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APPENDIX H
NOTE CONCERNING THE MISINTERPRETATION OF THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT
First, let us examine the Biblical theology of the Holy Spirit
True Christians (not nominal Christians, in name only) have the Holy Spirit. True Christians have accepted Christ and put their faith in Him and His death and resurrection. And as such they have received the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus ( Rom. 8:2). To be born again and to be alive to God is by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does this by revealing Christ and convicting (convincing) the unsaved of their need for Christ (John 16:7-11); The Spirit presents Christ to the unbeliever in the preaching of the Gospel. To receive Christ is also to receive the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Romans 8:9 to the believers at Rome,
“But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. If anyone have not the Spirit of Christ, this one is not his.” (Rom. 8:9)
To be “in the Spirit” is to be saved, and to be “in the flesh” is to be unsaved (Romans 7:5). But not everyone who has the Spirit dwelling in him is filled with Spirit; some are not “walking according to the Spirit”, but “according to the flesh” ( Romans 8:4; Gal. 5:16, 25). And to walk according to the flesh is to attempt to live the Christian life by human effort alone apart from the Spirit of God; such ones attempt to live up to the divine standard in the law. They are under law and thus experience only defeat and frustration ( Rom. 6:14 ERS and Rom. 7:18-19 ERS). They are trying to do what only the Holy Spirit can enable them to do. To be under law is to walk according the flesh (by human effort). To walk according to the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit is not to be under law ( Gal. 5:18). Those who walk according the Spirit bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit cannot be had apart from the Spirit; no human effort can produce that fruit. But those who walk according the Spirit fulfill the law without being under law.
“13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 13:9 The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed uup in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Rom. 13:8-10)
The goal is not moral or sinless perfection (conforming to the divine standard in the law) but love: love of God and love of our neighbor. This goal can be reached only if one is filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18-20).
And a Christian is filled with the Spirit if he has been baptized with the Holy Spirit. The baptism with the Holy Spirit has been misunderstood as the second work of grace that eradicates the sinful nature. This is not what the phrase means in the New Testament. The phrase “baptize with the Holy Spirit” was first used by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33) of Him who was to come after John, that is, the Christ or Messiah. Luke reports in Acts that the risen Jesus said,
“John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5)
This is obviously a reference to the coming of the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost, of which Jesus also said,
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
This baptism with the Holy Spirit was an empowerment for service, to be His witnesses. Later, Peter refers to Pentecost as the baptism with the Spirit when he explains what happened at the conversion of Cornelius, the centurion:
“15 As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 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 could withstand God?” (Acts 11:15-17)
How did Peter recognize that Holy Spirit had fallen on them and the gift of the Spirit? Because the same thing happened to them that happened to Peter and the others at Pentecost, they spoke with other tongues or languages (Acts 2:4; 9:44-47). This sign of the baptism with the Spirit of Cornelius, and those with him, was also the sign to Peter, and those with him, that the Spirit was also given to the Gentiles. Luke also refers to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as being filled with the Spirit;
“3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:3-4)
This coming of the Holy Spirit to them, which is the baptism with the Spirit, is the initial in-filling of the Spirit. Later they were again filled with Spirit (Acts 4:31). We believe that each believer, like these first believers, may be baptized with the Spirit as the initial in-filling of the Holy Spirit and may be refilled with the Spirit as the Spirit sees fit. Paul exhorted the Ephesian believers to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). If anyone objects to the use of the phrase “baptized with the Spirit” to refer this initial filling of the Spirit, I will not quibble with him, as long as he recognizes that Christian believers should be filled with the Spirit and that there must be a first filling of the Spirit which may occur at conversion or later. Whether one speaks in tongues at this first filling of the Spirit, which one may do as the Spirit leads, is between him (or her) and the Spirit. But I will tell you that if anyone makes an issue with God of not speaking with tongues, he may not be filled the Spirit until he yields. This yielding to the Spirit is the necessary condition for being filled with Spirit. Paul makes it clear in his letter to Romans that presenting our bodies and its members to God is the logical implication of our acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord and Savior ( Rom. 6:13 ERS; 12:1-2); and that includes presenting or yielding one’s tongue. This does not mean that the Christian believer has become morally perfect or that he must clean up his life before he can be filled with the Spirit; the Holy Spirit will take care of cleaning up the believer’s life after he is filled with the Spirit.
