Acts 1:4-8 “And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me; (5) for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." … (8) But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The second encounter that believers have with the Holy Spirit is what our Lord Jesus, in the above-quoted passage of Scripture, called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As we have already mentioned, the word "baptize" means to be fully immersed. Even though the Lord's disciples already had the Holy Spirit residing within them by this time—for they had been born again on the first night Jesus appeared to them and breathed on them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22)—they had not yet been fully immersed in or baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Why does the Lord want His disciples to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? He answers that question for us in the same passage when He tells us that we receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us.
Hebrews 6:4-6 “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, (5) and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, (6) if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.”
Why does the Lord Jesus want His saints to receive the power of the Holy Spirit? In the above passage of Scripture, the Holy Spirit through His apostle gives us insight into this question, speaking of the saints tasting the powers of the age to come. These powers are, in fact, the gifts of the Holy Spirit as listed in the book of Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12:8-10). Believers who are not baptized with the Holy Spirit do not have the power needed to do the works that Jesus did.
You will recall that Jesus said His believers would do the works that He did and even greater works, because He would ascend to God the Father (John 14:12). Jesus operated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit when He walked on the earth, but He only did those works after He was baptized in the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:1). If the Lord Jesus, Who walked this earth as a man, could only perform the works of God after being filled with the Holy Spirit, then we are certainly no different. We too must be baptized with the Holy Spirit if we want to do the works that He did and the greater works of which He spoke.
As an aside, I need to address the "greater works" our Lord mentioned. Some mistakenly think this means believers today will perform greater miracles and healings than Jesus did. This is not the case, however, because Jesus also said we cannot be greater than our Master (Matthew 10:24). The key to understanding what Jesus meant when He said we would perform greater works lies in His comment that we would be able to do these works "because He was going to the Father." The greater works we can do because Jesus has ascended to the Father are getting people born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus could not do these works when He was on earth, for they could only be done after He went to the Father. Jesus has thus made it possible for His church to do works which are far greater than miracles and healing, for they are eternal works rather than temporary ones.
Michael E.B. Maher
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