unique, uncomfortable, and compelling…
When they 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. (Acts 8.15,16)
Lately, I have been reflecting on the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit— frequently described as the “shy member” of the Trinity. His purpose is to be “another Jesus” and to execute the purposes of God (Father and Son) in the Church and in the world (see John 14.16ff; 15.26f; 16.4-15). The story of the Samaritan Christians (see Acts 8.4-25) is worth reading and reflecting upon. I believe this passage is still a unique, uncomfortable and compelling scenario for us today.
It is unique because it depicts the spreading of the gospel, for the first time, from Jews to non-Jews. Only a duplication of the phenomena which the apostles experienced could authenticate that God was calling and accepting Samaritans! For a Jew of the first century this was unthinkable!
It is uncomfortable because it upsets our neatly ordered theologies which attempt to always locate the filling of the Holy Spirit with conversion. It would seem that the Samaritans were true believers (Acts 8.5, 8, 16), but they had not yet been filled with the Holy Spirit.
It is compelling, because I continually meet Christians who are aware of barrenness and ineffectiveness in their lives— in contrast to the New Testament pattern where the disciples, though few in number, turned their world upside down.
There are three important things to observe about this incident. First, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not the same as conversion. While we tend to either equate the two or make them concurrent experiences, in practice it often does not occur until later. We certainly understand new birth in Christ to be the work of the Holy Spirit but it does not exclude the necessity for subsequent fillings by the Spirit of God to empower and inspire us for the work of His ministry.
Second, when the Holy Spirit fills a Christian there is clear, unmistakable, evidence. The criteria of the Spirit’s filling are new vitality, freedom, giftedness, and fruitfulness— not whether a woman or man stands or falls or shakes or cries.
Third, this filling is for the empowering of the believer to manifest Kingdom realities that glorify God, herald the good news of God’s Kingdom, and demonstrate Jesus’ redemptive presence. When Jesus is not glorified, then spiritual experiences decay until they become pretentious and self-aggrandizing— they may garner much attention but in reality they bear little fruit. If we want to be filled with the Holy Spirit in this special way, we may have to drop our prejudices, presumptions, and our agendas.
When I was serving in a different denomination, a pastor once told me: “There are two things I did not want to do— raise his hands in worship and to shout, “Praise the Lord!” These were the very things he did when the Holy Spirit filled him. Be careful! Do not let control, pride nor vain presumptions, which errantly systematize the Holy Spirit’s “behavior,” to become stumbling-blocks which hinder God’s desire to fill and empower you with the Holy Spirit.
Finally, let me close by celebrating the pastoral impact of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit have an unshakable assurance of the Father’s love, forgiveness, and acceptance. D. Martin Lloyd Jones, in his book, Joy Unspeakable, (a collection of messages about the baptism of the Holy Spirit) writes:
“When Christians are baptized by the Holy Spirit, they have a sense of power and the presence of God that they have never known before —and this is the greatest possible form of assurance…
A man and his little child [are] walking down the road and they are walking hand in hand, and the child knows that he is the child of his father [this God and the Christian], and he knows that his father loves him, and he rejoices in that, and he is happy in it. There is no uncertainty about it all, but suddenly the father, moved by some impulse, takes hold of the child, picks him up, fondles him in his arms, kisses him, embraces him, and showers his love upon him, and then he puts him down again and they go walking on their way.”
That’s it! The child knew before that his father loved him, and he knew that he was his child. But oh! the loving embrace, this extra outpouring of love, this unusual manifestation of it—that is the kind of thing. The Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” (pp. 95-97)
How we need more leaders who will preach and testify to the baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit!
Until next week…
