Walking in the Light and the Filling of the Holy Spirit
Galatians 5:16 & 1 John 1:4–9
We read the command Òwalk by means
of the Spirit.Ó We are taking some time to go through various passages
related to that. Remember the spiritual life of the believer in the Church Age
is a supernatural way of life and therefore demands a supernatural means of
execution. God the Father has so determined in this Church Age that there will
be a unique witness by the Church Age believer in the angelic conflict in
relation to the spiritual life. The more I study the more I come to understand
how significant this is.
This last week when we had the Prophecy Conference. I hope that some of you caught a little bit of what Tommy was saying
that how much what we are doing today will determine who and what we are in
eternity. This is just a drop in the bucket compared to all of eternity. This
is boot camp and basic training; this is where we learn everything there is to
know about living for the Lord in the midst of hostile circumstances.
The things that we can learn in the midst of testing can only be learned
in the midst of testing. When we are absent from the body and face to face with
the Lord, we will be in a place where there is no sin, no testing, and there
will not be the opportunity to learn many of the things that we have today. In
the context of the angelic conflict, God has structured the Church Age as the
highest level of testimony and witness in the angelic conflict.
As part of that whole package, God has given us the Holy Spirit. There
are seven different salvation ministries of God the Holy Spirit, and three of
those relate specifically and are unique to the Church Age. Those are the
baptism by means of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the
filling of the Holy Spirit. There is a lot of controversy today about the
nature of the filling of the Holy Spirit, and there is also a lot of
misunderstanding in relationship to confession of sin in relation to the
filling of the Holy Spirit. So many of these issues are interrelated that I am
taking the time to go through and try to understand what all of the dynamics
are in the New Testament in relation to what it means to walk by means of the
Spirit.
We have seen in Ephesians 5:8 we have the command that you are ÒÉlight in the Lord. Walk as children of lightÉÓ That tells us that this walk
that we have—that is, the metaphor for understanding the spiritual
life—is related to God, related to fellowship with God. In 1 John 1:5, we
read, ÒThis is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to
you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.Ó
Throughout Scripture there is this contrast between light and darkness.
Light represents the absolute purity and holiness, absolute perfection of GodÕs
character. He is perfect righteousness and in Him there is no sin. Darkness
represents sin.
In 1 John 1:6, we have the first of three third-class conditions. ÒIf we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth.Ó When we compare that particular verse back with
Ephesians 5:8, ÒFor you were once
darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of lightÉÓ That implies that if we are mandated to walk in
the light and here is the recognition that we can walk in darkness, we realize
that there are two spheres—light and darkness.
Another way that we represent this is in looking at the diagram where we
use the bottom circle. The top circle represents our positional reality. This
is in essence light; we are children of light. But then there is our
experiential reality—the experience of the believer in space/time
history. When we are in fellowship, that is tantamount
to walking in the light. Also, as we have seen, that means we are walking in
the sphere of light (that is a dative of sphere) and the means is by the Holy
Spirit. So we stay in this sphere by walking by means of God the Holy Spirit.
When we sin, Scripture says we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. In His
ministry toward us as part of what we call the filling of the Holy Spirit, He
is teaching us doctrine, He is reminding us of the doctrine we have learned
that is stored in our soul, He is leading and directing us, and He is producing
a transformed character, along with a number of other ministries.
All of this is part of the filling of the Holy Spirit, which emphasizes
the means of the filling (relates to doctrine in our soul), whereas, the walk
emphasizes our moment-by-moment dependence upon the Holy Spirit. When we sin,
we are out of fellowship and in what the Bible calls
carnality, which is the realm of darkness.
So you see, there is this division between light and darkness. There is
not just a little bit of light and a little bit of darkness. You canÕt be
both—light and darkness are mutually exclusive. I donÕt know if you have
ever been down in a deep cavern like Mammoth Caverns or Carlsbad Caverns. At
one point, the park ranger will tell them turn the lights off, and you canÕt
see your hand in front of your face. If there is any level of light, you can
see. Light and darkness are mutually exclusive domains—you are either in
one or you are in the other.
So John 1:16 says, ÒIf we say that
we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.Ó Light can have fellowship
only with light; perfect righteousness can have fellowship only with perfect
righteousness. Contrast verse 7, ÒBut if
we walk in the light [that is our moment-by- moment experience, tantamount
to walking by means of the Holy Spirit] as
He is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all
sin.Ó
When I got into this the last time and started breaking this down, there
are some categories here that are very important to understand. I want to make
sure that through a little repetition, there is inculcation, and we learn these
distinctives. There is a lot of confusion going on
today about this. ÒThe blood of Jesus,
His Son, cleanses us from all sin.Ó The word there for cleansing is the
same word that we have in 1 John 1:9. It is the Greek word KATHARIZO. It means
to cleanse, to purify. It is used to translate the Hebrew of the Old Testament
for all of the ritual cleansing, all the sacrifices in the temple and
tabernacle service. So it is a word that is rich with theological significance
and has to do with removing the guilt of sin either at the point of salvation
or experientially from the life of the believer.
