“This Jesus God raised up, and of
that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God,
and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has
poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the
heavens; but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,
till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet.’ Let all the house of Israel
therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus
whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this they were
cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren,
what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one
of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you
shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to
your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God
calls to him.” And he testified with many other words and exhorted them,
saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received
his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand
souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to
the breaking of bread and the prayers.
The two questions I want to try to
answer today are: (1) What does it mean to receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit? and (2) How do we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? Our focus will
be on the book of Acts and on Luke’s intention as he wrote it.
1.
What Is Receiving the Gift of the Holy Spirit?
One of the most widely used books in
contemporary charismatic renewal is The Holy Spirit and You by Dennis
and Rita Bennet, an Episcopal priest and his wife. On pages 64–65 the question
is posed, “What if I don’t speak in tongues? Can I receive the Holy Spirit
without speaking in tongues?” Answer:
“It comes with the package!”
Speaking in tongues is not the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but it is what
happens when and as you are baptized in the Spirit and it becomes an important
resource to help you continue, as Paul says, to . . . “keep on being filled
with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). You don’t
have to speak in tongues in order to be saved. You don’t have to speak
in tongues in order to have the Holy Spirit in you. You don’t have to speak in
tongues to have times of feeling filled with the Holy Spirit, but if you want
the free and full outpouring that is the baptism in the Holy Spirit, you must
expect it to happen as in Scripture. . . . If you want to understand the New
Testament you need the same experience that all its writers had.
On page 20 they sum up the classical
two-stage Pentecostal teaching:
The first experience of the
Christian life, salvation, is the incoming of the Holy Spirit, through
Jesus Christ, to give us new life, God’s life, eternal life. The second
experience, is the receiving, or making welcome of the Holy Spirit, so
that Jesus can cause Him to pour out this new life from our spirits, to baptize
our souls and bodies and then our world around, with his refreshing and
renewing power. (p. 275)
They call this “the scriptural
pattern of the ‘doctrine of baptisms.’”
Tongues
and Baptism in the Spirit in Acts
I have two things to say about this,
one negative and one positive. I’ll take the negative first so I can end with
the positive. The negative thing is that I think the Bennets are probably wrong
in making tongues a necessary part of the baptism in the Spirit.
Let’s walk with them through the
book of Acts to see where they get their evidence. It begins in Acts 1:5 where Jesus says to his disciples, “John
baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.” Then in verse 8 he says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses.” The fulfillment of these two
promises came on the day of Pentecost. Acts 2:2–4 says, “And suddenly a sound came from
heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they
were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributed and
resting on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and
began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
The next time tongues is mentioned
in Acts is when Peter went to preach at Cornelius’s house in Acts 10:44–46. “While Peter was still saying this
the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among
the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy
Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking
in tongues and extolling God.”
The only other place tongues is
referred to in Acts is 19:6. Paul finds in Ephesus some disciples of John the
Baptist who had never heard of the Holy Spirit. Paul explains to them that John
pointed people forward to Jesus, and so verse 5 says, “On hearing this they
were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands
upon them the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and
prophesied.” There is one other instance in chapter 8 where the apostles go to
Samaria and lay their hands on some believers so that they can receive the Holy
Spirit. Tongues is not mentioned, but since the language is the same as at
Cornelius’s house (fallen 8:16; fell 10:44), it’s likely the
Samaritans spoke in tongues, too.
Pentecostals argue that since
baptism in the Spirit happened these four times with speaking in tongues, we
should regard this as normative. First, the word of the gospel is received by
faith. Christ comes into your life by the Spirit. Then, you are baptized in
water. And, generally, following water-baptism at some later point, you pray
for the baptism in the Spirit and are overwhelmed with a new fullness and
freedom and power accompanied by speaking in tongues.
Tongues
Are Not Necessary to Being Baptized in the Spirit
There are five reasons why I am not
as confident as the Pentecostals are that speaking in tongues is a necessary
part of being baptized in the Spirit.
1. It is not taught anywhere
in the New Testament. It seems risky to me to say, since
it happened this way four times it must happen this way all the time.
2. What Jesus does teach in Acts 1:5 and 8 is that the experience of baptism in the Spirit
will bring power to witness into the Christian life. In the terminology of Acts we could say, what a powerless
Christian needs is a baptism in the Holy Spirit. And that’s a lot of us!
3. Acts records at least nine other
conversion stories, but never again mentions a two-step sequence with tongues (8:36; 9:17–19; 13:12, 48; 14:1; 16:14; 17:4, 34). This
shows how difficult it is to establish a norm from the way things happened back
then.
4. It could be that there were
special circumstances in Jerusalem, Samaria, Cornelius’s
house, and Ephesus that made speaking in tongues especially helpful in communicating
the truth that the Holy Spirit was creating a new unified body of Jew and
Samaritan and Gentile.
5. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:30 that “not all speak in
tongues” and the words he uses are for general tongues speaking, not merely for
a special “gift of tongues” used in church.
He seems to have in view the person who feels ostracized without tongues and
says (verse 16), “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.” Paul
responds, “Not everybody speaks in tongues!”
For these five reasons I cannot say
with the Pentecostals that no Christian has been baptized in the Holy Spirit
unless he has spoken in tongues. It seems to me that Luke leaves wide open the
possibility that the Holy Spirit might fall upon a person with revolutionizing
power over sin and power for witnessing and power in worship and yet not with
tongues. To say this person is not the beneficiary of Jesus’s promise to
baptize us in the Holy Spirit goes beyond Scripture. “You will be baptized with
the Holy Spirit . . . and you shall receive power” (Acts 1:5, 8). That is the biblical sign. (Whether or not a
Christian should seek to speak in tongues is another issue that we are working
on in the evening. See 1 Corinthians 14:5, 18, 39.)
Stressing
the Experience of Baptism in the Spirit
Now the positive thing I want to say
about the moderate Pentecostal teaching (represented by the Bennets) is that it
is right to stress the experiential reality of receiving the Spirit.
When you read the New Testament honestly, you can’t help but get the impression
of a big difference from a lot of contemporary Christian experience. For them
the Holy Spirit was a fact of experience. For many Christians today it
is a fact of doctrine.
Surely the Charismatic renewal has
something to teach us here. In sacramental churches the gift of the Holy Spirit
is virtually equated with the event of water baptism. In Protestant
evangelicalism it is equated with a subconscious work of God in regeneration
which you only know you have because the Bible says you do if you believe. It
is easy to imagine a spiritual counselor saying to a new convert today, “Don’t
expect to notice any difference. Just believe you have received the Spirit.”
But that is far from what we see in the New Testament. The Pentecostals are
right to stress the experience of being baptized in the Spirit.
Four
Reasons Why It Is Right to Do So
Here are four reasons from Acts:
1. Terminology — The very term “baptized in the Holy Spirit” (1:5; 11:16)
implies an immersion in the life of the Spirit. “John immersed in water; you
will be immersed in the Spirit.” If the Spirit overwhelms you like a baptism,
you can’t imagine him merely sneaking in quietly while you are asleep and
taking up inconspicuous residence. That may be the way it starts (Paul may have
this early movement in mind in 1 Corinthians 12:13), but if it ends there, Jesus
and Luke would not call it a baptism in the Spirit.
2. Power, Boldness, and Confidence — Jesus says in Acts 1:5 and 8 that baptism in the Spirit means, “You shall
receive power . . . and you shall be my witnesses.” This is an
experience of boldness and confidence and victory over sin. A Christian without
power is a Christian who needs a baptism in the Holy Spirit. I am aware that in
1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul says that baptism in the
Spirit is an act of God by which we become a part of the body of Christ at
conversion, so that in his terminology all genuine converts have been baptized
in the Spirit.
But we have done wrong in limiting
Paul’s understanding of the baptism in the Holy Spirit to this initial,
subconscious divine act in conversion and then forcing all of Luke’s theology
in Acts into that little mold. There is no reason to think that even for Paul
the baptism in the Holy Spirit was limited to the initial moment of conversion.
And for sure in the book of Acts the baptism in the Holy Spirit is more than a
subconscious divine act of regeneration — it is a conscious experience of power
(Acts 1:8).
3. The Testimony of Acts — In fact the third reason I think so is that, when you take
your concordance and look up every text in Acts where the Holy Spirit works in
believers, it is never subconscious. In Acts the Holy Spirit is not a
silent influence but an experienced power. Believers experienced the baptism in
the Holy Spirit. They didn’t just believe it happened because an apostle said
so.
4. The Consequence of Faith — The fourth reason we should stress the experience of
baptism in the Holy Spirit is that in Acts the apostles teach that it is
a consequence of faith not a subconscious cause of faith. As a convinced
Calvinist, I believe with all my heart that the grace of God precedes and
enables saving faith. We do not initiate our salvation by believing. God
initiates it by enabling us to believe (Ephesians 2:8–9; 2 Timothy 2:25; John 1:13).
But this regenerating work of God’s
Spirit is not the limit of what Peter means by baptism in the Spirit. In
Acts 11:15–17 Peter reports how the Holy Spirit
fell on Cornelius just as on the disciples at Pentecost. “As I began to speak,
the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. I remembered the
word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized in water, but you shall be
baptized in the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave
to us, when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I
should withstand God?”