One more point; speaking in tongues at the initial filling of the Spirit is not the gift of tongues of which Paul speaks in I Cor. chapters 12 to 14. While all believers may speak in tongues at the initial filling of Spirit, not all have the gift of tongues and the accompanying gift of interpretation of tongues. The Spirit distributes the gifts of the Spirit as he wills (I Cor. 12:11). As Paul makes clear in I Cor. 12, the gifts of the Spirit are manifestations of the Spirit in the body of Christ for the common good (I Cor. 12:7). The empowering of the gifts and ministries of the Spirit are to be concrete expressions of love for one another in the body of Christ and those outside. The preaching of Gospel should be accompanied by signs and wonders:
“3 It [the so great salvation] was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, 4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.” (Heb. 2:3-4)
The gift of tongues is not the speaking in tongues at the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But this is not the only misunderstanding of the baptiam of the Holy Spirit; the baptism of the Holy Spirit was misunderstood to be the Holiness second work of grace that was believed to eradicate the sinful nature in the Christian. At the beginning of the twentieth century during the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was misunderstood to be the Holiness second work of grace that was believed to eradicate the sinful nature in the Christian.
The Pentecostal movement began as an offshoot of the Holiness Movement. It began at a small school, Bethel Bible School, in Topeka, Kansas, which was founded by a Holiness evangelist, Charles Fox Parham. Parham had concluded that speaking in tongues was the sign of the second work of grace, after a student, Agnes Ozman, experienced speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, in January, 1901. The teaching and practice spread rapidly among Holiness groups. They became known as Pentecostals because they identified their experience with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the 120 gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2. They called their experience the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” on the basis of the promise of the risen Jesus recorded in Acts 1:5, “John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The movement came to Southern California in 1906 when a student of Parham, William J. Seymour, a black Holiness evangelist from Houston, Texas, came to Los Angeles, Calif., and began to hold revival meetings at an abandoned African Methodist Episcopal Church on Azuza Street in downtown Los Angeles. The Azuza Street Revival from 1906 to 1909 became the center from which Pentecostalism became a world movement. Other Holiness groups were pentecostalized rapidly as leaders of Holiness Movement came to Azuza Street to investigate what was happening there. Among the Azuza Street “pilgrims” were G. B. Cashwell (North Carolina), C H. Mason (Tennessee), Glen Cook (California), A. G. Argue (Canada), and W. H. Durham (Chicago). Within a year from the opening of the Azuza Street meetings (April, 1906), these and others spread the Pentecostal message across the nation.
But many of the Holiness groups were not willing to believe that speaking in tongues was sign of the second work of grace. Sharp controversies and divisions developed within several Holiness denominations on whether speaking in tongues was the sign of the second work of grace. The Pentecostals left or were forced to leave their Holiness denominations and they formed the first Pentecostal denominations, among which were the Pentecostal Holiness Church, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Apostolic Faith (Portland, Oregon), the United Holy Church, and the Pentecostal Free-Will Baptist Church. Most of these churches were located in the southern states and experienced rapid growth after the Pentecostal Revival. Two of these, the Church of God in Christ and the United Holy Church, were predominantly black.
A controversy developed among these churches about sanctification. Some like Parham and Seymour taught that speaking with tongues was the sign of the “second work of grace”, but others held that the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues was a “third work of grace”. Then there were those like William H. Durham who in 1910 began to teach his “finished work” theology, which taught that sanctification is progressive work of the Holy Spirit based on the finished work of Christ on Calvary. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the first filling of the Holy Spirit by which one is enabled by the Holy Spirit to live and minister. The Assemblies of God was formed in 1914 based on Durham’s teaching and soon became the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. Most of the Pentecostal Churches after 1914 were formed on the model of Assemblies of God. They include the Pentecostal Church of God, the International Church of the Four Square Gospel (founded in 1927 by Aimee Semple McPherson), and Open Bible Standard Church.
At the beginning of the twentieth century during the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was misunderstood to be the Holiness second work of grace that was believed to eradicate the sinful nature in the Christian. There were other Pentecostals that rejected this Holiness interpretation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit; they believed that the baptism of the Holy Spirit suppressed or overcame the sinful nature so that believer who had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit could live a victorious Christian life – Spirit-empowered law-keeping.
Neither of these interpretations of the baptism of the Holy Spirit are Biblical; man in general and the Christian in particular does not have a sinful nature. Man sins because he is spiritually dead; “because of which [death] all sinned.” ( Rom. 5:12d ERS) – not because he has a sinful nature. And many Christians experience the lordship of sin when they are placed under law and are not under the grace of God ( Rom. 6:14 ERS). They sin, not because they have a sinful nature, but because they have been practically placed back into spiritual death.