One of the things that we must understand is that the sin of the
unbeliever is dealt with in a different manner from the sin of the believer.
They are related of course. The unbeliever has his sins dealt with through
faith alone in Christ alone. Jesus Christ went to the cross, and there He died
spiritually as a substitute for the sins of the world. ÒFor He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in HimÓ
(2 Corinthians 5:21). The unbeliever has all of his pre-salvation sins dealt
with at the cross.
But what happens after salvation when you sin again? Now that you are a
believer, you have to deal with post-salvation sins. Historically, there are
several different ways in which this is treated.
1)
There is the Arminian solution, which is if you commit a post-salvation
sin or especially a more heinous sin, then you lose your salvation, and you
have to be saved again. That, of course, is heretical because it denies the
doctrine of eternal security and basically ends up saying that man saves
himself, and it is up to man by his own works or effort to keep himself saved.
2)
A second solution that is usually found in Reformed Theology,
also known as Calvinism, is the idea that 1 John 1:7 states the principle that the
blood of Christ continually cleanses us from all sin. Because KATHARIZO is
a present tense, they emphasize that as being continuous action. You will find
reformed commentators looking at this verse and saying the blood of Jesus
Christ continually cleanses us from all sin. Not all reformed theologians take
1 John 1:9 as a salvation verse, but many do. They think that you have to
confess or admit that you are a sinner in order to be saved.
The reason IÕm getting into this is because (1) you need to learn this
because it is important for your spiritual life. (2) There are some pastors in
doctrinal churches that have become very confused about this whole issue and
subject of rebound, confession, 1 John 1:9 and its relationship to the filling
of the Holy Spirit. Several men have quit teaching this over the last few years
and have sent shock waves through several doctrinal churches. Part of this is
because there are just some men out there who canÕt think theologically
anymore.
There are also a number of other questions. A good friend of mine, whom
we ordained at Berachah a couple of years ago and just
graduated from seminary, asked me a question three months ago. ÒWhat is the
connection between Ephesians 5:18, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and 1
John 1:9? How do we make that connection?Ó Paul wrote Ephesians in roughly AD
52–53. 1 John is written probably to the church at Ephesus sometime
between AD 85–90 and is written by the Apostle John. In Ephesians, there
doesnÕt seem to be any mention of confession. In 1 John 1, there doesnÕt seem
to be any mention of the Holy Spirit. How do we make this connection? Because
of that seeming discrepancy, many people have left the idea that there is a
connection.
I have been demonstrating some of these connections because in Ephesians
5, it starts off back in verse 8 by talking about walking in the light. Light
is synonymous with fellowship. What is the subject of 1 John 1? It is
fellowship and walking in the light. That is where you draw your connection.
They are talking about the same thing from different perspectives, and we will
get into Ephesians 5 a little later on in this study and see how, I think,
confession is alluded to in a few verses prior to Ephesians 5:18.
Another reason we are getting into this is if I do manage to get to the
point where I ever complete my doctoral dissertation, this is the subject of my
dissertation. I have to slug my way through an incredible number of
commentaries and theologies and deal with a lot of minutiae, so in the process
you might have to deal with a little along the way. So just call that an
opportunity to exercise grace orientation on your part if I get too bogged down
in the minutiae.
The reformed Calvinist tends to take 1 John 1:7 (and many others as well
because of the influence of this in the commentaries) as the standard, and then
they have trouble with 1 John 1:9. When we look at this, we have to understand
that there are at least three categories of forgiveness in the Scriptures.
Forgiveness is going to be an issue here in terms of cleansing from sin.
The first two are related to God, and the third is related to other
believers. Ephesians 4:32, ÒAnd be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in
Christ forgave you.Ó This third category has to do with forgiving other
believers, and that is not the subject of this particular study.
We have to understand the first two categories of forgiveness. Some
people have raised the question: If we are forgiven at the cross, and Christ
paid the penalty for our sins, how then can God penalize us again for the same
sin when we commit it in time? That falls under the category of law of double
jeopardy. IsnÕt there a double punishment for the same sin? If you go out and
commit murder, Christ paid the penalty for that sin on the cross. Then if you
have to suffer consequences or divine discipline for that murder, isnÕt that
paying twice for the same sin?
