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward" (v.13), and that "the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul" (v.14).

I share this to show you that even when someone is walking in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they will still have to contend with the human nature, and they will still fail in this at times. Only Jesus was able to avoid this type of failure, and that, I believe, is where His God nature came into play. He was empowered by the Holy Spirit to minister to the people, but He still had the human nature to contend with, and it was only His deity that kept Him from succumbing to the human nature. Since we do not possess any degree of deity, we will not be fully successful in our battle against the fleshly deeds that our human nature desires. So if you see someone whom you believe is walking in Holy Spirit baptism falter in some way, do not hold it in judgment against them any more than you would want your own failures held in judgment against you. They are still fallible.

I also want to point out that Saul had the Holy Spirit baptism taken away from him due to his disobedience to God's Word. There are those who believe that a person cannot lose their salvation by any means, but if a man that had been acting under the baptism by the Holy Spirit was able to lose that baptism due to disobedience, does it not also make sense that someone who has simply been indwelt by the Holy Spirit could, by the same disobedience, cause the Holy Spirit to depart from him, taking with Him the gift of eternal salvation? 

The gift is not eternal; the salvation from eternal punishment is, contingent on our continued obedience to God. I cover this topic in my series on the false doctrine of Once Saved, Always Saved. The Holy Spirit weighs the heart of a man and will not reject a man for the occasional failure. It takes a heart position of rebellion against God for the man to be deemed as having rejected God and for the Holy Spirit to depart from him, whether in regards to the baptism or the indwelling, depending on that man's relationship with God. If one is Holy Spirit baptized, then I think they can likely lose that anointing without losing their salvation, but if that man is not careful, he is already on the trajectory to lose his salvation as well.

As I wind up this series of articles, I hope that it has become clear to you that the baptism by the Holy Spirit that I am talking about is unfortunately and unnecessarily rare, in the western church in particular. As such, it is possible that you have been seeing someone who is walking in Holy Spirit baptism acting in ways that you think are strange, not understanding the root of their decisions. There may be aspects of their character that are at odds with what you think is normal, or maybe some of the choices that they make don't make sense to you. There are definitely people who make odd choices of their own volition or who try to impart that they are operating under the impulses of the Holy Spirit when they, in fact, are not. This is another area where discernment comes into play. But I want you to also consider that they may, in fact, be tuned into another source of guidance that has them walking a different path than one that world, or you, would recognize as normal.

Jesus talks about this in John 3:8. "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." When we observe someone who is acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we may not understand what they are doing or why. It simply does not make sense to those who are not walking according to the Spirit. We do not understand the source of their decisions in the same way that we do not know where the wind that we observe blowing the trees around has originated from.

Matthew Henry says it this way in his commentary; "The Spirit, in regeneration, works arbitrarily, and as a free agent. The Spirit dispenses his influences where, and when, on whom, and in what measure and degrees, he pleases. He works powerfully, and with evident effects; Thou hearest the sound thereof; though its causes are hidden, its effects are manifest. He works mysteriously, and in secret hidden ways. Thou canst not tell whence it comes, not whither it goes. How it gathers and how it spends its strength is a riddle to us; so the manner and methods of the Spirit's working are a mystery."

There are many people who have been observing my journey over the last many years already who have, no doubt, determined that I have lost my way. They cannot see the logic behind the decisions that I have made, because by human logic, there is none. But I am convinced that I have been acting according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and though the road has been hard, I am also convinced that there is a purpose to all of it. Thankfully, I now attend a church that is sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and there are individuals that have walked a similar road before us who are encouraging us to continue on this path, and we are buoyed by their belief, alongside ours, that this path has been placed before us by the Holy Spirit.

I am still learning what it means to live according to the Spirit. I suspect that there is no final destination for this journey other than to pursue continual progress. There may come a time when either I or the Spirit will determine that I have progressed as far as I can, and that journey will stall out. I want to make it my purpose to find out how far my faith can bring me in this journey.

After the time when I set this article up to publish online, it has been laid on me to encourage everyone who is reading this and who wants to receive the baptism by the Holy Spirit to actively pursue the baptism by the Holy Spirit. Ask God for it; don't just wait for the Holy Spirit to move on you, but make the request of God to receive His Spirit baptism and to empower you to be His witness to the ends of the earth, witnessing in word, in deed, and in the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:18-19).

[a] Introduction to Christian Theology - H. Orton Wiley, S.T.D; Paul T. Culbertson, PHd; 1946 pg 252