Galatians 3:2-5 “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? -- (3) Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? (4) Have you suffered so many things in vain--if indeed it was in vain? (5) Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
The apostle Paul, in the above quoted passage of scripture, confirms the truth to us that we receive both the baptism of the Holy Spirit and all subsequent encounters with the Holy Spirit, through the hearing of faith. In an earlier section where we looked at the five accounts of the saints receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, all of them except one, showed that the saints received the baptism by faith, including the day of Pentecost, for on that day the saints were expectant of receiving the promised Holy Spirit that Jesus had spoken about. The only account where God baptized the saints in His sovereignty was when the Gentiles were first added to the church, and we said that God did that to convince the Jewish believers that He had also chosen the Gentiles for salvation.
Michael E.B. Maher
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