Foundations of the Christian Life. Chapter 26. The Holy Spirit #7. The Pentecostal Experience.

Foundations of the Christian Life
Chapter 26. The Holy Spirit #7. The Pentecostal Experience.

At this point I feel I have established that:
1. The covenant gift of the Spirit, received at conversion, includes two relationships of the Holy Spirit to the believer, both and “in” relationship (the indwelling Spirit) and an “on” relationship (the Baptism in the Spirit). These are given to us because they belong to Christ and we are “in Christ”.
2. However there is an experiential element to both of these: The Indwelling Spirit should lead to being Spirit-filled and manifesting the nature of Christ through us, the Baptism in the Spirit should lead to power in Christian service. We acknowledge that we don’t fully enter into the experience of the gift of the Spirit at conversion, rather we grow into it.
3. The experience of receiving the gift of the Spirit is described in Acts, particularly in Acts 2:1-4.

There are three questions that need to be addressed here:
1. What does the gift of the Spirit look like in Acts 2:1-4?
2. Was it a pattern in Acts? Is this the same right through Acts?
3. Should it be taken as a norm, or pattern, for us?

WHAT DOES THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT LOOK LIKE?

It is at this point that the Pentecostal teacher has something to contribute to the discussion. Their contention seems to me to be sound at this point. There are four main points they make:

* The Promise of the Spirit, both indwelling and baptism, was fulfilled at the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), and this is the description of what the gift of the Spirit looks like in experience.
* Speaking in tongues is the visible sign of having received this experience.
* Other people were accepted into the Church later in Acts because their experience matched the experience of those who were present at Pentecost.
* The experience at Pentecost is thus the pattern and norm for receiving the full experience of the Spirit for every Christian.

We will leave detailed discussion of speaking in tongues until later as it tends to divert the discussion from the other points, which are of primary interest and importance for the discussion at this point. Besides which, I’m not sure I agree with the way the claim about tongues is made by Pentecostals.

Acts 2:1-4.
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

There are certain things in this passage which are unique to the historical situation and therefore should not be taken as a guide for us, but other aspects are common to all, or most, of the Acts experiences so we can take them as a guide for us.

(1) Elements Unique to Acts 2.

(a) The wind and tongues of fire.
(b) The Apparent two-stage reception of the Spirit by the 120.
C/f John 20:19-23.
I covered this in Chapter 23 so we wont go into it again.

These two things appear to be unique to the experience of the original 120 disciples present on the day of Pentecost.

The sound of wind and the visible tongues of fire signify the giving of the gift of the Holy Spirit by the Father at the beginning of a new age – the Church Age.

In later Acts experiences where the gift of the Spirit is given to people he is mediated through those in the Church who already have the Spirit. This is God’s normal way of spreading the Spirit in this age – through other people. There is, therefore. no need for the sound of wind or the visible tongues of fire to be repeated in the other Acts instances.

(2) Elements Common to the Other Acts Episodes.

There are three elements to the Pentecostal Experience that seem to be common to the Acts episodes.

(a) The BAPTISM in the Holy Spirit - the words "clothed", "upon".

This is an experience of being IMMERSED in the Spirit.

Acts 2:3 (above).

From the understanding that Baptism means initiation we are to conclude that the initial reception of the Spirit was a Baptism in the Spirit. But it is clear in Acts that there was a dramatic experience for the convert, which was observable by others. This experience could only be described in terms of being immersed, or overwhelmed, by the Spirit. In other words, the experience matched the words used to describe and name it. The Spirit “clothed” them or “came on them”. This is implied by the very meaning of the word "Baptise", "An Immersion", derived from the Greek "Baptiso", meaning to cause a thing to be dipped, or plunged, or submerged, or immersed in fluid.

We have to allow this meaning of the word with the Baptism of the Spirit. Clearly the idea John the Baptist hints at when he prophecies that the Messiah would "baptise in the Holy Spirit and in Fire", is that this spiritual baptism would be at least every bit as real as the water baptism he was offering. Clearly this is true in Acts.