Now since there is no sinful nature that causes the believer to sin, then the baptism of Holy Spirit is not the eradication or suppression of the sinful nature. But since the Christian sins when he or she is put under law ( Rom. 6:14 ERS), the baptism of the Holy Spirit may also be a deliverance from being under law to being under grace.
“7:25b So then, I myself am a slave to the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it is weakened through the flesh, God Himself, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh, 8:4 in order that the righteous acts of law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom. 7:25b-8:4 ERS)
God delivers believers from being under law through His word of unconditional love which says that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ ( Rom. 8:1 ERS). This is a word of grace and places the Christian back under grace. Being under law conditions God’s love by our sins. God says that His love is unconditioned by our sins. Therefore, God does not condemn us for our failure under the law but delivers us from being under law and places us back under grace. For in His love, by His grace, God delivers us from the law of sin and of death by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ ( Rom. 8:2 ERS) and thus from wrath which is condemnation ( Rom. 8:1 NAS).
This deliverance by the operation of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has been misinterpreted as an eradication of the sinful nature. But the law of sin and law of death is not the sinful nature. The law of sin is the operation of sin as a slavemaster and the law of death is the operation of death which separates man from God. The law of death brings the man who is under law into captivity to the law of sin (Rom. 7:23). That is, death (primarily spiritual death) leads to sin.
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because of which [death] all sinned, — ” (Rom. 5:12 ERS)
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” (I Cor. 15:55 ERS)
No sinful nature is necessary to explain the Romans 7 experience; the man under law sins because he is practically spiritually dead; the law separates him from God. And since the law cannot make alive ( Gal. 3:21), it therefore cannot produce righteousness. For the Christian to place himself under the law is the same as placing himself in spiritual death; it has the same results — sin. For the Christian under law, the law has taken the place of the Holy Spirit; the law thus separates the Christian from God, and that is spiritual death. Romans chapter 7 is not the normal Christian life; it is the struggle of the man under law, entrapped in the bondage of legalism, of being under law. And if the Christian falls into this legalism, there is deliverance.
“Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 7:25a)
This deliverance often takes place with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is the initial infilling with the Spirit. And if the believer is in bondage under the law, then he or she will be set free from this bondage when they are filled with the Spirit. But since the Christian life is often misinterpreted as living by the law, then the spirit-filled believer is often placed back again under law. And then the believer sins, and some interpret these sins as the lost of salvation and the need to be saved again. Among some other, this fall into sin is interpreted as an expression of sinful nature of the believer who has yielded to his sinful nature rather than living according to his new nature. Both these teachings misunderstand the reason for the fall into sin and do not recognize that the cause of the sin is being under law ( Rom. 6:14 ERS).
Being under law does not mean that the law is the cause of sin. As Paul points out in Romans 7:7-12, the law is good but for the man under law, sin uses the law as an opportunity to become active. And this law of sin becomes active because of the law of death ( Rom. 7:23). The law of God is not the law of sin, but being under the law allows the law of sin to become operative. And the law of sin becomes operative because the being under law allows the law of death to become operative. For the law cannot make alive ( Gal. 3:21), but brings death ( Rom. 7:10). Deliverance from the law of sin is by the deliverance from the law of death and deliverance from the law of death is by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus ( Rom. 8:2). Thus the law or power of action of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus frees us from the law or power of action of sin and the law or power of action of death. Since death leads to sin, the Spirit delivers from sin by giving us life in Christ which is deliverance from death. The law is not able to do this; it is through the death of Christ ( Rom. 8:3) who put an end to sin’s reign over us (“condemn sin in the flesh”) by His death for us (II Cor. 5:14-15; Rom. 6:10). The result ( Rom. 8:4) is that the righteous acts of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. To walk after the flesh is to try to do the righteous acts of the law by human effort (“the flesh”). The believer must not do it that way. Romans chapter 7 shows us the failure of this way. Only as we are delivered from being under the law (we died to the law in Christ’s death: Rom. 7:4) and are set free from the law of sin and from the law of death by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus ( Rom. 8:2 NAS), do we experience the resurrection victory of Christ over sin and death.