Where we fall into a problem there is what is called the fallacy of the middle term in logic.
What that means is that we are using the same term penalty in two different ways. When we use it in two different
ways, it is a very subtle shift, and we end up creating what appears to be a
contradiction. We have to understand that there are two different penalties for
sin. We will call the first one P1, which has to do with eternal penalty,
spiritual death. When God placed Adam and Ishah in
the garden, He had a tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:16, ÒAnd the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ÔOf every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.Õ Ó He used a
particular construction in the Hebrew—a kal
infinitive absolute plus the finite verb—which indicates certainty and
absolute surety. It was a very emphatic form of saying that at the instant you
do this, you will die.
The instant they ate, they did not die physically. So we have to ask the
question, ÒWhat kind of death was it?Ó There are several different kinds of
death in the Scripture. All of them are the consequences of this primary death.
The primary penalty was spiritual death, which is defined as separation from
God, the loss of the human spirit. That is what died.
Man was originally created with three components—this is called trichotomy, which is just a long word for three parts. That
means he has a physical body, a human soul (which is the real
you—composed of self-consciousness, mentality, volition, and conscience),
and a human spirit (which is that immaterial part of man which gives us the ability
to have a relationship with God and to understand spiritual phenomena).
At the moment Adam sinned, he lost that human spirit and became
spiritually dead. That spiritual death is penalty one (P1). When he died
spiritually, there were consequences in space/time history. Some of those
consequences are enumerated in the curse. The curse on the serpent was he had
to crawl, the curse on the woman was that she would have a desire to control
her husband, and the curse on the man was that his work would be laborious and
by the sweat of the brow.
I think there are many other implications to all that. All of the
creation suffered from the curse according to Romans 8. The entire creation
groans and labors under the curse of sin waiting the ultimate redemption. The
plants grew thorns and thistles; it became a battle to pull sustenance out of
the soil. The animals were originally created granivorous,
and many became carnivores. Now there were battles, problems, and violence in
the animal kingdom.
All of this is a consequence of AdamÕs original sin, because of his
spiritual death. The issue was how Adam responded to the test. Because Adam
failed and was the representative of God over creation, manÕs domain,
everything in manÕs domain was then affected by that decision. That is what we
will call P2, which is space/time consequences for
sin. All of a sudden, we realize there are two different categories of
punishment for sin. There is category 1 (P1), the eternal punishment of
spiritual death, and category 2 (P2), the temporal consequences of that sin.
When Jesus Christ went to the cross and died, He did not pay the
space/time consequences for our sin. He paid the penalty of spiritual death,
which is the root issue of all sin. Jesus Christ paid the penalty (P1) for all
sins in human history—all pre-salvation sins and all post-salvation sins.
There is no single sin that anyone can commit that was not paid for by Jesus
Christ on the cross.
When you are saved, you are cleansed of all pre-salvation sins. But
after salvation, five minutes later, when you lie or have a mental attitude sin
of lust or whatever it might be, that sin is also covered. All post-salvation
sins are cleansed (P1), and you donÕt have to worry about losing your
salvation. This is what 1 John 1:7 is talking about. It is a reference to the
fact that if we sin, the blood of Jesus, His Son is continually cleansing us
from all sin so that we never again have to worry about P1 penalty for sin.
However, we still have to worry about P2 consequences because there are
consequences for our sin.
1) The first area is the law of volitional responsibility. Scripture says ÒÉ for whatsoever
a man sows, that he will also reap,Ó
Galatians 6:7. There are natural consequences to sin, whether mental attitude
sins, sins of the tongue, or overt sins; they all have consequences. The more
we allow sin in our life, the more it has a negative effect on our
soul—it is destructive. So volitional responsibility just recognizes that
there are natural consequences to sin.
2) The second arena of consequence is an intensified form, which is the
law of divine discipline. On top of the natural consequences to that sin, God
may heap some divine discipline and intensify the discipline in order to bring
us back to a position where we are going to recover from our sin through
confession of sin and get back in line with GodÕs plan and walk by means of the
Holy Spirit. P2 consequences have to be dealt with.
3) A third level of P2 consequences is that these sins grieve and quench
the Holy Spirit, and we lose fellowship with God. We are walking in darkness,
so there has to be some mechanism for moving from the realm of walking in
darkness back into light. This is the thing that is lost in the way many people
reject confession as a means of the filling of the Holy Spirit; this is where
it falls apart. They do not have any means of recovery; they think there is
some nebulous faith in the Holy Spirit that is automatically going to happen.