Hence we have three lines of thought coming from the idea of Baptism:

(1) It indicates a relationship with the Spirit that every believer has, at least in theory/doctrine.
(2) It indicates something that can be seen by others and be verified as being the same as other similar experiences.
(3) It is an experience for the individual that is as real as being immersed in water.

(b) Being FILLED with the HOLY Spirit.

Acts 2:3 (above).

There is a clear difference between Baptism and Filling. Where Baptism is an OUTER clothing, the Filling is an INNER experience.

(c) Speaking in Tongues.

See later discussion.

Clearly at Pentecost:
* The experience of receiving the Spirit was dynamic, powerful.
* Those that received the Spirit knew they had received him.
* Others, who were bystanders, could see something had happened.

Question: Are these factors true in the other Acts accounts of receiving the Spirit?

Though all three elements do not appear in every case, they appear, or are implied in most. We do not have to insist that they are always recorded in every case as the Bible is not a science textbook. God is under no obligation to repeat himself every time for our benefit when the pattern is clear. All I have to show here is a significant number of these aspects in each case for the argument to be valid.

We need to understand the structure of the book of Acts if we are to understand what it is trying to teach us. The structure of the book is outlined for us in

Acts 1:8
“You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth”.

The book is structured around how the gospel spread in these steps:
Acts 1-7 In Jerusalem and Judea.
Acts 8-9 To Samaria.
Acts 10ff To the Gentiles – the ends of the earth.

So as the gospel spreads to each new area we see a spreading of the gift of the Spirit to each new group. This experience of the Spirit is seen in Acts to be the proof that they have become Christians.

Let’s look at the episodes:

1. The Samaritan Revival.

Acts 8:15-18.
“When they (Peter and John) arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money …”

* “The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them” – the wording refers to the Baptism in the Spirit. See ch 18 for a full discussion on why this was their real salvation experience. It was their initiation into the Spirit.
* “They received the Spirit” – Presumably for this to be stated so definitely there was some way that the Samaritans knew they had received the Spirit and the Apostles could verify this. There must have been some criteria by which the Apostles judged that was sufficiently common to what was happening in Jerusalem and elsewhere for this to be so.
* “When Simon saw…” – whatever happened Simon could see it happening. Most interpreters nowadays assume it was speaking in tongues. But the real point here is that receiving the Spirit was observable, experiential and verifiable by those who knew about such things.
* There is no mention of being “filled with the Spirit”.

2. The Conversion of Saul/Paul.

Acts 9:17,18.
“Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord- Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here- has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, …”

* We discussed in Chapter 15 why this event and not the experience on the road to Damascus three days earlier was Paul’s conversion. So this was his initial experience of the Spirit.
* He was presumably “filled with the Spirit” in accordance with Ananias’ words.
* The Baptism in the Spirit is not mentioned.
* Tongues is not mentioned here, but Paul testifies that he “spoke in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:18)” and it is not unreasonable to assume that he began to do so at this point of his life.
* Whatever happened to Paul at this point was clearly observable and similar to what happened to others who received the Spirit. I say this because Paul immediately began witnessing to Christ and this brought some criticism from older believers. However Barnabas was sufficiently convinced (Acts 8:26ff) and was able to convince others that Saul had been saved. What criteria was he judging with? What proofs did he offer to the Church in Jerusalem that calmed their fears? Clearly Ananias and later Barnabus were totally convinced that Paul was truly converted. There must have been some evidence for their conviction considering Paul's prior reputation.


3 The Conversion of Cornelius.

Acts 10:44-47.
“While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, "Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have."

* “the Holy Spirit came on all…had been poured out even on the Gentiles” – “on” is Baptism in the Spirit language. This was clearly their initiation into the Spirit.
* “For they heard them speaking in tongues” – In the minds of Luke (writing this) and those who were present there is obviously a strong identification of the reception of the Spirit with speaking in tongues. The Word "for" is causative.
* The “Filling of the Spirit” is not mentioned.
* “they have received the Holy Spirit just as we have” – Peter is recognising that there is an identity of experience between what was happening elsewhere and what had just happened with the Gentiles. It was observable, verifiable, experiential.

