The baptism of the Holy Spirit

1. Prior to the Church Age at salvation God the Holy Spirit was the agent of regeneration. Now, He in not only the agent of regeneration but He performs other functions as well, other functions which make the Church Age believer unique. You, as a Church Age believer, have been entered into the holy of holies. That is unique because in the previous dispensation everyone had to stay out. The holy of holies is Christ at the right hand of the Father and you have been entered into union with Christ. So positionally you live in the holy of holies, and the means by which this is accomplished is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That is why you didn’t feel or experience the baptism of the Spirit. That is entrance into the royal family. And that isn’t all. Our bodies are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and nobody was ever indwelt by any member of the Trinity in the Old Testament. Always before man was building something to represent what God did — a tabernacle, an altar, a laver, a table of shewbread, a lampstand, a golden altar of incense, an ark of the covenant, later on a temple. All of these things are shadows pointing to the reality, and once the reality comes God does His own building. He builds instantaneously a temple, a temple inside of the believer. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, inside you. That never happened before.

And what does God want to do with that temple? He wants to fill it with human treasures from the divine source of grace, something to match the third person of the Trinity living inside of you. What could match it? Something on the outside — your blessing, your promotion, your prosperity. Whatever form it was designed to be in eternity past, it is definitely there. Then you were sealed by the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation. That is the security of your royalty. And you were given a spiritual gift, the guarantee of the provision of royalty.

The baptism of the Spirit, then, is unique, along with the other salvation ministries of the Spirit - except regeneration.

2. The prophecy of the baptism of the Spirit was given first of all in John 14:20, then in Acts 1:5. It was accomplished by Jesus Christ just before the conjunction of the ages or the interruption of the Age of Israel and the beginning of the Church Age — Acts 1:5 is very important in that connection.

3. The definition and the mechanics of the baptism of the Spirit is important today simply because of that form of apostasy called the tongues movement. By definition the baptism of the Spirit is a part of the salvation work of the Holy Spirit, instantaneous, not felt or experienced in any way, whereby He takes you and me when we believed and enters us into union with the Lord Jesus Christ. The mechanics of this are taught in 1 Corinthians 12:13. The mechanics are related to the concept of the body of Christ.

4. The baptism of the Spirit and the essence of the royal family are linked and related forever. The baptism of the Spirit unifies all members of the body of Christ, according to Ephesians 4:5. It is something we have in common, it is something we all have and always will have and there never will be a time when we lose it. And we are all inseparably linked together. All members of the royal family have the same baptism, the baptism of the Spirit, and it provides equality in the royal family which did not exist under physical birth. The moment we are born physically into the world we are immediately in a system of inequality. The devil could never overcome that, but he keeps trying.

5. The baptism of the Spirit is related to spiritual sanctification.

6. The baptism of the Spirit occurs at the moment of salvation — Colossians 2:12. Therefore the baptism of the Spirit is not an experience of any kind. It is not speaking in tongues, it is not ecstatics, it is something that happens instantaneously and has no connotation of emotion, of stimulation, or anything else that the holy-rollers erroneously peddle today.

7. The baptism of the Spirit interrupts the Jewish dispensation and begins the Church Age. We see this in Hebrews 9:26 where Christ offered the efficacious sacrifice that interrupted the Jewish Age before its completion and began the Church Age which is the dispensation for the royal family of God. The baptism of the Spirit, therefore, is the interrupter of the Jewish Age and the beginning of the Church Age — Matthew 16:18; Acts 1:5; 2:3; 11:15-17 which says the baptism of the Spirit occurred in Acts 2:3.

8. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of seven Bible baptisms. The Bible baptisms are divided into two parts, those which are real and those which are ritual. There are four real and three ritual baptisms. A real baptism is an actual identification whereas a ritual baptism is simply a representative identification, and in that ritual water always represents something very important. Of the real baptisms there is the baptism of Moses — 1 Corinthians 10:2, the people of Israel identified with Moses in crossing the Red Sea to safety. There is the baptism of the cross in Matthew 20:22 where our sins were identified with Christ in the function of His efficacious saving work. Then there is the baptism of the Spirit whereby we are identified with Christ forever, identified with the real holy of holies — 1 Corinthians 12:13. Finally, there is the baptism of fire in Matthew 3:11 and in many passages in which the Tribulational persons who are unbelievers are cast into fire at the end of the Tribulation which is really the end of the Jewish Age. There are three basic ritual baptisms. Again, water is always used to represent something in the spiritual realm. In the baptism of John — Matthew 3:1-10 — water represented the kingdom which he preached, and those who believed were entered into the water. He had no ritual of the temple, he lived in the Jewish Age, therefore baptism was given to him as a special ritual. This is the only shadow not authorised by the Mosaic law but authorised by a special addendum from God. God personally did something for John the baptist that he has never done for anyone else. He permitted him to have a ritual which would be meaningful to these people who were very close to the interruption of the Jewish Age. The water represented the kingdom which he proclaimed. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself was baptised by John. And it is interesting that our Lord is never related to the shadows which portray Him at the temple. He is never related to these things because at the time they were ritual without reality. Therefore in Matthew 3:13-17 our Lord tuned His back upon the shadow, the temple, and walked down to John and asked John to baptise Him. John refused because he understood his own ritual and he also identified the Messiah and knew that He was sinless and did not need salvation and was in effect the saviour, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So he said no, and our Lord explained that this was another addendum to the addendum and that the water would have a different meaning. It was simply our Lord’s volitional ritual by which He agreed to go to the cross. The water, therefore, represented the divine decrees and the Father’s plan, and the humanity of the Lord willingly accepting this plan, though for Him is was the most excruciating misery that anyone ever suffered in history. Therefore once again we have a ritual baptism, a water baptism, and the meaning of the water is dependent entirely upon its declaration in scripture and has no meaning apart from that.

There is also what we call Christian baptism. This is found in Acts 8:36-38; 16:33, and a host of passages in the book of Acts where baptism was practiced after the Church Age began. The water represented the individual identified with Christ in his death, and when the candidate came out of the water it was a picture of identification with Christ seated at the right hand of the Father. So it portrayed identification with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection. There is no reference to water baptism in the epistles, except in an unfavourable reference in 1 Corinthians 1 where there was a lot of squabbling. The purpose of water baptism was not to enter into controversy but it was to understand some very important principle of doctrine. It was to portray the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There is no record that there is any significance in the perpetuation of baptism after the canon of scripture is completed.

The baptism of the Spirit is not an experience but it is the basis by which we enter into the holy of holies.

The first part of Hebrews 10:10 says we have been sanctified in the past with the result that we remain separated toward God forever. We have been earmarked as unique. We are royal family. The baptism of the Spirit is unique to the Church Age and the baptism of the Spirit is only used for royalty, for royal family only. It was not used in the Old Testament, it will not be used in the Tribulation, it will not be found in the Millennium.