Notice that the gift of the Spirit,
or baptism in the Spirit, is preceded by faith. The NASB correctly says in
verse 17 that God gave the Holy Spirit after they believed. So the
baptism of the Spirit (verse 16) or the receiving of the gift of the Spirit
(verse 17) cannot be the same as the work of God before faith which enables
faith (which Luke speaks of in 2:39; 5:31; 16:14; 11:18; 15:10; 14:27). The
baptism in the Spirit is an experience of the Spirit given after faith to
faith.
Receiving
the Spirit Is a Life-Changing Experience
This is why Paul can say in Acts 19:2 when he meets the confused disciples of
John the Baptist, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” What
would a contemporary Protestant evangelical say in response to that question? I
think we would say something like, “I thought we automatically received the
Holy Spirit when we believed. I don’t understand how you can even ask the
question.” How could Paul ask that question? He could ask it, I think, because
receiving the Holy Spirit is a real experience. There are marks of it in
your life. And the best way to test the faith of these so-called disciples is
to ask them about their experience of the Spirit.
This is no different than what Paul
said in Romans 8:14, “All who are led by the Spirit
are the sons of God” (see 2 Corinthians 13:5 and 1 John 3:24; 4:12–13). I sometimes fear that we have so
redefined conversion in terms of human decisions and have so removed any
necessity of the experience of God’s Spirit, that many people think they are
saved when in fact they only have Christian ideas in their head not spiritual
power in their heart.
So you see, the real issue the
Charismatics raise for us is not the issue of tongues. In itself that is
relatively unimportant. The really valuable contribution of the Charismatic
renewal is their relentless emphasis on the truth that receiving the gift of
the Holy Spirit is a real, life-changing experience. Christianity is not
merely an array of glorious ideas. It is not merely the performance of rituals
and sacraments. It is the life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit through
faith in Jesus Christ the Lord of the universe.
Two
Things That Characterize This Experience
We could talk for hours about what
that experience is. In fact, most of my messages are just that — descriptions
of the experience of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. But I’ll
mention two things from the book of Acts — things that mark the experience of
being baptized in the Holy Spirit or of receiving the gift of the Spirit.
1. A Heart of Praise — One is a heart of praise. In Acts 10:46 the disciples knew the Holy Spirit had
fallen because “they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling (or magnifying)
God.” Speaking in tongues is one particular way of releasing the heart of
praise. It may be present or may not. But one thing is sure: The heart in which
the Holy Spirit has been poured out will stop magnifying self and start
magnifying God. Heartfelt praise and worship is the mark of a real experience
of the Holy Spirit.
2. Obedience — The other mark I’ll mention is obedience. In Acts 5:29 Peter and the apostles say to the
Sadducees who had arrested them, “We must obey God rather than men.” Then in
verse 32 he says, “We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit
whom God gave to those who are obeying him.” (“Gave” is past tense; “obey” is
present, ongoing tense.)
It is inevitable that when the
object of your heart’s worship changes, your obedience changes. When Jesus
baptizes you in the Holy Spirit, and infuses you with a new sense of the glory
of God, you have a new desire and a new power (1:8) to obey. Whether or not you
speak in tongues, these two things will be your experience if you have been
baptized in the Holy Spirit — a new desire to magnify God in worship and a
powerful disposition to obey God in everyday life.
2.
How to Receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit.
I close by pointing you to Peter’s
instructions for how to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:38–41.
1. The word of God must be heard. Peter has preached that in God’s plan Jesus was crucified,
raised, and exalted as Lord over all the universe and that forgiveness of sin
and spiritual renewal can be had from him. The Word has been heard.
2. The sovereign God must call men
and women to himself, or they will never come. Verse 39 says, “The promise is to you and to your children
and to all that are far off, everyone to whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
No one comes to faith in Christ unless the Father draws him (John 6:44, 65). The preached Word is heard with conviction
and power only when the effectual call of God lays hold on the hearers.
3. We must “receive the word.” Verse 41: “So those who received his word were
baptized.” Receiving the Word means that it becomes part of you so that you
trust the Christ it presents. You trust his provision for your forgiveness. You
trust his path for your life. You trust his power to help you obey. And you
trust his promises for your future. And that radical commitment to Christ
always involves repentance — a turning away from your own self-wrought
provisions and paths and powers and promises. And when you really turn to
Christ for new paths and new power, you open yourself to the Holy Spirit,
because it is by his Spirit that Christ guides and empowers.
4. We must give an open expression
of faith in the act of water baptism in obedience to Jesus Christ. Baptism was the universal experience of all Christians in
the New Testament. There were no unbaptized Christians after Pentecost. Christ
had commanded it (Matthew 28:18–20) and the
church practiced it. So we do today.
Therefore, I invite you to
experience the greatest thing in the world: Repent, trust Christ, open yourself
to the power of his Spirit, be baptized in his name, and you will receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit.
