Baptism – beyond the controversy Part III

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In the third of four blogs on Baptism - getting beyond the controversy we continue with Part III: John the Baptist prophesied that he baptised with water, but someone was coming who would ‘baptise with the Holy Spirit’. But what does it mean to be baptised with the Holy Spirit?  
Click here to read Part II

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Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Acts 1 v 5 ‘John truly baptised water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit’

There needs to be someone to administer the baptism: it’s not DIY.

When John the Baptist was preaching, he prophesied: ‘I baptise you with water, but there is coming One who will baptise you with Holy Spirit and with fire’   Mat 4v11, Mk 1v 8, Luke 3 v 16, John 1 v 33

Jesus repeated John’s prophecy to the disciples: ‘John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit’.

He said this just prior to the Ascension. The three years of Jesus’ discipleship of the apostles, and others, had led to this moment. Jesus would ascend into heaven but from there would baptise the disciples with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the baptiser with the Holy Spirit and when the Spirit was poured out on the disciples on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) true Christianity began:

‘When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place and there came a sound from heaven…and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them the ability’.

This pouring out of the Holy Spirit was repeated throughout the book of Acts, as people came to faith, they received the baptism in the Holy Spirit; some at the point of conversion, some before (see Acts 10 v44), some after (see Acts 8v 1-17).

Why are not all believers baptised in the Spirit? Most often because they either haven’t been told about the Holy Spirit, but we will deal with this later.

What should be commonplace in the churches is not. When I was taken to church in my childhood, I could not understand why the services were so unlike the ministry of Jesus and the apostles. It was largely because of this mismatch that I doubted the authenticity of the New Testament and, like so many, although I was attracted to Jesus, his teaching, his criticism of the religious leaders, and miracles, the disparity between what I was seeing and what was being read to us from Scripture was too great. Whatever longings I might have had to believe in Him were buried in the lack of evidence around me in church that the Scriptures were genuine. And so, I, along with so many of my generation, swelled the ranks of the agnostics.

I then began to hear and read accounts of individuals and churches that were experiencing the very things I knew as so lacking in my experience of church. After a great deal of soul searching and reading, I was faced with a choice. Eventually, I believed. I’m one of those who had an instantaneous conversion to Christ. Nothing dramatic. As an agnostic, I had stopped reciting the Apostles Creed during church services for years, but on one particular Sunday morning, I opened my mouth and as I said the familiar words ‘I believe in God, the Father…’ I believed. The speaking and believing were simultaneous. It was very quiet. No altar calls or dramatic music. And yet everything changed in that moment. It’s difficult to describe.

And yet I also knew, from reading accounts of the baptism in the Spirit, that this baptism hadn’t happened automatically for me at that time. That came later.

To return to the subject matter, baptism in the Spirit is not about baptism in water; Baptism in the Spirit is Jesus immersing us, flooding us, saturating us with the Spirit of God.

Jesus’ vision of the Christian faith is described in John chapter 7:

‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, , out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ But this he said concerning the Spirit…Who had not yet been given’ (John 7 v 37-39).

This was Jesus’ understanding of the fundamental nature of what has become known as Christianity; it should be our normal experience.

The baptism in the Spirit is all about thirst. How thirsty are you? I’ve only been seriously dehydrated once. Foolishly, I didn’t take enough water with me walking around Snowdon and around the ridges leading off Snowdon away from the well-worn paths. There were no streams at all, it’s arid up there. And, unusual perhaps for Wales, it was a very hot, sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky. By the time I staggered back to where I had a small bivouac by a stream, I lay down headfirst in the stream and drank and drank, desperate for water.

The problem for so many of us in the West, in England and elsewhere, is that we have been steeped in a view of the world from the Enlightenment onwards that has left us with an empirical, evidence and reason-based view of the world…to the exclusion of spiritual revelation. As a Chemistry teacher by profession and someone who was always fascinated by science, I have been ‘baptised’ if you will in that view of the world. I love teaching about Galileo and others who were imprisoned for not following the church’s Aristotelean dominated theories about forces and so on, dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Empirical evidence trumping the thought experiments of Greek philosophy. Both, ironically, exalting Reason above all else, the ability of the human mind to ascertain truth.

But Jesus did not operate like this. On one occasion he fed five thousand with just a few fish and loaves of bread. Reason would have told him to dismiss the crowd so they could go and buy some food. In fact, as I read the bible, Old Testament and New, I found out that all the bible characters had similar experiences. Somehow, they had heard from God, believed what they had heard, and ‘it came to pass’. Reason and evidence has its place, but not to be exalted above all else. It’s hard for us to switch systems! Not that God’s word is a system, the bible says it is living and active, like a two-edged sword, discerning between soul and spirit. ‘Soul’ being our reason, our will, and our emotions; ‘spirit’ being the part of us, our innermost being, where we commune with the Holy Spirit. Essentially, we are spiritual by nature. Our souls and our bodies are amazing, even if they malfunction, but our essential self is spiritual, spirit. And we can become so spiritually dehydrated our innermost beings cry out to be quenched.

The key is the baptism in the Spirit. If we are saturated with the Spirit, if the Spirit becomes this fountain that Jesus spoke about. It is easier to see, then, that we might begin to learn to operate like Jesus. Like the apostles. Like many other ordinary believers as recorded in Acts and the Epistles did. It’s not for the few, it’s for anyone who is thirsty.

Lastly, speaking in tongues and other ‘gifts’ of the Holy Spirit.

To start with I think it is worth saying that for many, like me, the miraculous is such a far cry from our childhood and maybe adulthood experience of church that it is hard to equate speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, and miracles with church or ‘Christianity’, especially in England! Putting it bluntly, if you were to drive to the nearest town, attend the Morning Service, you are not likely to hear someone speak in tongues, or prophesy, or a miracle of healing take place before your eyes. These things are so foreign to our expectation of Sunday services, we would be shocked to see or hear them.

And yet this is exactly what the New Testament teaches, and the early church practiced. But not only then. There have always been churches that have known this reality and there are a growing number – even in England!

It all starts with being thirsty. As Jesus said ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink…’

The baptism in the Spirit is not an ‘experience’, although many do experience a sense of power, or speaking in tongues (other languages), or prophesy, but is the foundation and doorway of the true and normal Christian life, which is led by the Spirit, not our ability alone to think; our reason.

Please click here for Baptism – getting beyond the controversy Part IV