But the reason you move from light to darkness is because of your
volition, and you have to engage your volition to recover. There must be some
sense of recovery there, and the basis is, of course, the fact that those sins
were paid for by Jesus Christ on the cross. When you acknowledge and admit
those sins to God, in essence what you are saying is that ÒI have committed
these various acts, Lord, and I recognize that Jesus Christ paid for those on
the cross. Therefore, because they are paid, I can recover fellowship with You and continue to walk by means of the Holy Spirit.Ó That
doesnÕt mean you say all of that, but that is the dynamic, the framework in
which this takes place. That is the basis for confession. It is basically a
recognition that those sins are paid for, and you admit them to the Lord, and
you are forgiven because of the work that Christ did on the cross.
The other thing that we will see as we go further into this study in
Galatians 5 is that the sin nature, the flesh, our natural ability produces
certain works. The Holy Spirit also has certain production and fruit in our
lives. We can in the power of the flesh also produce what I call pseudo works,
human good. It looks like divine good; it masquerades as divine good. If you do
not have a mechanism, a means of moving from walking in the darkness to walking
in the light, how do you ascertain whether or not you are walking by the Spirit
or walking in the flesh? There has to be some means for determining the realm
in which you are walking and how you recover.
1 John 1:9 supplies that. Just because you
confess your sins and move back into the sphere of light, it doesnÕt mean that
you are going anywhere. It just puts you back in a position where you can go
somewhere. Confession doesnÕt move you anywhere other than back into the sphere
of light. It is from that point on that the issue is determined. You have to
continue walking by means of the Holy Spirit, so all 1 John 1:9 is is a grace recovery procedure to put you in a position to
go forward. Now you have to start making moment-by-moment decisions to go
forward by walking by means of God the Holy Spirit.
1 John 1:7 indicates what takes place in terms of the continual
cleansing from sin, that we donÕt lose our salvation because the penalty was
completely paid for by Jesus Christ on the cross.
In summary, 1) we said that the subjunctive mood in 1 John 1:7 ÒÉ if we walk ÉÓ is the mood of
potentiality. We may or may not walk in the light.
2) Walking in the light is experiential sanctification.
3) Walking in the light is not equivalent to being a believer. That is
one thing that some people will say when they come to this passage, typical of
reformed theologians, that walking in the darkness is an unbeliever and walking
in the light is a believer. This is a crucial issue. I find it fascinating how
people tend to always line up on the same sides of different issues because of
their theological framework. Reformed theologians always end up making 1 John
1:9 indicate Òtests of life.Ó These contrasts are, throughout the entire
epistle of John, all between believer and unbeliever.
The interesting thing is that has tremendous implications because of the
way you then take many passages in 1 John on the whole lordship salvation
issue. So those who hold to lordship salvation almost to a man take this
reformed view of 1 John that it is Òtests of life.Ó On the other hand, those
who believe in the free grace position, that salvation is by faith alone in
Christ alone, see 1 John as demonstrating Òtests of fellowship.Ó The contrast
isnÕt between unbeliever and believer but between the carnal believer and the
spiritual believer.
This is the issue here. 1 John 1:6, ÒIf
we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.Ó We
have already established from other passages, notably Ephesians 5:8 and others,
that you can walk in darkness as a believer. You continue to commit sin, and
that is walking in darkness. Positionally you are sons of light—that is
our title, our position—yet we can walk in darkness rather than in light.
So we are mandated to walk in the light because Jesus Himself is in the light.
Walking in the light is not a term to describe a believer but is a term for
describing a believer who is walking by means of the Holy Spirit and advancing
in the spiritual life.
4) Walking in the light is tantamount or equivalent to walking by means
of the Spirit, having a life that is temporarily free from sin. Because of
experiential righteousness in the life of the believer, because he is walking
by means of the Holy Spirit, the result is fellowship with God and with other
believers.
1 John 1:8, ÒIf we say that we
have no sin [if we are in self-deception and denial], we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us.Ó In other words, as a believer, you succumbed to
arrogance and are denying sin, that there is even sin in your life. In contrast
to the carnal believer who denies sin, there is the advancing believer who
confesses sin. 1 John 1:9, ÒIf we confess our sins, He is faithful
[He always does the same thing every time] and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Ó
If the blood of Jesus Christ continually cleanses us from sin, why then
ought we confess (1 John 1:9)? This is the problem. If you are going to
emphasize 1 John 1:7 so highly, then vs. 9 not only becomes redundant, it
becomes unnecessary. If ChristÕs death on the cross for you as a believer
automatically cleanses you from all sin, why then in two verses later does John
say we ought to confess our sins? You see the contradiction there. Those who
emphasize vs. 7 fail to understand that we are talking about two different
categories of penalty and two different categories of cleansing. One is
positional and the other is experiential. That is why we have to admit or
acknowledge our sins so there will be cleansing in time for the space/time
consequences of sin.
