7Doctrine of Positional
Truth; Baptism of the Holy Spirit; 1Co
We have come to a
key passage in 1 Corinthians,
1 Corinthian 12:12 NASB “For
even as the body is one and {yet} has many members, and all the members of the
body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. [13] For by one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether
Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one
Spirit.” These two verses lay the foundation for Paul’s argument here on
spiritual gifts in both the verses that precede this and the verses that
follow.
If we add verse 14 here there
are seven uses of the word “one.” So what is the emphasis here? One of the laws
of Bible study is repetition and to observe whether or not the author of
Scripture repeats something. Usually it is not quite this obvious but when we
have the word “one” mentioned seven times in three verses it should get our
attention. The emphasis is on that team nature for a local church, that we are
a team, it is not just a bunch of individual believers who come to church and
fill out their doctrinal notebooks and then head home without any real
interaction with each other. There is not just the emphasis on the individual
but also on that team nature to the local church. So in verse 12 Paul comes
back to the unity aspect of the body. By “body” he refers to the body of Christ
which is the church. And the body is one, therefore in the doctrine of the
church we speak of the universal church. The universal church is made up of all
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ during the church age, alive or dead. Then
there is the doctrine of the local church and that is the manifestation of the
universal body of Christ in a local assembly. Then he says, “and all the
members [each individual], though they are many, are one body.” He adds the
phrase “though they are many” to emphasize their individual distinctiveness,
but then he emphasizes in the phrase following the verb, they “are one body, so
also is Christ.” So there is this balance between the individuals and the unity
of the body.
Verse 13 is going to explain
the mechanics of how that happens. That is called the baptism of the Holy
Spirit and it is related to the doctrine of positional truth. Positional truth
has to do with our standing in relationship to Jesus Christ. We are said to be
“in Christ”—e)n plus the dative, in
a locative sense we are identified with Christ. This is where the body of
Christ is formed. The action that performs that, that places us in Christ, is
the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. It is the baptism by the Holy Spirit
that effects positional truth.
The doctrine of positional truth
1)
Positional truth
is a term that is equivalent to positional sanctification. These terms are very
similar and they indicate the fact that at the instant of salvation when we are
put in Christ we are completely set apart to the service of God. We are positionally sanctified and that means that we become a
sanctified one or a saint. This occurs only in relationship to church age
believers. There was no positional truth prior to the church age. Positional
truth focuses the believer on his uniting with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection.
2)
The mechanics of
how positional truth is accomplished is the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit.
And the definition of that is that Christ uses the Holy Spirit to effect our union with Himself. This is seen in 1 Corinthians
12:13 NASB “For by one Spirit we were all baptized
into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all
made to drink of one Spirit.”
3)
Positional truth
guarantees the believer’s eternal security. Because we are in Christ we have a
secure salvation. That union is permanent, it cannot be severed. Romans 8:38,
39.
4)
Positional truth
belongs to all categories of believers—carnal, spiritual, adult, immature, reversionist. It is not determined by anything we do, it is
determined at the instant of salvation.
5)
Positional truth
is what qualifies the believer to live with God forever. To live with God forever
we must have our sins paid for and we must possess perfect righteousness and
eternal life. All of that takes place at the instant of salvation.
6)
Positional truth
creates a new creature in Christ. There is regeneration. 2 Corinthians 5:17. In
the Old Testament believers were regenerated but they weren’t in Christ.
7)
Positional truth
is the basis of spiritual growth because we are now indwelt by God the Holy
Spirit which is the foundation for the filling by means of the Holy Spirit, and
for producing divine good. Ephesians 2:10.
8)
Positional truth
is the basis for grace blessing. Because we are in Christ God is able to bestow
His blessings on us. God blesses us because of possession of Christ’s
righteousness, not what we have done.
9)
What God has done
for us in positional truth is itemized Romans
10)
Because we are in
union with Christ we share nine things: a) Eternal life, 1 John 5:11, 12; b)
Perfect righteousness, 2 Corinthians 5:21; c) Election, Ephesians 1:4; d)
Destiny, Ephesians 1:5; e) Sonship, 2 Timothy 2:1; f) Sanctification, 1
Corinthians 1:2; g) Priesthood. He is the high priest and we are all royal
priests, Hebrews 10:10-14; Royalty, 2 Peter 1:11.
11)
Positional truth
is not experience, not emotion, not ecstatics.
