October 2006

Since it has been over a month since my last MLJ post, I will briefly review my previous posts in this series. As I have already indicated, the doctor’s teaching on the subject of the Holy Spirit is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is distinct from conversion. MLJ then discusses three Scripture verses that are commonly used by cessationists to refute this belief: Luke 11:13; Acts 2:37-39; and 1 Corinthians 12:13.

In part 1, the Doctor outlined two principles. The first principle was that those who are going to ask the Father for the Holy Spirit are those who know they are His children and address Him as their heavenly Father. The second principle was that the text implies a kind of gradation of asking, seeking, and knocking that signifies seeking for, a striving after this gift of the Holy Spirit.

In part 2, the Doctor argued that the gift (or baptism) of the Holy Spirit is promised, but simply because it is promised does not automatically mean it is given to everyone. Rather, the promise is a general one accompanied by conditions; in other words, as Christians we become candidates for these promises.

In part 3, in MLJ shows how the Corinthians text does not, in fact, deal with the baptism of the Holy Spirit at all. He explores the Greek meaning of the word en in this text and contrasts its grammatical implications with the use of the word en in other New Testament texts. He concludes that this kind of verb is not found in other passages in which it is used, and therefore rendering “baptized by means of the spirit” is correct for the Corinthians passage, but not correct for the other texts.

“But there are other reasons, quite apart from grammar, which make this perfectly plain and clear. In every reference to baptism with the Spirit, the Baptizer is the Lord Jesus Christ, and what he does when he baptizes with the Spirit is what we have seen. It is a baptism to give power, to create witnesses, to enable us to testify. ‘Tarry,’ he says, ‘at Jerusalem until ye shall have received power.’ The whole object, as we have seen so abundantly, of the baptism with the Spirit, is to give us such an assurance and to fill us with such power that we become living witnesses and testifiers to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus; we become his witnesses. That is the purpose of the baptism with the Spirit and it is a baptism that is done by the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Then he goes on. Listen, he says, I have got an illustration. ‘As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.’ He says it is because by one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body of Christ, whether we are Jews, or Gentiles; and we have all been made to drink into the one and only Spirit. He is continuing with the activity of the Spirit, and that is why, undoubtedly, these Authorized translators and all the others, apart from the Revised Version, have deliberately translated this with ‘by’ — ‘ . . . by the Spirit’.

It is a continuation of his account of the action and the activity of the Holy Spirit, and what he is talking about here is not power, it is not witness; he is here reminding them that every Christian is one who is born again. That is true of all Christians . . . it is the Holy Spirit acting in regeneration.

But the Holy Spirit at the moment of regeneration also takes each person who is regenerated and puts him into the body of Christ—places and introduces him into it. That is the force and the meaning of the word. And what he is saying here, therefore, is this: Now the Spirit who has given you these different gifts, the same Spirit also has taken every one of you and put you into the body of Christ, so that you must never think of yourselves as separate units. He is reinforcing his main and general argument. It is no part of his concern here to deal with the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The illustration is simply to show that all Christians, whether they were Jews or Gentiles . . . are now ‘one in Christ Jesus’ . . . And that, he says, is the action and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now you see the contrast; it is the Lord himself who baptizes us ‘with’ the Spirit, but it is nowhere taught in the Scripture that the Lord engrafts us into his own body. No, that is the work of the Spirit. His work is to regenerate us, to engraft us into Christ, to place us in him to ‘baptize’ us if you like into the body. All along, this is the activity of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who applies salvation to us right the way through, and that is true of every Christian . . .

[This verse] has no reference whatsoever to the doctrine of the baptism with the Spirit or the blessing which comes to those who have been baptized with the Spirit. So this verse, which some people seem to think is crucial, not only does not contradict what we have been saying, but tends to prove it, and that to the very hilt, because we have seen so clearly and in so many different places that there are people described in Acts who have believed and have been baptized, but still the apostles had to lay their hands upon them before they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They were already regenerate, as the apostles themselves were before the day of Pentecost, but they had not been baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

You may not agree with Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ interpretation of this verse, but I think it is worthwhile repeating it here. The theological debates about what you should call an experience of the Holy Spirit should not, in my view, remove the absolute necessity that we recognise the reality of two clearly distinct works of the Spirit. Some would argue that Paul means in the first clause here to describe the same event as baptism with the Spirit, others that he does indeed mean something different. In either case, we should not jump to the conclusion that there is therefore no second experience to seek for.

I should point out the consideration that Paul’s use of the word “all” here in no way means that every Christian has to have the experience described – for we know that the biblical use of the word “all” is not always as clear-cut as we in English tend to understand. But even if we do come to the conclusion that “all” really is “all” here, then there are still two further points to make.

The first is that just because “all” of Paul’s original readers experienced an event does not mean necessarily that we all have also exeperienced that same event. It is quite possible that a normal part of the conversion process – the conscious receiving of the Spirit – might have in some way been lost and needs reclaiming without these words being in any sense untrue.

The second point is that ultimately this can become an argument of terminology. One thing on which few commentators seem to focus when considering this verse is that the second half actually seems to speak of a different event. So, far from being a proof verse against a second experience of the Spirit, in this verse we have Paul telling us that his readers had both been baptised “by” the Spirit into Christ’s body and had been given this same Spirit to “drink.” You don’t need to drink the Spirit in order for Him to add you to Christ’s body!

I remain convinced that the balance of Scripture teaches us that there is a secret act of the Spirit in regenerating us and joining us to Christ of which we may not be aware save for its effects in us. Many a believer feels that the faith he now feels is his own – little does he know that it has been produced in him by the Spirit, that a rebirth has happened. If you want to call that event the baptism with the Spirit, then at least recognise that it is an event that is centred on joining the believer to the body of Christ.

Believers are, however, to desire and expect that we might “drink” of the Spirit or “receive” him. This event is something that we will recognise when it happens. I do not believe it is a once-for-all event. We are to keep coming back for more drink! We are to desire and savour the Spirit and yearn for more conscious awareness of Him as a person who is at work in every believer. What is the difference between the Spirit-filled believer and the one who when asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” would have a similar answer to the Ephesians in Acts 19:2? Is it that the Spirit is not working in the latter? Absolutely not. The Spirit is at work in every believer. It is simply that the one who is “full” of the Spirit, who has drunk of the Spirit – who has received the Spirit, is one who has a vivid experience of the third person of the Trinity as a reality in their lives.

If that experience is not true of you, then I pray that it will become so soon!

All emphasis mine.

Excerpts from this post were taken from:

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable – The Baptism and Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christopher Catherwood, Ed., Combined edition of Joy Unspeakable (1984) and Prove All Things (1985), Kingsway Publications, Eastbourne, England, 1995, “Something Worth Striving For”, chapter 18, pp. 333-335.