LetÕs have a summary of where we have gone so far in our study of
walking because we have spent four or five hours on this, and I donÕt want you
to lose the forest because we are spending so much time looking at the trees.
I find one of the problems in many doctrinal churches where we emphasize
exegesis and analysis of the text is we spend so much time looking at the
details of the verse that we lose the big picture. The other thing that happens
is that when somebody comes in and starts giving you the big picture, I hear
people say Òwell, that was pretty basic.Ó Overviews are not basic. I have been
around a lot of believers who have been in churches who have had detailed
analysis all their lives, and they canÕt give you the structure of Romans, they
canÕt give you an overview of the Bible, they donÕt understand the Old
Testament. They know a lot of detail, but they donÕt understand the big
picture. You have to do both; you have to do analysis and synthesis, put it all
together and see the big picture.
I want to go back and forth in this study so we donÕt lose the overall
perspective of where we are going here. The bottom line is we have to
understand how to walk by means of the Spirit.
1) Walking in the light refers to the Christian living his life in
fellowship with God.
2) Just as the darkness is incompatible with light, so sin, whether
overt, mental or verbal, is incompatible with fellowship with God. What the
righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God condemns.
3) If walking in the light refers to the Christian living his life in
fellowship with God and if darkness is incompatible with light and sin is going
to move us from light into darkness, then when we sin, we quit walking in the
light and begin walking in darkness. Any sin—a good
sin, a bad sin, a heinous sin, a light sin, a venial sin, a mortal sin, a
deadly sin, a criminal sin. It doesnÕt matter; in the Bible you only
have sin. There are no distinctions between one sin and another. Remember all
it took to plunge the human race into depravity was eating a piece of fruit.
Any sin, whatever it is, is an act of disobedience to God, violates His
righteous character, and thus separates us from fellowship. So when we sin, we
quit walking in the light and begin walking in darkness.
4) Walking in darkness is an absolute that is compared to other
absolutes in Ephesians 5. There are other absolutes in Ephesians
5—foolish vs. wise, drunk vs. filled with the Spirit. This indicates that
these are not processes but absolutes.
5) The command to be filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18 is
tantamount to the mandate to walk in the light and to walk by means of the
Spirit. They are related; they both relate to walking by means of the light.
6) The continuous light metaphor in Ephesians 5 and in 1 John 1 shows
the connection between fellowship with God and the filling of the Holy Spirit.
That is important. The context of Ephesians 5 is walking in the light. The
context in 1 John 1 is walking in the light. Both passages recognize that you
can move outside the light. In Ephesians 5, you are focusing on one aspect which is the mandate to be filled by means of the
Spirit, and in 1 John, John is addressing a different issue so he mentions
confession of sin. When you put these together, you realize that the
similarities are there in many different points. What is different is the
command to be filled with the Spirit and the principle of confession of sin.
Therefore, you are then able to put those two together as being related.
7) Confession is the means of recovery for the filling of the Spirit.
This is the recovery from darkness through the use of 1 John 1:9, which
restores the filling of the Holy Spirit.
That brings us to the doctrine of the filling of the Holy Spirit. This
is really just by way of an introduction. I have three rather extended points
that we need to look at in terms of understanding the mandate to be filled by
means of the Spirit. LetÕs turn to Ephesians 5:18.
One thing that has impressed itself upon me in this study is the only
place in the Scriptures that really emphasizes this is Ephesians 5:18. Of
course, God only needs to mandate something once and that is sufficient. Some
people say if it is only in one place, it must not be that important. The
concept is expressed elsewhere, but the emphasis is not the filling by means of
the Spirit as much as it is walking by means of the Spirit. Filling of the
Spirit is a means; walking by means of the Spirit is the continuous process.
That is why there is more of an emphasis on walking in the Scriptures than more
mandates on the filling, but that does not negate the importance of filling.
First we have to exegete the passage a little to understand what is
happening. Ephesians 5:18, ÒAnd do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the
Spirit.Ó There are some things we need to look at in the Greek in order to
make sure we have an accurate translation because you cannot have an accurate
application if you do not have accurate interpretation. You cannot have
accurate interpretation if you do not have an accurate understanding of what
the original text says. There is a parallel drawn here, an analogy that is
drawn between being drunk and being filled. We have to understand the nature of
that analogy.
