What and When is the Baptism
of the Spirit. Acts 8:14-18
Acts
But Acts is a transition book. We are
moving from one dispensation, the dispensation of
In Acts chapter two the Holy Spirit
initially only falls upon the twelve. This was spread out as the day of
Pentecost proceeded. They were already believers, it was evidenced by a noise
like wind; then there was a visible representation in
the tongues of fire. Subsequent to that we are told they were filled with the
Spirit. This was a different word for filling than we have in Ephesians 5:18.
It was the word pimpleni [pimplhni]
which always precedes some sort of vocal utterance, some sort of statement or
speaking. It is related more to some kind of inspiration type talk than it is
to the ongoing filling of the Holy Spirit of Ephesians 5:18. They were filled
with the Spirit, they spoke in tongues, and there was no laying
on of hands. Water baptism is only mentioned late in the events in Acts 2:38.
In Acts chapter eight, the passage we are in, the Samaritans believed, are
baptised by water almost immediately, then three or four days go by before
Peter and John get there. Peter and John lay hands on them and then they
receive the Holy Spirit. There is clearly a distinction of three or four days
time between their justification and regeneration, and then several days later
they receive the Holy Spirit. But there is no mention of tongues.
If we read Pentecostal writers they say,
well everything else was there so tongues would have been there also. That is
reading things into the text, and you just can’t do that, there is no
justification for it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there but if the Holy Spirit
is connecting these dots all the way through, if we are really coming to the
text with a view that the Holy Spirit has inspired this and He is telling us
what we need to know, and He talks about tongues in Acts 2, Acts 10 and Acts 19,
and not here, if they had occurred here why wouldn’t He mention it? Because what
He is doing in each of these as He talks about the reception of the Holy Spirit,
which is the thread that ties these together, is to show that the Jews in Acts
2, the Samaritans in Acts 8, the Gentiles in Acts 10, and Old Testament
believers as evidenced by John the Baptist’s disciples as they come to Paul in Acts
19, these all come into the same body of Christ on the foundation of apostolic
authority. There is only one apostolic foundation and one apostolic leadership.
This is what Paul says in Ephesians 2:12: the apostles and prophets lay the
foundation of the church. So the Holy Spirit ties these together in what He
says. It is important to pay attention to what He says and what He leaves out.
So here there is no mention of speaking in
tongues and this is related to the fact that tongues was
designed to be a sign, not what was said. Many times people don’t hear that
because for so long people have thought that the purpose of tongues was to
communicate the gospel. But that is not what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14. It
is not what is being said, it is that divine revelation and content is not
being said in Hebrew, and because it is not being said in Hebrew and it is
being said in a Gentile language and a result of the Holy Spirit, it is a sign
of judgment on
If Jesus died in AD
33 and you were an Old Testament saint living in
So we want to look at the baptism of the
Holy Spirit and the mechanics. We may not think it is so important but it is
always important to make sure we clearly understand what the Word of God says
about whatever it talks about. First of all we have to understand that the baptism
of the Holy Spirit did not occur in the Old Testament at all. Baptism is a word
that has a literal meaning and it has a figurative connotation. The literal meaning
is to dip or plunge or immerse. It was used in a lot of different ways but it
had a symbolic significance of identification. The literal plunging or
immersion, which is what occurred in the baptism of John the Baptist and water
baptism for believer’s baptism, is to teach the principle of identification
with the message of either John or with the message of the gospel. The baptism
by means of the Holy Spirit did not occur in the Old Testament because it is an identification, as we will see, with Jesus Christ in His
death, burial and resurrection. Since Jesus had not died, been buried or
resurrected there could be no identification with that.
The first baptism of the Holy Spirit
occurred on the day of Pentecost. It is indicated by non-technical language
such as the receiving of the Holy Spirit. The reason for that is that there are
numerous ministries of God the Holy Spirit to the church age believer, and none
of those transpired prior to the day of Pentecost. So the reception of the Holy
Spirit includes indwelling, filling, the baptism by the Holy Spirit, the
reception of spiritual gifts; and all of this happened instantly on the day of
Pentecost, first to the apostles and then to other believers.
This doctrine of the baptism by the Holy
Spirit has become a controversial doctrine in modern times because of the
teaching of the Pentecostal-charismatic movement. It is important to understand
these technically-defined terms. A Pentecostal is the original movement, and “Pentecostal”
meant that you believed that there was a work of grace after salvation that is
identified by speaking in languages, and that act is called the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. If you got that then you quit your denomination and went off and
joined a distinct Pentecostal denomination. The Charismatic movement, though, is
one that has the same view that you get a second work of grace identified as
the baptism of the Holy Spirit, necessarily evidenced by speaking in tongues,
but you don’t leave your denomination.
It is important to understand that in classic
Pentecostal-Charismatic theology there are two works that happen. There is
something that happens at salvation and there something after salvation. If
they are challenged biblically we talk about what John the Baptist said about
Jesus: that Jesus would baptize by the Spirit, and then in 1 Corinthians
Matthew
In 1 Corinthians we have this phrase, “For
by one Spirit.” We always translate it “by means of one Spirit” because that
gets across the idea of instrumentality. We are “all baptized into one body,” and
Paul here uses the verb baptizo [baptizw]
in the aorist tense, which indicates that he is viewing it as completely in the
past. He traced the use of this first person plural pronoun all the way through
1 Corinthians from the beginning to the end talking about himself and anybody
in the Corinthians church—all those nasty, carnal Corinthians. Paul includes
them all and says, “we were all baptized into one body”
– past tense. So it is clear that this verse is talking about something that
applies to anyone and everyone who is a believer. They have all been identified
with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.