The Christian life is not Spirit-empowered law-keeping, that is, being under the law and coming up to standard of the law by the power of the Spirit. For the believer is not under law ( Rom. 6:14) because he is dead to the law ( Rom. 7:4, 6). Thus the walk according the Spirit is not Spirit-empowered law-keeping but is Spirit-filled law-fulfilling by love ( Rom. 8:4; 13:10); it is a joyful walk filled with the Spirit, trusting Him who loves us and gave Himself for us. And is a law necessary when we love and trust God? The law is for those who do not love and trust God — though it will not save them — the law cannot make them alive and it cannot produce righteousness ( Gal. 3:21), the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:5, 13). And this walk in the Spirit is possible only by being filled with the Spirit. But if the believer by faith is walking according to the Spirit, he will fulfill the righteous acts of the law ( Rom. 8:4). He will love God with his heart, soul, and mind, with his whole being, and he will love his neighbor as he loves himself (Matt. 22:37-40). Thus by love he will fulfill the righteous acts of the law. And it is by walking after the Spirit, that the believer will fulfill the righteous acts of the law. He will love God with his heart, soul, and mind, with his whole being, and he will love his neighbor as he loves himself. This fulfillment of the righteous acts of the law is not Spirit-empowered law-keeping. It is to walk by the Spirit and to walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit, and if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law:
“But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” (Gal. 5:18).
Legalism is a temptation and an obstacle to the walk in the Spirit by faith. As good and right as the law is (Rom. 7:10), this law is not man’s highest good, and observing the Ten Commandments is not man’s righteousness. God Himself is man’s highest good, and trust in and love for God is his righteousness. This love fulfills the law ( Rom. 13:8-10), which a legalistic living by the law does not do. Man’s basic problem is not “Are you keeping the law?” but “Which god are you trusting?” Is it the true God or is it a false one? This is not just the problem of the non-Christian and the unbeliever but also the problem of the Christian. Many psychological problems that Christians have are the result of a divided loyalty. They are trying to hang onto the true God and a false god at the same time. This double-mindedness, this divided faith (James 1:7-8) makes a Christian psychologically and morally unstable and hinders his walk with the Lord.
And strange as it may seem, this is the situation behind the Romans 7 kind of experience of many Christians. As we observed above, the experience of Romans 7 is the experience of the man under law. And if a Christian is having this kind of experience, it is because he has placed himself under law which God says he is not under, for he is under grace ( Rom. 6:14 ERS). He is attempting to serve two masters at the same time: the law and the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be done ( Gal. 5:18). It only creates psychological and moral problems: guilt on the inside and sin and failure on the outside. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Christian does not need to walk by the law but by the Spirit. The Christian’s goal is not moral perfection but the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). The Apostle Paul’s question in Galatians 3:3 is particularly relevant and right to the point: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Paul’s obvious answer to this rhetorical question is “No“. For “as you… have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Col. 2:6). By faith they have received Christ so they walk in Him by faith. This walk is not the striving for moral perfection. Moral perfection is perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law, and is contrary and opposed to the fruit of the Spirit and the righteousness of faith (Gal. 5:19-21). The weakness, if not the error, of most Christian preaching and teaching is that it is an exhortation of the Christian to perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law. Having begun in the Spirit, the Christian is urged to seek moral perfection. The Holy Spirit is brought into this kind of preaching, if at all, as the source of power to enable the Christian to keep the law. This Spirit-empowered law-keeping is not what Paul means when he speaks of “walking according to the Spirit” ( Rom. 8:4; see also Gal. 5:16, 25). To walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit, and if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law:
“But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” (Gal. 5:18)
To walk according to the Spirit is to make all one’s decisions with reference to the Holy Spirit as He personally guides, fills and empowers the believer. The walk in the Spirit is the moment by moment walk of faith and personal trust in the God who personally by His Holy Spirit reveals and communicates Himself along each step of that walk. The “normal” Christian life is this walk according to the Spirit and not a legalistic Spirit-empowered law-keeping, but a biblical Spirit-filled law-fulfillment by love ( Rom. 8:4; 13:10). Christian legalism not only ignores the clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is not under law ( Rom. 6:14 ERS), but also ignores the equally clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is dead to the law.
“Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit to God.” (Rom. 7:4; Gal 2:19)
Not only is the Christian dead to sin but is also dead to the law. Through Christ’s death, the believer has died to sin and to the law, and now in the resurrected Christ he is alive to God.
“But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Rom. 7:6)
The Christian has passed from under the reign of death and sin unto reigning in life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 5:17). The law was the rule in the dispensation of death (II Cor. 3:6-7); the letter kills and the law condemns. The Holy Spirit is the rule of life in the new dispensation of life (II Cor. 3:17-18). Since the Spirit gives life (II Cor. 3:6), the dispensation of life is the dispensation of the Spirit (II Cor. 3:8), the Era of the Spirit. Since the Christian has passed from death to life, he has passed from the rule of the law to the rule of the Spirit. The law as the rule of Christian life has no place in the Era of the Spirit. And if the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit, legalism as an idolatry and misunderstanding of the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit either.