The first verb is the negation of a command, a present passive
imperative of METHUSKO. That means to get drunk. It is present tense, passive voice, imperative mood. With the negative, it is an imperative of
prohibition. Because it is in the present tense, it is a complete prohibition
(do not get drunk) for the entire life of the believer. That is followed by the
dative of means for the word for wine OINOS. That is why someone who studies wine and has
a hobby of learning about wine, the differences, the fine nuances of flavor is
called a oenologist, someone who studies wine. The
dative indicates means. So the command is do not get drunk by means of wine for
that is dissipation (wasting your life). We just got through saying that man is
to redeem the time back in Ephesians 5:16.
In contrast, you have a second command in Ephesians 5:18 and that is
indicated by the strong adversative ALLA, which indicates a strong contrast between the
two statements—ÒÉ but be filled ...Ó Now
you have the positive command also a present passive imperative. The present
imperative indicates a general or standard rule for the believerÕs life,
standard operating procedure. It comes from the verb PLEROO, and that emphasizes
to fill something up. Now the question needs to be asked, what are you filled
up with?
This is where we have to understand a little bit about the history of
interpretation of this passage because there has been a lot of confusion about
this. We are told to be filled up with the Spirit. It
seems like in the English that the content of the filling is the Spirit. Just
as I might take my coffee cup and fill it up with coffee. But what you are
indicating in English is the content of the filling is coffee. It is not what
this is saying—it is a bad translation. In the Greek, you use genitive to
indicate content and dative to indicate means. Just as it said, Òdo not get drunk with wine.Ó ItÕs not
talking about the content; itÕs talking about the means, the method used to get
drunk. Here it is talking about Òby means
of the Holy SpiritÓ—instrumental
dative.
What are you filled with? In Colossians 3:16, you have the command ÒLet the word of Christ dwell in you richly ÉÓ If you compare Ephesians 5 and 6 with Colossians 3 and what comes after that command into
Colossians 4, they are the same consequences. It talks about gratitude, singing
hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, marriage mandates of wives being
submissive to husbands and husbands loving their wives, children obeying their
parents. All these consequences flow from both mandates. So what we have in
Ephesians is the emphasis on the means of filling, and in Colossians the
emphasis is on the content of the filling, which is Bible doctrine.
So letÕs make some observations here.
1) Both verbs are present passive imperatives indicating that the believer is acted upon by that which is in the dative.
The passive voice indicates that the believer is the recipient of the action.
So he is acted upon by that which is in the dative. In
the first case, he is acted upon by wine, and is made drunk. In the second
case, he is acted upon by the Holy Spirit and is filled up with something. The
imperative mood emphasizes that this is a command or mandate. The imperative is
always addressed to the volition of the individual. That means that your
volition is engaged, and it is up to you as to whether or not you will
implement the mandate—whether or not you will be filled or whether you
will avoid being drunk. It is up to you.
2) In the past in terms of the history of the interpretation of this
passage, drunkenness has been taken as the key issue in the metaphor.
Obviously, we are dealing with an analogy here. Drunkenness has been taken as
the key issue, and the emphasis has then been on the idea of control—that
when you drink wine and get drunk, it is the wine controlling you. The analogy
would then mean that the Holy Spirit is supposed to control you.
What is wrong with that? Recent studies in the religious practices
common in Ephesus at the time reveal that one of the very popular cults was the
worship of the god Dionysus, also known by the Latin name Bacchus. Dionysus
was, among other things, the god of wine, and his worship was very much
associated with what came to be called the mystery religions at that time. In
fact, a study of the mystery religions is very important for understanding a
lot of the background for the first epistle to the Corinthians and why they
were speaking in tongues.
What would happen is that in the worship of Dionysus, you would go up
into your various groves outside of town where you had altars set up, and you
would have these orgies, tremendous parties. Because Dionysus was the god of
wine, you would then participate in his particular benefit and would drink
enormous amounts of wine so that you could get drunk, get into some kind of
altered state of consciousness so that you could have communion or fellowship
with the god.
If you really got lucky, then the god would speak to you in glossolalia. That is the background for Corinth as well. It
happened also with the worship of Apollo. They would go up to Delphi, where
there was the Oracle of Delphi, and they would get engaged in the same kind of
thing where they would get drunk, have wild dances, and then fall down in an
ecstatic trance and begin to speak in glossolalia or
just gibberish. They identified that as the god speaking through them.
If that is your background and you come into the church, someone stands
up and you canÕt understand anything they say, and they start speaking in a
foreign language you are ignorant of, you are going to think it is the same
thing you have been experiencing all your life up on the hillside worshipping
Dionysus. That is what the Corinthians did. They were confusing the pagan
mystical worship of speaking in glossolalia with this
miraculous ability to speak in a legitimate human language as a special
spiritual gift.
In Ephesus, they had the same kind of problem. They were thinking that
the means to become spiritual and to have fellowship with God was by getting
drunk because that is what you did in your bacchanals and that would elevate
your consciousness and you would have greater fellowship with God. In terms of
their religious background, they were using wine in order to have a deeper
fellowship with God.