The word “into” is the Greek preposition eis [e)ij] which
indicates the direction or goal of something. The point is that we have a sort
of formula statement. There is a verb that tells us the kind of action. There
is another statement that tells us the instrument used to accomplish the action—indicated
by the en clause, then there is
another preposition that indicates the future goal or state that is the end
result of this action of baptism. We get messed up in English because in
English we handle a passive verb a little differently. We see that baptizo is an aorist passive indicative.
An active voice verb means that the subject performs the action of the verb.
John hit the ball with (by means of) the bat. The verb is “hit.” John is the
grammatical subject of the verb. So (active voice) John performs the action of
hitting the ball. The grammatical direct object of the verb receives the action
of the verb. John hit the ball with (expressing the instrument of how he
hit the ball), but if we turn it around and change the active voice verb to a
passive voice verb we have ti change where we put the subject and the object. If
we reverse it and say, The ball was hit with (or by)
the bat, the ball is now the grammatical subject, but it receives the action of
the passive voice verb. “Was hit” is now a passive voice, the subject receives
the action of the verb. When we change that over and say that the ball was hit
by John, John is no longer the grammatical subject of the verb but he is still
the one who performs the action. So grammatically this is called being the
agent—he is the agent who performs the action, but in a passive voice he is not
the grammatical subject. So we say, The ball (subject)
was hit (passive verb) by John. Notice that in English we use the preposition “by”
to express the agent who performs the action of the verb. You can also use “by”
to express the instrument. Confusing! The first “by” is not the same as the
second “by.” This is a problem we get into in 1 Corinthian s 12:13.
In Greek the performer or the agent, if it
is a passive verb, it is always going to be indicated by hupo [u(po]. It is
technical. Greek is not going to let us miss who the agent of the action is, it
is always going to be expressed by the preposition hupo, not by en.
en tells us what he hit it with. So
when 1 Corinthians
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is first
prophesied by John the Baptist at the incarnation. Jesus Christ states it
almost identically in Acts 1:5. In each of those instances this baptism by
means of the Holy Spirit is all future. Acts chapter one Jesus said: You will
be baptized by the Holy Spirit. By the time we get to Acts chapter eight it has
already happened. When does it happen? Acts chapter two.
In Matthew
John said: I baptize you (active voice
verb). John performs the action and he does it with water. To understand what
Jesus does with the Holy Spirit we have to understand what John the Baptist did
with the water. That is the visual training aid to understand something that
happens in the invisible spiritual realm. John takes a person and plunges/immerses
them into the water. It is literal water but it is a symbol or picture of the
total cleansing of this person from sin. Then when this person comes up out of
the water he is in a new state—in this case a state of repentance. So he has
gone from an old state of being non-repentant to being cleansed of sin
(symbolised by being plunged into the water). He comes out of the water and is
identified in a new state. When John says, “I baptize you with water,” it is
for the end goal of repentance, the new state. He compares that with what Jesus
is going to do: “He who is coming after me …. will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (future tense) – just as John baptized with
water. So the role of the Holy Spirit is analogous to the role of the water. What
was the role of the water? To cleanse ceremonially, ritually,
from sin. What is the Holy Spirit going to do at the instant of
salvation? He cleanses us positionally of all sin. The
baptism of the Holy Spirit is this picture of an identification that takes
place where the Holy Spirit is used in the same way that water was used by John
the Baptist to bring about this cleansing and into this new state.
1 Corinthians 10:2 NASB “and
all were baptized (passive voice) into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” This
is a dry baptism, the ones who got wet died. “… into
Moses,” the new state, “by means of the cloud and by means of the sea.” The
agent that effected their identification with Moses was the cloud and the
water, which is a reference to the pillar of fire, the cloud and the
1 Corinthians
In terms of mechanics Jesus Christ uses
the Holy Spirit to identify the believer with Christ just as John the Baptist
used water to identify the believer with repentance. It is identification that
is so important. John the Baptist uses water to identify the person with
repentance; Jesus Christ uses the Holy Spirit to identify the person with
Himself, in terms of His death, burial and resurrection. Jesus does the
baptising and there is only one baptism. The baptism that John predicted in
Matthew 3:11 and Jesus predicted in Acts 1:5 is the same baptism that Paul
talks about in 1 Corinthians 12:13. We are all united in this universal body of
Christ. Unification among believers is achieved by the baptism by means of the
Holy Spirit. Positionally we are all one in Christ.
Ephesians 4:5 NASB “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” The baptism
Paul is talking about there isn’t water baptism, it is the baptism by means of
God the Holy Spirit because that is what makes us one body in Christ.
This has implications such as in Galatians
3:23, 25. It doesn’t means that ethnic distinction, gender distinction, social
distinction is eradicated but these are no longer relevant in terms of the individual’s
relationship to God as they were under the Mosaic Law. In terms of the body of
Christ there aren’t these distinctions. There are in terms of roles but not in
terms of our personal relationship to God. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit provides
retroactive (it goes back) identification with the death, burial and resurrection
of Christ which is the basis, then, of the victory over the sin nature—Romans 6:3-5.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit begins the
church age, and this distinguishes it from all previous ages.
It is also the basis for positional truth,
i.e. our identification with Christ which then becomes the foundation for these
challenges and exhortations to live the spiritual life.
It is not an experience of any kind. We can’t look back and say we felt it. We didn’t even know what it was until we studied the Scripture and the revelation of God tells us about it. The bottom line is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit places us in Christ as a new creature, a new status, in His body, and that is what is being formed. Christ does it using the Holy Spirit as the means of cleansing and identification.