1 Corinthians
This verse is a difficult
verse to really understand in the Greek because of its relationship to other
verses that talk about the baptism by the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is
important to understand it in terms of a certain amount of distinctions made in
the Greek. The verse begins “For by one spirit.” This is the preposition en [e)n] plus pneumati [pneumati], the dative form of the noun pneuma [pneuma]. The preposition en strengthens the idea that this is
instrumentality; it is by means of something. In the early 20th
century in the doctrines of the Holy Spirit liberal theology assaulted
Christianity on a part of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and that was in the
arena of His independent personality. So there was a tremendous battle waged at
the end of the 19th century and into the middle of the 20th
century with liberal theology as to whether or not the Holy Spirit was just an
impersonal force of God or merely a manifestation of God, or whether the Holy
Spirit had a distinct, unique personhood. (We have seen in the past that the
Holy Spirit is a distinct person) Conservatives became a little confused with
some grammar terms. One of these terms was “personal agency” and the other was
“impersonal means.” These are grammar terms, and the way this was traditionally
taught was that if you have a dative phrase and it is means or agency, of the
noun in the dative is an individual or a person then you select the option of
“personal agency.” If it is an impersonal object, then you select “impersonal means.”
So the conclusion was, since they were fighting a battle over the personhood of
the Holy Spirit, we can’t say that is impersonal means because that would
indicate that the Holy Spirit may not be a person. Well now they have confused
a real category of personhood with grammatical nomenclature of personal agency
and impersonal means.
The difference: The agent of
an action, in the concept of personal agency, is the same person who performs
the action. Grammatically that would be, if you have an active voice verb, then
the agent who performs the action would be the subject of the sentence. But if
it is reversed and made a passive voice the agent is not longer the subject of
the verb, it is now the object.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit
1)
Baptism of the
Holy Spirit did not occur in the Old Testament. Baptism of the Holy Spirit has
to do with being identified with Christ, therefore there was no baptism of the
Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, it is unique to the
church age.
2)
The baptism of the Holy Spirit was first
prophesied by John the Baptist prior to the inception of Jesus’ ministry. In
Acts 1:5 it was still future. Matthew
What
this led to was the fact that among non-Charismatics
they were inadvertently talking about two different baptisms. This was a
problem in Charismatics because they recognized the
difference and said 1 Corinthians 12:13 clearly takes place at salvation so you
have a baptism by the Spirit that happens to everybody at salvation, but you
get a second one that is done by Jesus in the Gospels and that is the one that
comes after salvation. So in traditional Pentecostal theology they came up with
two different baptisms. The answer for most non-Charismatics
was that they’re the same baptism but there is only baptism, and the way it was
normally taught was that the Spirit was the one who performed the baptism, and
the Holy Spirit identifies you with Christ. See the problem? In that sentence
the Holy Spirit identifies you with Christ, the Holy
Sprit is now the subject of the verb and the agent. Will that fit? Because if you are going to call that personal agency you confuse
the grammar term with the reality. That’s where it ended up
inadvertently in a non-Charismatic position reaffirming two baptisms. But they
are not, there is only one baptism.
Acts
1:5, Jesus says the same thing: “for John baptized
with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit not many days from now.” John performs the action,
therefore he is the agent performing the action of the verb. John baptized with water: en
hudati; “but you will be baptized,” future
passive indicative, “with the Holy Spirit,” en
pneumati, “by means of the Holy Spirit.” So once again, the Holy Spirit
in both the Matthew passage and the Acts passage it is the Holy Spirit who is
the means. 1 Corinthians 10:2, “and all were baptized
into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” “Were baptized”
is passive, which means the subject, “all,” receives the action of the verb.
All the Jews were baptized “into (eis) Moses, by means of (en) the cloud and by means (en) of the sea.” In Greek, when you shift
something from an active voice to a passive voice to express the subject, the
agent, the one who performs the action, you use the preposition huper or dia,
not en.
That
means that the phrase “by the Spirit” in verse 13 should be understood not as indicating
the one who performs the action or the agent of the action, but is indicating
the means of the action. It should be translated: “We were all baptized by means of one Spirit.” It doesn’t mentioned the one who performs the action, we know that from
Matthew 3:11. Jesus Christ is the one who performs the action; He is the agent;
he is the one who is the subject of the verb; he is the one who is performing
the action of baptism, and He does it by using God the Holy Spirit to
identify the believer with Himself in His death, burial and resurrection.