What is Paul saying here? He is saying donÕt get drunk with wine because
that is not going to get you in fellowship with God, but be filled by means of
the Spirit because that is what gets you in fellowship with God.
You have to do some good isagogics here and understand the culture of
the time in order to correctly interpret the passage so you donÕt misinterpret
and then misapply. This has been one of the great problems that you when you
utilize the term control, it
indicates that somehow your volition is negated, you become somewhat passive,
and now the Holy Spirit is going to live the spiritual life for you. ÒLet go
and let God.Ó That is one of the common phrases that came out of the Higher
Life movement, the Victorious Life movement.
In the history of the doctrine, you have people like Lewis Sperry
Chafer, C.I. Scofield, Arno C. Gaebelein,
some of the greats at the end of the 19th century who were
tremendous dispensationalists, but they also associated with people like Reuben
A. Torrey, Dwight Moody who was very much into Keswick higher life teaching,
and some others. They spoke at a lot of the same conferences together. People
like Scofield, Gaebelein,
Chafer and others picked up the same vocabulary, but they meant something
different by it. That was one reason that they were criticized by the way they
handled Ephesians 5:18.
Now we are trying to solve this problem, and we X out the concept of
control, and what we are going to emphasize is the idea of influence. LetÕs
look at the analogy as we go back to Ephesians 5:16.
We realize that what the mandate is is to walk
by means of the Spirit and you will not fulfill, bring to completion the lusts
of the flesh. There is the contrast—the Holy Spirit vs. the sin nature.
How does the sin nature operate? Sin nature is the source of temptation:
the sin nature tempts your volition. When you operate positive to the sin
nature, which is negative to God, then volition becomes the source of sin.
The Holy Spirit is filling you with doctrine; He is continually bringing
to your mind the doctrine that you need to apply in terms of reminding you, in
terms of recall of doctrine for the situation, and you can exercise positive
volition and respond to the Holy Spirit. As long as you are responding
positively and applying doctrine in your life and saying no to the sin nature,
then you are walking by means of the Holy Spirit. As long as you are in
fellowship with God and learning the Word of God, then the Holy Spirit is going
to be filling up your soul with doctrine, making it understandable so that
there is something there for Him to bring to your mind at the proper time.
1) All of that helps us to understand what is meant by
the filling of the Holy Spirit, so our conclusion is that the filling of
the Holy Spirit means to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit and is the means
to fellowship and spirituality.
2) In earlier writings by various theologians (Chafer is one, and I read
it in many others) who failed to understand the original languages, they made
an argument for repeated fillings. They said, in Ephesians 5:18 it says to be filled with the Spirit. In Acts we find that
some people are filled over and over again. So obviously you can lose the
filling of the Spirit, and you have to recover it.
The imperative mood of Ephesians 5:18 indicates that you can lose it.
When you have an imperative, you are either going to obey it or disobey
it—one or the other. If you are obeying it, you have got it; if you are
disobeying, you donÕt. So the imperative by nature of its significance indicates
that you can lose the filling of the Holy Spirit
Let me impress that upon you because nowhere in Acts does it indicate
that you can lose the filling of the Holy Spirit. The reason is the word that
is used in all of these passages is the word PIMPLEMI,
and the word that is used in Ephesians 5:18 is PLEROO. Two different
words—they are not synonymous.
LetÕs look at the usages. Luke 1:15 in reference to John the Baptist.
This was the announcement by the angel to his father Zacharias that his wife
Elizabeth would become pregnant, and they would have a child. (The angel said,)
ÒFor he will be great in the sight of the
Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink [Nazarite vow]. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit,
even from his motherÕs womb.Ó The word filled
is not PLEROO; that is PIMPLEMI. What dispensation is John the Baptist living in? He is living in the
dispensation of Israel and later the dispensation of the Messiah. But he is not
living in the Church Age where you have the unique filling of the Holy Spirit PLEROO. It
is PIMPLEMI.
Luke 1:41, ÒAnd it happened, when
Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit.Ó That does not mean that there was a soul in her womb—I donÕt
want to get caught up in the origin of human life issue. That means that in the
terms of ElizabethÕs excitement, there were a lot of other dynamics going on
that affected the physical life in the womb. Elizabeth was filled by means of
the Holy Spirit, and then she speaks.
Incidentally, on the whole origin of human life, I ran across a very
interesting website not too long ago that had a halakha, a Rabbinic discussion
back and forth. It had rabbis from the time of Christ, and they were arguing
back and forth over the same issue. One of the interesting things in this is
that legal issues on inheritance rights were such that if a man died and his
wife was pregnant, as far as his estate was concerned, he was childless. They
were not treating the life in the womb as full legal life. That is Jewish
interpretation.
