What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
John the Baptist announced that Someone coming after him would baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit, and the New Testament writers treat that promise as the doorway into Christianity itself. Commentators in this collection ask three questions of it: when did it happen, what did it produce, and is it something a believer should still be seeking today?
What "baptism" Means
Before asking what the Spirit's baptism does, one writer looks at how the word behaves everywhere else in Scripture.
Samuel RidoutI think you will find, in taking up the teaching of Scripture on the subject of baptism, that it nearly always, if not entirely, means introduction into a place. "They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Cor. 10:2); that is, they were brought fully into relationship with Moses as their leader, and the cloud and the sea marked that connection. It was in contrast with their earlier slavery to Pharaoh.
A Promise With a Date
The Gospels speak of this baptism as still ahead; Acts speaks of it as having arrived. One writer lines up the texts and notes how short the wait turned out to be.
VariousThese Scriptures speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as future: "he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5). In Acts 1:5 the Lord made it very clear that "not many days from now" this baptism with the Holy Spirit was to take place, and so it was — only ten days after the ascension of Christ... on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:33). This is an important point to note: the Holy Spirit, in Person, was sent here after the Crucified One was glorified (John 7:39).
The One Who Baptizes
John pointed away from himself to the One who would do this, and commentators press what that identification implies about Him.
William KellyBut if the Spirit remained on Him as man, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. No one could baptize like that but God. It would be blasphemy to say otherwise. It is the fullest right of a Divine Person to act in this way; and so John the Baptist completely disclaimed it, and in every Gospel points to Jesus alone as the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, just as he himself had come baptizing with water. It is the mighty work of Jesus from heaven, as He was the Lamb of God on the cross.
One Body Formed
The result of that baptism is not first an experience but a structure — a company that did not exist before.
W. H. WestcottIt is clear from the passage referred to that all believers, whether Jew or Gentile, whether Paul the Apostle or his Corinthian converts (and with them all converts in Christ everywhere), are formed into one body by the baptism of the Spirit... The same Spirit is the One who forms us into one body, so that every differing interest we might have had as individuals — even interests as far apart as those of Jew and Gentile — should be submerged in a shared interest under one sovereign direction.
Because it forms a company, several writers insist the language of Scripture never shrinks it down to a private transaction.
Other AuthorsNo individual is ever said to have been baptized with the Spirit. And no individual is ever told to seek it. It is a corporate and collective thing. This cannot be stressed too strongly.
Never Repeated, Yet Ever Widening
If the baptism happened once, how do later believers come into it? One writer answers with a picture of a stone dropped in still water.
W. T. P. WolstonNot by faith, but by receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the body of Christ was formed on the day of Pentecost, and that baptism, having once taken place, is never repeated, though each new believer is embraced by it and gets his place in the body of Christ... A circle was formed, and it widened, and widened, and presently it reached a solitary reed, and the reed was inside the circle; then it reached another reed, and that one too was embraced in the circle, and so the circle went on until all the reeds in the lake were embraced in it. From the day of Pentecost until now, every soul born of God is brought, sooner or later, when he receives the forgiveness of his sins and the Holy Spirit, into that unity which the Spirit makes, and which man cannot break.
Where People Go Wrong
Two errors are named repeatedly. The first turns the baptism into a spiritual promotion.
A. J. PollockThere is a teaching around that makes this filling something later than the gift of the Spirit to the believer, brought about by a special act of surrender and faith, and says that the believer who has, as they put it, received the baptism of the Spirit lives on a higher level than the ordinary Christian. We are convinced that this teaching, though it often comes from a sincere desire to be heavenly minded, is mixed up with wrong teaching that in the end fixes the believer's attention on his own attainments instead of on Christ and His glories.
The second confuses this baptism with new birth, or with the fire John also mentioned.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinWe are not born again by the baptism of the Spirit, but those who are born again become by it members of that one body. Every believer who has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit... It is wrong for a believer to plead or pray for the Holy Spirit to come to him, and it is equally unscriptural to pray for a baptism with fire, for there is no such baptism now.
Writers do distinguish this baptism from being filled with the Spirit, which Scripture does urge on Christians — the mistake is giving one the name of the other.
Summary
- Placed — Baptism in Scripture means being brought into a new position; Spirit baptism placed believers into a company they were not in before.
- Placed by Christ — The Baptizer is the ascended Lord, and John's whole point was that only a divine Person could give the Spirit.
- Placed once — It happened at Pentecost, ten days after the ascension, and the writers say plainly it has never been repeated.
- Placed together — The result is one body in which Jew and Gentile lose their separate standing under one direction; the act is corporate, never private.
- Placed already — Each new believer, on receiving the Spirit, is embraced by that one baptism — so what remains to seek is to be filled, not re-baptized.