4. The Ephesian “disciples”.

Acts 19:1-6.
“While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They answered, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." So Paul asked, "Then what baptism did you receive?" "John's baptism," they replied. Paul said, "John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”

* “Did you receive the Holy Spirit…” – Paul is assuming that if they had done so they would know for sure. There is no room for “maybes” here.
* “the Holy Spirit came on them.” – Baptism in the Spirit language.
* “They spoke in tongues and prophecied.”
* No mention of the “Filling of the Spirit.”
* The reception of the Spirit was experiential, observable, able to be verified by others as being the reception of the Spirit.
* This is clearly their first reception of the Spirit, their initiation. This is their salvation experience, as discussed in Chapter 15.

Our survey of Acts, then, produces these results. Where the reception of the Spirit is described:
1. It was clearly experiential.
2. It could be seen by other people who were watching.
3. It was basically the same in every instance so that those observing were able to verify that this was the real thing and not some other experience. There was “criteria.”
4. We get the impression that this experience was so common and so distinct that it could be used as a “proof” of salvation if there was a dispute, e.g. in the cases of the Samaritans, Paul and the Gentiles.
5. There was a pattern:
* The Spirit came "on" them.
* They were "filled with the Spirit".
* They "spoke in tongues and prophecied" (see later discussion on the cultural identity of tongues and prophecy).

WAS THIS UNDERSTOOD TO BE A NORM?

This experience seems to have been taken as the norm and standard. Others were included in the Church because their experience conformed to this pattern. It seems to have been the common experience of salvation in the early Church. Some references indicate this to us:

Acts 10:47.
“They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have."

This phrase is interesting because of the word “we”. Who are the “we” Peter is talking about?
Luke has already told us that the people accompanying Peter were not from Jerusalem. They were not present at Pentecost. Rather they were converts from Joppa (v23). This indicates that the subjective experience of the Disciples at Joppa when they became Christians had also been to have a dynamic experience of the Spirit and to speak in tongues. “Just as we have” indicates an identity of experience. This was exactly the same as they had experienced.
It would seem that the church in Joppa had a similar experience of receiving the Spirit. Presumably this was the case in Peter’s ministry throughout Judea.

Peter is assuming a commonality of experience of the Spirit that he can appeal to. He can only do this if he has a pretty strong knowledge that there was a common experience.

Acts 15:8.
"... gave them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us".

When Peter returned to Jerusalem he was called to task for accepting the Gentiles into the Church. His defense was that God accepted the Gentiles so how could he refuse them entry. His proof of God’s acceptance is that God "Gave them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us".

The interesting thing about this defense is the word “us”. Who is the “us” Peter is referring to?
This comment of Peter's to the assembled Church in Jerusalem is calling on their collective experience of receiving the Holy Spirit as being the test for the reality of the Gentiles' experience. For this to be a meaningful test there must be some common elements:
(i) Their experience at Jerusalem must have been all very similar.
(ii) Their experience must have been tangible, in that others could attest to it being true and real. This means there must have been external evidence in the experience of those being saved that was immediately visible to those looking on. The conclusion we are drawn to is that nearly every convert in Jerusalem had a similar experience of speaking in tongues. After all, the Spirit is invisible we can’t see him (John 3) so the Baptism in the Spirit and the Filling of the Spirit are not observable to the human eye. The only thing in the Acts stories that is observable is the “speaking in tongues” so this must have been the external visible criteria they made the judgment on: “These people are saved/have received the Spirit because they are speaking in tongues.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.

In his speech Peter appeals to the common experience of receiving the Spirit in the Jerusalem church. In other words, the Acts 2 experience was the common experience of all of the members of the Jerusalem church – which numbered tens of thousands by this stage. Again, Peter could not confidently appeal to such a common experience unless he knew it was common – i.e. they all had the same experience.

