Filled with the Spirit: The Messaging Has Been a Mess
In the previous post attention was given to the necessity of the filling of the Spirit if our witnessing is to be effective. But I knew, even as I wrote, that there is much confusion on this point. The messaging has been a mess.
In his book, Sodom Had No Bible, Leonard Ravenhill made a very telling point when he wrote:
To me it is a shocking commentary on present Christian feebleness that while, in the first century, 120 men could move from an upper-room closet and shake Jerusalem, nowadays 120 churches claiming a like experience of the Holy Spirit can be in one of our cities and yet that city at large hardly knows they are there.
How can this be? The only explanation plausible is, despite their common claim, it isn’t a like experience.
There are those who claim this experience with blank faces, flat tones, and empty words, no truer in reality than the learned vocalizing of a caged parrot, and no more persuasive than that dry-eyed look of some mannequin in a store.
Theological confusion accounts for this outcome.
Let's sort it out.
A common teaching in many churches today states that one becomes filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion. Is this true?
Not exactly. This point needs clarification.
Actually, the Bible speaks of two baptisms, not one.
The first baptism is analogous to salvation (the crossing of the Red Sea); the second baptism is analogous to Promise Land living (the crossing of the Jordan River).
The very distinct differences between these two baptisms can be seen in the juxtaposition of two New Testament verses.
In First Corinthians 12:13 we read: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body ....” This is the baptism every Christian has already experienced.
In examining this baptism, notice, first, who is doing the baptism? The Holy Spirit. And notice next—into what we were all baptized? The Church, the body of Christ.
In John 1:33, though, we see a different baptism. Here we find John the Baptist saying, “... He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’.”
So, according to this verse, who is doing the baptizing? Jesus, the one upon whom the Holy Spirit descended.
And what is the element of this baptism? The Holy Spirit, whose engulfing, rushing presence will change our whole life!
Through Scripture’s characterizations of these two baptisms, we can see that the agent of each is different, the element of each is different, and the purpose of each is different.
The first baptism has been experienced by every Christian. The second baptism is available to every Christian but its very existence is unknown to many.
The filling of the Spirit occurs with the second baptism, not the first. But if you don't know that, you won't seek it.
It is interesting that of the 7,487 promises in God’s Word, one of these is so needful and special that it is referred to by Jesus as “the promise” (Acts 1:4).
What the Father promised (Luke 24:49), the prophet prophesied (Matthew 3:11), Jesus proclaimed (Acts 1:5-8), the early church experienced (Acts 2:4), and Scripture commands (Ephesians 5:18), we now want to understand—the beauty, the bounty, and the blessing of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
So there won't be any confusion, the first fact to nail down is this: Every Christian already has the Holy Spirit within. This assertion is based on Romans 8:9, which says that if we don’t have the Spirit, we are none of his.
So every Christian— no matter what denominational preference or present level of maturity—has received (not partially, but fully) the Holy Spirit.
However, there is a big difference between the receiving of the Holy Spirit and the releasing of the Holy Spirit.
Whenever the Holy Spirit is released to fill one's life, the experience is so overwhelming the Bible speaks of it as a baptism—something that floods, engulfs, immerses, and overcomes.
Sudden, Not Gradual
For purposes of understanding we may ask: Is this second baptism a gradual thing, the successful outcome of spiritual maturity?
No, the Bible never represents this as a step-by-step improvement program. The language of Scripture always conveys sudden, definite, point-in-time action—the Spirit came, the Spirit descended, the Spirit fell upon. The language is punctiliar, not progressive.
Many Christians will view the Christian life as years and years of growth rewarded someday, they hope, by a graduation of the Holy Spirit’s filling. But G.D. Watson has biblical support for chiding “the snail-crawling gradualism that gets us nowhere.”
Andrew Murray said that “... some people want to glide into this life ... gradually, to steal in quietly, and God won’t have it.”
With equal decisiveness, Charles Trumbull said the same thing:
No! The victorious life, the life of freedom from the power of sin, is not a gradual gift. There is no such thing as a gradual gift. And victory is a gift. It is not a growth. “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How long does it take you to grow into your Christmas presents? On Christmas morning, when you come downstairs, and find them there on the table with your name on them, how long does it take you to grow into those gifts? One minute a gift is not yours, though it is labeled with your name. The next minute, it is yours
Why? Because in that minute you have taken it. You did not grow into it; in an instant you took it.