Luke 1:67, ÒNow his father
Zacharias was filled [PIMPLEMI] with
the Holy Spirit, and prophesied.Ó Acts 2:4, ÒAnd they [the disciples] were
all filled with the Holy Spirit [PIMPLEMI] and
began to speak with other tongues, as
the Spirit gave them utterance.Ó Acts 4:8, ÒThen Peter, filled [PIMPLEMI] with
the Holy Spirit, said to them ÉÓ
Notice there is a relation between filling [PIMPLEMI] and speaking. It has a
revelatory significance.
I would say that PIMPLEMI has more in common with the Old Testament temporary enduement
than it does with New Testament filling because it is temporary and exclusively
related to some kind of verbal utterance. Just as the prophets in the Old
Testament were filled with the Spirit in order to write the Scriptures. That is
what it relates to. It doesnÕt have anything to do with the issue of living the
spiritual life as outlined in Ephesians 5:18. PIMPLEMI is
not the issue; PLEROO is.
3) There is a failure to distinguish between the verb PLEROO and
the related adjective PLERES. PLERES is an adjective and, as such, is descriptive. PLERES plus a genitive of
description is going to give us a character analysis of a person. I know
somebody who says that PLERES in these verses shows that filling is a process.
LetÕs look at this, and IÕll show you how it works. Acts 13:10 is a description of one of the various characters who are in
opposition to the apostles in Acts. This is Elymas
the magician, and he wants to have the power that Paul has. Paul says to him, ÒO full [PLERES] of all deceit and all fraud ÉÓ This is a character description of Elymas. He has a deceitful, fraudulent character.
Acts 9:36, ÒAt Joppa [modern day Haifa] there was a certain disciple named Tabitha,
which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and
charitable deeds which she did.Ó Literally, it is PLERES—full of good
works and mercy. That is the literal translation. It is PLERES
plus ERGON AGATHON (good works) and ELEEMOSUNE (mercy). This is a character description of the woman; she is characterized by good works and mercy. I used those
descriptions because they are not related to the Holy Spirit at all.
Acts 6:3, ÒTherefore, brethren,
seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, when we may appoint over this business.Ó They are going to choose the first
proto-deacons really. Here it is PLERES again. He is not talking about PLEROO
that these men are filled with the Spirit. It is real obvious from the passage
that if you are going to choose these men, you are not going to choose men who
are at this moment filled with the Spirit and the next moment not. You are not
filled with wisdom one moment and not filled with wisdom the next. That is
clearly an adjectival description of somebody whose whole life is characterized
by the Holy Spirit and wisdom.
So PLERES is different from PLEROO. PLEROO is the means of filling; PLERES
describes the ultimate mature results of filling. What we would say is the
reason they are full of the Spirit and wisdom is because these men have grown
to spiritual maturity, and they have spent maximum amount of time being filled
with doctrine under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and it is exemplified
in their life.
This is then said of Stephen in Acts 6:8, that he was Òfull of grace and power.Ó That describes
his life: he is grace oriented, and he relies upon God the Holy Spirit. Acts
11:24, ÒFor he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.Ó
So PLERES is different from PLEROO. PLERES indicates the character
quality, the character results of PLEROO. The Bible is saying that character matters.
The ultimate goal is not to be filled with the Spirit, is not to be in
fellowship; it is to advance to spiritual maturity and exemplify the character
of Jesus Christ. That is what we are going to see in Galatians 5, the fruit of
the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is the PLERES. It is the character that is
produced in the believer as the result of continuous filling by means of God
the Holy Spirit.
The conclusion is that PIMPLEMI relates to the pre-church age enduement of the Holy Spirit for special revelation. PLEROO
relates to the work of the Holy Spirit in filling the believer with doctrine.
The content of the filling is always doctrine, and the result is expressed by PLERES and
that is Christ-like character. There we see, through looking at these different
uses of the verb, the entire process from spiritual infancy to spiritual
maturity. The means is the Holy Spirit filling you with doctrine, the process
is continuous walking, and the result is transformed character expressed by PLERES.
Closing Prayer
ÒFather, we thank You for the opportunity to look at these things today,
to understand that the spiritual life is uniquely driven, empowered by God the
Holy Spirit who helps us to understand the things of Your Word and reminds us
of them and recalls them to our mind so that we can apply them in times of
testing and thereby advance to spiritual maturity and exemplify the character
of Christ. We pray that we might be challenged by the things
that we have studied this morning. In JesusÕ name.
Amen.Ó