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 last of the three baptisms that we will discuss, is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Of all three baptisms, this one is the most misunderstood and therefore also the one most resisted in the church; because of which far fewer Christians experience this baptism than even water baptism. And so just as Satan resists water baptism, he also resists the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He opposes this baptism even more because as we will see, it is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that dramatically increases the anointing upon the life of the believer. And it is the anointing that Satan hates because he has no defence against it. So what does the bible teach about this baptism? In the above-quoted passage of scripture, our Lord instructed His disciples to remain in the city of Jerusalem until they had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When our Lord Jesus gave the disciples this instruction, they had already been born-again and had the Holy Spirit living on the inside of them, for they had all believed in Him when He first appeared to them forty days before this incident. And you will recall that in that encounter, our Lord Jesus had breathed on them so that they could receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:19-22). But now forty days later, our Lord Jesus tells them that even though they already had the Holy Spirit living on the inside of them, they had not yet been baptized with the Holy Spirit. So what was the difference that the disciples would experience between having the Holy Spirit living on the inside of them through the new birth, and being baptized with the Holy Spirit? Simply put, the difference between having the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us through the new birth, and being baptized with the Holy Spirit, is walking in the supernatural. Before the disciples were baptized with the Holy Spirit, they could still witness for the Lord, for they had seen Him raised from the dead and they could testify to that fact. But they had not yet received the power that the baptism with the Holy Spirit brings, for our Lord Jesus told the disciples that they would receive power when they were baptised with the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit is real and tangible and the early disciples had intimate knowledge of and experience in this power.
1 Corinthians 4:19-20 “But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. (20) For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.”
To get a clearer understanding of just how intimately the early church understood and walked in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can look at Paul’s comment to the church at Corinth as quoted above. The context of this passage is that certain individuals in the church at Corinth were challenging Paul’s authority in the gospel. Paul then told them that when he came to visit them he would demonstrate God’s power to those who wanted to challenge his authority. So how did Paul do this? You will recall the incident when Paul was on the island of Cypress preaching the gospel, that there was a false prophet by the name of Elymas, who tried to prevent Paul from preaching to the proconsul of the city of Paphos. By the anointing of the Holy Spirit, Paul turned to that man and commanded blindness to come on him, and scripture teaches us that for a whole year that man lived in darkness, unable to see (Acts 13:8-11). That is just one example of the power available to all believers who have been baptised with the Holy Spirit. Under the Old Covenant, there was only one ministry gift, which was the office of the prophet, and it was that individual that experienced the power of the Holy Spirit as He came upon them, thus enabling them to operate in the various gifts of the Spirit. Under the New Covenant however, even though the ministry gifts have been expanded to include apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, it is not just the ministry gifts that can operate in the power of the Holy Spirit, but rather that power is made available to all the Lord’s saints through the operation of the gifts of the Spirit, which the writer of the book of Hebrews calls the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5).
Michael E.B. Maher
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