Baptism of the Holy Spirit; Personality of the Holy Spirit; 1Co 12:13

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.”

There is no stated agent in this verse. There is en pneumati [e)n pneumati], “by the Spirit,” so that must indicate means just as it does in every other passage. The en clause indicates the means or the instrument used to effect the identification and then the new state is “into one body,” eis [e)ij] plus the accusative of soma [swma]. What we see, then, is three things: a performer of the action, the action itself, and the new state.

In the water baptism of John then Baptist, John is the agent or the performer of the action. He uses water to identify the person with repentance. In the parallel, Jesus Christ is going to use the Holy Spirit (indicated by en) to identify the person with Himself in His death, burial and resurrection; we are baptized into His body. That clarifies the meaning and significance of the baptism by means of God the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit provides a retro-active identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ which then, according to Romans 6:3ff, is the basis for our victory over the sin nature.

The result of this is given in Galatians 3:27, 28, i.e. a genuine equality. In positional truth is the only place where there is real equality in this life. ^NASB “Gal 3:27 For all of you who were baptized [aorist passive indicative] into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” The one who performs the action, the agent, isn’t mentioned here. Neither is the means. Christ is not mentioned as the agent of the verb, the one who performs the act of baptism; neither is there an en clause indicating the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. What there is is the subject of the passive verb, every believer. Then there is the new state, “into Christ,” e)n plus the accusative of Xristoj. “…have clothed yourselves with Christ” is the idea of putting something on; we are now in Christ. Result: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This does not mean that in our experience there are no longer any Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, male or female. It means that in the spiritual life these categories no longer matter.

Definition: The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the work of Christ (That means he is the ultimate agent who is in charge of the operation) whereby at the moment of faith alone in Christ alone, Christ uses the Holy Spirit in the act of regeneration itself (Titus 3:5) to identify the believer with His own death, burial and resurrection, so that the believer becomes a new creature in Christ.

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.” “All” includes Paul and the Corinthians church, whether carnal or spiritual. We are all baptized, we all get the same package of assets: the 39 irrevocable things given at salvation, plus one revocable (the filling of the Spirit which is recovered through confession of sin). He adds something is the last clause, something that is frequently overlooked and one that is rarely exegeted because the issue of baptism of the Holy Spirit is such a hot topic: “we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” There is a certain parallelism here and linkage between two independent clause by the coordinating conjunction “and” – “and we were all made to drink.” That is the verb potizo [potizw], first person plural, aorist passive indicative. The picture here is that the Spirit was forcibly poured into your mouth; you were made to drink. This is not up to our volition, it is a passive voice verb.

This is going to take us right back to a series of Old Testament passages that relate to the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. This is a prophetic fulfilment of some things that were indicated in the Old Testament. It is similar to but not identical with what will happen in the Millennial kingdom, and that is an important distinction to make. It should be clear that in these Old Testament passages we are not talking about fulfilment. There is no mention of the church, not prophecy of the church in the Old Testament. There is prophecy related to the future role of the Holy Spirit in Israel, and this is one of those passages, and it is tied to the fulfilment in the Millennial kingdom. Isaiah 32:15 ^NASB “Until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fertile field, And the fertile field is considered as a forest.” The context is a praise passage focusing on characteristics of the Millennial kingdom when Israel is fully restored to the land and fully experiencing all of the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, the land covenant and the Davidic covenant. “Until the Spirit is poured out.” Again, this verbiage is used for the pouring out of the Holy Spirit during this particular time. This is the key term for understanding this phrase, and this concept of pouring something out is a metaphor so we have to understand what this means. How is the Holy Spirit poured out? Is it poured out like a quart at a time, a cup at a time, or a teaspoon at a time? How does this happen and what does this metaphor indicate? It is basically a matter of comparing Scripture with Scripture.

