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Is Baptism in the Holy Spirit a Separate Experience from Salvation? INTRODUCTION The world slips further and further everyday into the abyss of relativism, in which absolute truth can no longer exist. Tragically, many churches today have been influenced by this tendency, and blindly follow the world down this dark and destructive path. What will become of a church that continues this dark journey? The only thing that can happen is decay and eventual death of that church. The absence of absolute truth is totally incongruent with God. In fact, it’s anti-God. God is truth. (Deut. 32:4, John 1:14, 14:6) A denial of truth, is a denial of God. Many times this process of decay begins by the distortion of one doctrine. This can happen when a church has, for whatever reason, lost it’s ability to clearly discern truth. The Holy Spirit reveals truth. (John 16:13) When a church begins to turn it’s back on God’s Word, things lose their clarity. This issue has manifested itself in many different ways. Some are minor doctrines, and some affect salvation itself. We are free to disagree on minor doctrines, (non-essentials) they should not be used to divide the Body of Christ. (Romans 14:1-12) However, great concern should be exercised when a church begins elevating non-essential doctrines to a place of supreme importance within the church. The scope of this paper will be the erroneous teaching of an experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit apart from salvation and how this teaching can divide the church and turn the new Christian away in confusion. BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT The first thing that always needs to take place when evaluating a claim is defining the terms. What exactly is meant by baptism in the Holy Spirit? This phrase is used in only the following seven passages in the New Testament. They are: Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33, Acts 1:5, Acts 11:16 and 1 Corinthians 12:13. In the first four verses, it is hard to get a real understanding of what baptism in the Holy Spirit actually consists of. The two verses in Acts apply directly to Pentecost. But in the seventh verse, “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.” Paul makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is given to all believers. They are immediately made part of the body of Christ. This happens during the initial acceptance of Christ as Savior. This event is also called regeneration, that is when the old nature dies, and the new life in Christ is born. (Galatians 2:20) Proponents of the “separate experience” view are quick to point out the differences in wording between this verse in 1 Corinthians, and the other six verses. In the first six verses, Jesus is the one that baptizes in the Holy Spirit. But in 1 Corinthians 12:13, it appears that the Holy Spirit Himself is doing the baptizing. However, this is an issue of the English translation of the verse. When looking at the original greek, the argument is ended because same expression is used here, as in the previous verses. [1] What we see from this is that Paul, using the same terminology that Jesus and John the Baptist used, says that baptism of the Holy Spirit is what happens when a person is saved. So the question is this, if every believer is baptized in the Holy Spirit upon conversion, how can there be a number of believers who have not received Him? The result of this flawed teaching is the creation of two classes of believers. There inevitably becomes a “second” class of Christian, a lesser believer who has not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Those who have been, are regarded as superior in comparison. This is divisive, and throughout its history, the grouping of Christians into two classes has harmed the church. What then do we make of the millions of believers that attest to a separate experience after salvation in which they were overcome with feelings of supernatural power, love, awe and worship of God? Are these genuine experiences? There is no reason to doubt that they are. Scripture is filled with examples of the Holy Spirit empowering believers for service to God. This is usually referred to as a "filling of the Holy Spirit" and is not just a one-time occurrence, but one that can, and should happen repeatedly. For example, in Acts 2:4 we see that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit along with everyone with them. Later in Acts 4:8 Peter is standing before the Sanhedrin when he is again “…filled with the Holy Spirit…” and even later, after returning to the church to tell the others what happened, they prayed and were again filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 4:31) It is easy to see throughout scripture that the power brought on by the Holy Spirit is an event that empowers the believer numerous times. This event happens with more strength and frequency when we are closer to His will and His purpose for our lives. A passage of scripture sometimes used to defend the “separate experience” position is Acts 19:1-6. Upon close examination of these verses we can see that these men had not heard the gospel. Indeed they are called disciples, this does not mean however, that they were disciples of Christ. Paul questions these men in order to ascertain whether or not they are believers. When Paul asks them if they had received the Holy Spirit they replied, "... we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit." (Acts 19:2) These men revealed that they were baptized into "...John's baptism". At this point, Paul proceeds to tell them that Jesus was the one whom John spoke of coming. Only after hearing and believing this, were they baptized in Jesus' name and received the Holy Spirit. These men hadn't heard the full gospel. They knew from John's teachings that the Messiah was coming and they prepared themselves through John's baptism of repentance for His coming. But for whatever reason, it seems that they missed Jesus' actual arrival! Whether this was due to being away during Jesus' ministry, or for some other reason is not clear. What is clear is that they needed to be further educated by Paul in order to receive salvation. This is not a story of receiving the Holy Spirit months after being saved. SPEAKING IN TONGUES There are many within the church that believe a true baptism in the Holy Spirit is evidenced by speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift given to the believer in which they find themselves speaking in a foreign, earthly language (as at Pentecost) or perhaps even a ...language of angels.... (1 Cora. 13:1). Paul describes of this form of the gift in 1 Corinthians 14:2. There is considerable debate on whether or not this gift is still given today, and whether or not scripture refers only to earthly languages or not. However, that debate is beyond the scope of this paper. That being said, baptism of the Holy Spirit being solely evidenced by speaking in tongues has no biblical foundation upon which to stand. There are several occasions in scripture in which someone being filled with the Holy Spirit did not speak in tongues. Furthermore, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he asks a series of rhetorical questions. He is in the process of describing how diverse the body of Christ is in gifts and talents. When he asks, “…all do not speak in tongues do they?...” (1 Corinthians 12:30) the expected answer is obviously no. Paul undoubtedly placed much value on the gift of tongues (though he placed greater value in the gift of prophecy) when he writes, "...I wish that you all spoke in tongues...". (1 Corinthians 14:5) But this verse alone shows that there must have been believers in the first century church who did not possess the gift of tongues. In light of this fact, it is not reasonable for us today to require speaking in tongues of those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the Bible states clearly that if anyone speaks in a tongue, there should always be someone to interpret what is said. (1 Corinthians 14:27) CONCLUSION In this paper we have seen from scripture, that every believer is baptized in the Holy Spirit upon his conversion, and that the gift of tongues is not to be required evidence of that fact. It has been further discussed that the filling of the Holy Spirit is an experience that should happen many times in a Christian's life. It is not a one time event, but one that happens repeatedly to aid the believer in his ministry and worship of God. The Holy Spirit is the Agent by which a person's heart is regenerated when they accept Christ as their Savior. This regeneration is necessary due to that fact that mankind is totally corrupted by sin. (Romans 3:10-12) To say that a believer has not experienced baptism in the Holy Spirit is to say that they are not regenerated, and thus, not a Christian. Let us never make this mistake lest we lead new converts astray in confusion and frustration. Let us instead take great comfort in The Comforter who was with us from the moment we were born again, changing us, empowering us, protecting us and leading us into all truth!
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Copyright © 2009 The Exodus Project, all rights reserved.
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