19d • Theology
Baptism of the Spirit or Filling with the Spirit?
Across protestant denominations, there are many beliefs about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Baptism of the Spirit is usually used to describe a second experience after becoming a Christian where a believer receives empowerment and gifting from the Holy Spirit for ministry and their walk with Christ. It's often accompanied by speaking in tongues.
There are some branches of Christianity that believe some of the gifts of the Spirit ceased with the apostles, and there are some branches who believe they did not. Thereby they do not give much credit to this experience.
I grew up in mixed tradition of Baptist and Pentecostal.
I can see where both sides are coming from, but no doubt take the position of a "continuationist". That means I believe that the gifts of the Spirit (all of them) are still active today in the Church.
I will explain how I've come to that conclusion in another post.
For purposes of this post, I wanted to point out an interesting distinction that Wayne Grudem makes in Systematic Theology.
He argues that the baptism of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Scripture is actually what happens when we come to Christ. ("For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit"- 1 Cor. 12:13). He argues it's a one time experience that happens at salvation in almost all cases.
He argues that the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" that many Christians have experienced later after becoming a Christian is really the "filling of the Holy Spirit" where they have greater empowerment for ministry, repentance and such.
It's a bit of semantics. He argues it's important because some Christians will tend to believe that aren't "full Christians" if they haven't experienced the "baptism of the Holy Spirit".
I think his distinction is good.
What do you guys think?
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Baptism of the Spirit or Filling with the Spirit?
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