Proverbs 1:23 ^NASB “Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.” Here we have clarification because the proverb is put in poetry where there is a synonymous parallelism. “I will pour out my Spirit on you?” What does that mean? Is that some kind of mystical encounter, some kind of experiential, emotional event? No, look at the parallel: “I will make my words known to you.” That phrase explains what it means to have the Spirit poured out. It is revelatory. It is God the Holy Spirit who is the agent of revelation, and the phrase “pouring out my Spirit,” is a phrase that indicates that God is communicating objective information through His Spirit, words to make known to us. It is related to providing revelation, communicating information to mankind. This is Millennial in its anticipation. It is prophetic and tied to the messianic kingdom in Israel.

Joel 2:28 ^NASB “It will come about after this [After the day of the Lord, the day of wrath] That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy [revelation], Your old men will dream dreams [revelation], Your young men will see visions.” This is the mechanics of God giving revelation, revealing His Word and His will to mankind. Dreams were one of the means God used in the Old Testament to communicate information. Visions does not refer to ecstatic experience. Ecstatic experience removes the intellect from the function of the operation. Ecstatic utterance by definition is emotive, it cuts out thought, it short-circuits the intellectual process. Just as the giving of prophecy through dreams and visions in the Old Testament was never ecstatic, it is not ecstatic in the Millennial kingdom, it is never emotion. God never communicates truth through emotion. Joel 2:28 is a prophecy that is similar to that of the one in Isaiah 32:15 related to the revelatory process that would be in operation in the Millennial kingdom as a result of the Holy Spirit.

This Joel verse is quoted by Peter in Acts 2. What happens in Acts 2 is foundational to understanding tongues, the problem with tongues and spiritual gifts in Corinth. In Acts 2 we have the first historical occurrence of the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit was prophesied as future in Acts 1:5.

Acts 2:1 ^NASB “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” Who is the “they’? The basic rule of grammar is that when you have a pronoun you have to go back to the most immediate antecedent, and that is who “they” is referring to. “They” is a plural noun, so we have to find the last plural noun mentioned. It is the eleven apostles, not the 120. So we are only talking about something that happens initially to the eleven. [4] “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” This was a miracle of speech. Sometimes people will say they heard in their own language. They did hear in their own language because their language was being spoken. It is not a miracle of hearing, the gift of languages is a gift of speech, it is not a gift of hearing. Somewhere between 7 to eleven language groups were present there being communicated to.

Acts 2:16 ^NASB “but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel.” That phrase is the subject of much debate. It sounds to the untrained ear that what he is saying is that this is a fulfilment of Joel. The problem is that if you go back and look at the context of Joel 2, Joel mentions a number of different things that are going to take place after these things: “And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions.” There are no dreams, prophecies, visions; there is speaking of languages. So what we have mentioned in Joel 2 doesn’t occur in Acts 2. What does occur in Acts 2 is not mentioned in Joel 2. This is important to understand. If this is a fulfilment of prophecy then what is happening in Acts 2 must be exactly what is happening in Joel 2; but it is not. Peter quotes five different verses from Joel 2. This must have been standard Jewish operating procedure for quoting Scripture. The same thing happens in Hebrews and other places where four or five verses are quoted and the person who is doing the quoting is only making one simple point out of one simple phrase, yet he quotes the whole chapter almost but there is only one point he is emphasizing.

Here, this is not a one-to-one fulfilment. There are different ways Jewish rabbis handled Old Testament Scripture. The first way is a literal prophecy with a literal fulfilment. This would be like Micah 5:2 which is the prophecy that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem. Then there is a statement that is a literal prophecy, such as Joel 2, but it is an application, not a fulfilment. In this case what this means is that all that is being brought out by the reference is similarity. He is saying that this is like that, not that this is that. This is the same kind of thing that is going on. There is going to be revelation as a result of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

So now when we look at 1 Corinthians 12:13 and we look at the baptism of the Holy Spirit, what doe we read? “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.” That also has a revelatory sense to it. There is new revelation to come as a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and this new revelation that comes has to do with unrevealed truth that was not revealed in the Old Testament: the mystery doctrine of the church age. And that is related to the body of Christ and this whole new thing that is happening in the church age. So we have to understand the distinctiveness and the importance of the body of Christ and our unity with Christ, and how that relates to the function and operation of the church down through history.