(Transcript of the video above, edited for readability)
Whenever I get questions about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, I'll usually start just by showing someone that in the New Testament there are seven passages or texts that deal with that explicitly. One in each of the four gospels, two in the book of Acts: one in Acts 1, where Jesus is speaking to all of them about what will happen in Acts 2. And then there's another part in the Book of Acts where in chapter 11, Peter is recounting what Jesus said. And then finally, the last one is in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13. And so really they're only those seven passages. And so we'll take some time. We'll look at each one of those and you'll find that especially in Acts 1, and when we see the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, I think it's very clear that Jesus says, "in a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
He says that in Acts 1. And then in Acts 2, we see the Holy Spirit coming. and of course, tongues like tongues of fire coming up and resting upon them. And so it would be right to understand what happened on the day of Pentecost there as the baptism with the Holy Spirit. There's another sense in which the baptism of the Holy Spirit is spoken. And that's in 1 Corinthians 12:13, where Paul is actually saying there, if you look at chapter 12 in 1 Corinthians, he says to them, "I don't want you to be ignorant of spiritual gifts and how these things work. There are lots of different gifts, lots of different workings, but it's all by the same spirit." He goes through these different things and he says, one has faith by the same spirit, another tongues by the same spirit, another healing by the same spirit. And his point is not to pick the gifts apart and say, which one do you have? His point is to say all of these, as he says in 1 Corinthians 12:11, are the work of one in the same spirit. And he goes through all of that to say what he says in verses 12-13. And then he goes down and he says, "now you are the body of Christ. Just as it is that way. So it is with the body of Christ." He's making this analogy and saying in verses 1-11, he's saying, now you have a lot of differences. The Holy Spirit has made you different in very important ways. One has this gift, another has that gift. But then he turns and he says, you actually have some things about you that are the same.
In 1 Corinthians 12:12, he says, "For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ." So he looks at the human body and says, "you've got many members, lots of different parts, but there's a unity despite those differences." And he says the body of Christ is just like that. And he says in verse 13, if you want to know how we can be sure that the body of Christ is like this, that there is a unity despite all these differences we might observe in spiritual gifts. He says in verse 13, "for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and all were made to drink of the One Spirit." So in one sense, you'll find this in many places, sometimes the idea of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is taught in such a way that it distinguishes one group of Christians from the next.
Here are those who have it. Here are those who do not. In 1 Corinthians 12:13, we're told that in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. It speaks of the baptism with the Holy Spirit in this part of the Bible as something that all Christians have experienced as something initial, which has placed us into the one body of Christ. So it's confirmed at the end of the chapter as well. He gets into some rhetorical questions and he says, do all speak with tongues? Do all work miracles? Do all do this? No, which helps us again, because sometimes you'll hear, well, if you have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, then you will definitely speak with other tongues. And yet in 1 Corinthians 12:13, we see that this kind of being baptized with the Spirit is a common and initial experience of all Christians who are entering the body of Christ. And then we're told at the end of that chapter in 1 Corinthians 12, toward the end there, that not all who have had this experience speak with other tongues. So I think that it really, just reading through the Bible in context that way, helps us a lot.
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(First published on Christianity.com on August 12, 2012)
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