There appears to be three elements to the experience of receiving the Spirit which were common to all the Early Church, and which were taken as a norm, or standard of proof, that people were Christians. These are:
1. An experience of being baptised in the Spirit.
2. An experience of being filled with the Spirit.
3. Speaking in tongues, which in some way was understood to be the result of the first two things.

The reception of the Spirit was clearly a visible dramatic experience. This experience had two things about it which were clear:
(i) The recipient knew they had had an encounter with the Living God.
(ii) Onlookers knew that the person had received the Spirit.

IS IT VALID TO MAKE THIS PATTERN A NORM FOR US?

Of course!

I believe the Acts experiences are a guide - a model if you like – for us today of what receiving the fullness of the Spirit should look like on an experiential level. The experience of Acts 2:1-4 is a pattern, as criteria by which we can judge whether or not someone has fully experienced what God wants for them with the gift of the Spirit.

Peter and the other apostles used the Acts 2 experience as a sort of measuring stick to tell if someone was really a Christian or not. Had they really received the Spirit? If the apostles could do it then we can too. In other words if we enter into the fullness of the Spirit this is what it should look like in our experience.

Again I point out, if we are not prepared to accept the Acts episodes as a guide for us today then we have no guide in scripture and we are left to make up our own minds as to what the gift of the Spirit looks like. But the evidence of Scripture suggests it is defined a bit more clearly for us than that.

I know we can prove doctrinally that every Christian is born again and has received the Baptism in the Spirit. But when we ask the question, “What does this mean in our experience?” we have to answer that question also from the Bible. If we ask, “What does the Pentecostal experience, the Fullness of the Spirit, look like?” then Acts provides the answer. It looks like this:

An experience that has three dynamic elements:
1. A baptism in the Spirit which is a gift of power, a clothing a coming upon us by the Holy Spirit. An immersion in the Spirit.
2. An infilling with the Holy Spirit.
3. Speaking in tongues.

RECEIVING THE SPIRIT IN THE EPISTLES:

There is clear evidence in the epistles that receiving the Spirit at conversion was such a dynamic experience that the person could not doubt their reception of the Spirit. It formed the basis of their assurance of salvation.

(1) Romans 5:5.
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Romans 5 is dealing with the issue of assurance of salvation. Paul is moving in his discussion beyond the legal aspects of justification into the experiential reality of that salvation for us as Believers.

Paul's language here would seem to indicate that the readers have had an experience of the Spirit - there is a knowing of the love of God in their hearts through the pouring of the Holy Spirit into them.

This is Baptism in the Spirit language. The word "poured" is associated in particular with the Baptism of the Spirit. But the whole emphasis in this passage is that these things are real experiences in our lives that we can trace back to a time when we KNOW we received the Spirit. It is this gift of the Spirit that gives us absolute confidence of Salvation. Assurance of salvation is not obtained by memorising proof texts, but by experiencing the Holy Spirit.

(2) Galatians 3:2.
“I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?”

Paul's question here can only mean that they KNEW that they had received the Spirit. It was an event dynamic enough in their lives for him to be able to use it as a reference point in his argument.

Other references could be examined but the point is clear - when they got the Spirit they knew it, there was no doubt, their experience was dynamic and beyond question.

Summary:

(1) The Evangelical doctrine, as far as it goes, appears to be correct. But it needs to be fair when talking about the relationship of doctrine to experience. Because there is a tendency to ignore this relationship of doctrine to experience in the debate over the Baptism in the Spirit the Evangelical position is incomplete and so is a distortion of the teaching of scripture. In other words, though it starts out being right it ends up wrong because it does not go far enough.

(2) The Pentecostal experience has an adequate scriptural basis and, as it appears to be the normal pattern in scripture of receiving the fullness of the Spirit. We can thus make the claim that it should still be the normal pattern today, the criteria for deciding if one has really received the Spirit or not. In the early Church there is evidence that this was the criteria.

HOMEWORK:

TRANSFORMER VERSES:

Receiving the Spirit:
Romans 5:5.
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Galatians 3:2.
“I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?”

PRAYER:
Father God, I pray that you would give me an experience of the Spirit that will give me assurance of your love and the fact of my salvation. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.