Likewise, A.B. Simpson spoke of this experience “as a gift, not as a growth. It is an obtainment, not an attainment.”
But you won't obtain unless you know there is something more to gain.
What the Spirit-Filling is Like
To further clarify what the filling of Holy Spirit is like, we note at the outset that the Greek word for “filled” has three compatible meanings.
First, it means pressure. Just as the wind will fill out the sails and drive it along—and the river currents will take a stick and drive it along—so also the Holy Spirit will drive the life he fills in a prescribed, God-ordained direction.
Second, this word means to permeate. Like salt and other seasonings that permeate food, or the many colors of dye that permeate cloth, the Holy Spirit will permeate the life of a believer, altering the flavor and appearance of that life.
Third, this Greek word for filling, pleroo, means possession. To be filled with the Spirit is to have our life totally taken over by God in such a way that we will actually feel him inside us.
So awesome is this experience—the fervor of its fire, the sweetness of its strength—that we may feel that our heart is going to burst! Those who haven’t experienced this have no idea that something so good is even possible on this side of Heaven.
E. Stanley Jones, missionary to India, described his own experience. He said he had been in prayer when the Lord asked him, “Will you give me your all?”
Jones answered, “Yes, Lord, of course, I will. I will give you my all, all I know and all that I don’t know.” Then the Lord replied, “Take my all, take the Holy Spirit.”
At first, Jones felt nothing. Next, doubts made their case, and he had to shoo these off like Abraham did when the birds came to scatter his sacrifice.
But it was while pushing away these menacing doubts that it then happened. This is his account:
Wave after wave of the Holy Spirit seemed to be going through me as a cleansing fire. I could only walk the floor with the tears of joy flowing down my cheeks. I could do nothing but praise him—and did. I knew this was no passing emotion.
D.L. Moody, R.A. Torrey, Samuel Chadwick, Samuel Brengle, Oswald Chambers, F.B. Meyer, A.J. Gordon, Andrew Murray and others describe their filling of the Holy Spirit in much the same way. But was this true of, say, Billy Graham, a Southern Baptist? Yes, it was!
Even as an evangelist, Billy Graham knew there was something major missing in his life. Determined to find it, Billy Graham sought the counsel of Stephen Olford.
For several days, Dr. Graham went into isolation with Dr. Olford, the great Bible expositor, learning what he had not learned as a Southern Baptist: what it meant to be baptized with Holy Spirit.
Persuaded by these truths, he then went before Jesus the baptizer to receive the reality of the Spirit's fullness. That changed Billy. He finally found what had been missing.
The life of divided loyalties can end for us, too, as can the deadly duality of talking one way but living another way, once the Holy Spirit fills our life.
Just as it happened for those first disciples, the fire will finally be lit in us! And accompanying this fire will be a burst of compassion—toward God and toward others—that will transport truths we profess into a reality we now more fully possess.
Anything less than this just isn’t the Christianity that God wants broadcast at home or beyond.
Is it now becoming clear to you why Jesus told his disciples to wait?
To attempt to live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit released is a hopeless prospect. Trying to convert others to a life we have never experienced is simply a doomed venture.
And yet, this is precisely what is happening. Friendly flesh is trying to glad-hand a lost world into conversion. Sincere souls are talking about realities they have never experienced—and, quite frankly, do not understand.
True, those in this condition won't be fruitless and useless. There can be a measure of growth, but that's not the preferred way, certainly not the best way as taught by him who is “the way”.
Unlike the first baptism that happened when you were saved and placed into the church, this second baptism occurs more than once.
While the filling of the Holy Spirit is sudden and not gradual, it is also continuous and not final.
Those who were filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 were filled again in Acts 4. Indeed, the command of Scripture is to keep on being filled with Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
This ongoing experience of the Spirit’s filling increases our ability for witnessing, worship, and every other dimension of Christian life.
Scripture shows the night-and-day difference between the disciples in the gospels and the disciples in the book of Acts. What accounted for this difference was the filling with the Holy Spirit!
Chances are many today see their current life more like that of the disciples in the gospels. Why is this true? Because they, like the disciples in the gospels, haven't been filled with the Holy Spirit yet.
