WAYS TO RECEIVE THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Acts 2:32-42                                                                                    

“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 knows 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 pp. 64f. 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" (Eph. 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 p. 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. (See 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, "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' 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 v. 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' 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 NOT NECESSARY TO BEING BAPTIZED IN THE SPIRIT

There are five reasons why I am not as confident as the Pentecostals or Charismatic’s 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' 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 (v. 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' 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 this 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 v. 17 that God gave the Holy Spirit after they believed. So the baptism of the Spirit (v. 16) or the receiving of the gift of the Spirit (v. 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.