Titus
3:5 NASB “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done
in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” Washing there brings in this whole water imagery of
washing and cleansing. What John did was take the individual and use water to
symbolize cleaning and identification. He would plunge them into the water and
he would bring them out into a new state of repentance. What happens in the
parallelism is that he says Jesus is going to come along and instead of using
water to put the believer into a new state he was going to use the Holy Spirit
to put the believer into a new state. So Jesus is going to take the believer,
as it were, and using the Holy Spirit is going to plunge the believer into the
Holy Spirit and that affects washing and regeneration and all of the other
Spirit-related ministries, and he identifies the believer with Himself.
What this shows is that there
are not two different performers of action. You don’t have Jesus doing it in
the Gospels and the Holy Spirit doing it in 1 Corinthians, and it is
illegitimate to say that Jesus is the ultimate one who does it and the Holy
Spirit is the immediate performer of the action. That doesn’t work
grammatically. The only thing that works is to be consistent, that it is the
Holy Spirit who is the means of effecting this identification. Technically we
need to refer to it as the baptism by means of the Spirit. We are filled by means
of the Spirit; we walk by means of the Spirit; we are baptized
by means of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who is the means of effecting
all of these different elements in the Christian life.
_______________
Ephesians 2:8, 9 NASB
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,
{it is} the gift of God;
The only thing that we did
for salvation was believe the gospel, but that belief is not the cause of the of the gospel, it is the means of appropriating eternal
life. This is something that is so important, so foundational and so much under
attack today.
The hyper-Calvinistic
doctrine is that faith is a gift and that you can’t do anything to save
yourself, therefore God has to give you the gift of faith. Faith is viewed in
that context as something that has merit or value in and of itself.
There are two options in
understanding faith. Faith can have value or merit in and of itself, or it can
be non-meritorious. The way the hyper-Calvinist takes it is that faith in and
of itself is meritorious so he says that you can have a non-saving faith in
Christ. This is inherent to Reformed theology and to Lordship salvation. In
that idea this makes faith meritorious, therefore at salvation you have to be
given faith from God. Faith is viewed as the gift in Ephesians 2:8,9: NASB“For by grace
you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
What the Calvinist tries
to do is take that neuter singular pronoun “it” and make it refer back to
faith, that faith is the gift. But faith in the Greek is a feminie singular
noun, and the rule of grammar is that a pronoun must agree in gender with the
noun it refers to. Therefore a neuter pronoun cannot refer to a feminine noun.
Furthermore, we read in
that passage, “For by grace you have been saved,” grace is the Greek noun charis, and charis is also a
feminine noun. Therefore the “it” cannot refer to charis.
It is a rule of grammar in Greek that when you have an entire clause or a
compound or abstract idea the whole idea is referred to by a neuter pronoun. So
the main idea of “For by grace you have been saved” goes back to verse 4 in
Ephesians 2 where Paul brings it in at that point as a sort of exclamation, and
he picks that idea up again in verse 8 and “through faith” is a secondary idea in
the grammar. The “it” refers to the “For by grace you have been saved,” it is a
“by grace” salvation; that is the gift of God.
This is so misunderstood
and what that emphasizes is that faith is non-meritorious, and it is not faith
that has value, it is the cross, the object of faith, that
has value. So we are not saved because of anything we do. Furthermore in
Ephesians 2:8, 9 it is “by grace through faith.” That is another important
phrase.
In this passage we have
the preposition dia, and dia
either governs a noun in the genitive or it will govern a noun in the
accusative. When that noun that follows the preposition is in the accusative
case it means “because.” When it is in the genitive case it has the idea of
“through,” and through indicates a secondary means. Because indicates the
ultimate causation for something, but it doesn’t say that, it doesn’t have dia plus the accusative, it has dia
plus the genitive of pisits, which means that we are
saved through faith, not because of faith. If faith were meritorious then we
would have an accusative case there, “because.” But it is not that way, it
means we are saved through faith, the cause of salvation is located in the
grace of God and His eternal plan of salvation and Christ’s work on the cross,
it is not on what we do; it is not even in faith. So faith is non-meritorious,
it cannot be considered a work. It is not something that we can do that gains
God’s favour.
The point is that we don’t
do anything to get saved; Jesus did it all.