The Personal Work of the Holy Spirit

[John B]

Hi,
I thought it would be good to post a few studies on the personal work of the Spirit. Obviously this is a contentious issue still so a different take on it would be good. And I have a different take!

I grew up in a conservative evangelical background and later in life had a Pentecostal type experience. The problem was that it didn't match my theology. Nor did Pentecostal and Charismatic theology (they are different) seem to match the Bible very well. This led to some deep study and reflection which led to the series of studies I am about to post. I hope you enjoy. And if you have doctrinal questions about the issue I hope this helps you resolve them as it has helped me.

So the topics I am about to cover are things like:
1. The Seal of the Spirit.
2. Being born again.
3. The Indwelling Spirit.
4. Being Filled with the Spirit.
5. Being Baptised in the Spirit.
6. The Pentecostal experience.
7. The Toronto experience and similar type experiences.

But I must start at the beginning and work logically building a foundation from scripture so I will not be drawn into discussion on something until I am ready for it - otherwise confusion will result. But along the way I hope for discussion and critique so that the issue is clarified.

Hope you enjoy.

John B.

[John B]

3. THIS COVENANT GIFT OF THE SPIRIT CONTAINS ALL THE PROMISES OF GOD.

Let’s hear a parable.

A wealthy man and his only son loved to collect rare works of art. They had everything in their collection, from Picasso to Raphael. They would often sit together and admire the great works of art.
When the Viet Nam conflict broke out, the son went to war. He was very courageous and died in battle while rescuing another soldier. The father was notified and grieved deeply for his son.
About a month later, just before Christmas, there was a knock at the door. A young man stood at the door with a large package in his hands. He said, "Sir, you don't know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life. He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart and he died instantly. He often talked about you, and your love for art.”
The young man held out his package. "I know this isn't much. I'm not really a great artist, but I think your son would have wanted you to have this."
The father opened the package. It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man. He stared in awe at the way the soldier had captured the personality of his son in the painting. The father was so drawn to the eyes that his own eyes welled up with tears. He thanked the young man and offered to pay him for the picture.
"Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your son did for me. It's a gift."
The father hung the portrait over his mantle. Every time visitors came to his home he took them to see the portrait of his son before he showed them any of the other great works he had collected.
The man died a few months later. There was to be a great auction of his paintings. Many influential people gathered, excited over seeing the great paintings and having an opportunity to purchase one for their collection. On the platform sat the painting of the son. The auctioneer pounded his gavel.
"We will start the bidding with this picture of the son. Who will bid for this picture?"
There was silence. Then a voice in the back of the room shouted. "We want to see the famous paintings. Skip this one.”
But the auctioneer persisted. "Will someone bid for this painting?
Who will start the bidding? $100, $200?"
Another voice shouted angrily. "We didn't come to see this painting. We came to see the Van Goghs, the Rembrandts. Get on with the real bids!”
But still the auctioneer continued. "The son! The son! Who'll take the son?"
Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room. It was the long-time gardener of the man and his son. "I'll give $10 for the painting." Being a poor man, it was all he could afford.
"We have $10, who will bid $20?"
"Give it to him for $10. Let's see the masters."
"$10 is the bid, won't someone bid $20?" The crowd was becoming angry.
They didn't want the picture of the son. They wanted the more worthy investments for their collections. The auctioneer pounded the gavel. "Going once, twice, SOLD for $10!"
A man sitting on the second row shouted. "Now let's get on with the collection!"
The auctioneer laid down his gavel. "I'm sorry, the auction is over."
"What about the paintings?"
"I am sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation in the will. I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the paintings. The man who takes the son gets every thing!"

He who takes the Son gets every thing!

This is a beautiful picture of what our Lord has done for us. When we take the Son of God into our lives we get all of the gifts of God with him.

We need to look at this, but in doing so I want to also point out another connection that is clearly in the mind of St Paul, and it is this:
The Gift of the Spirit IS the sum total of the gifts of God. If we have the Spirit we have all the gifts of God.

Romans 8:31-32.
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

“How will he (God) not also, along with him (Christ), graciously give us all things.”


He who takes the Son gets everything.
One of the most marvelous things about the gospel of Christ is the absolute lavishness of the gift that God has given us. When we stop and think about it, the gift of his Son was an amazing thing. The gift of his Son gives us forgiveness of sins, cleansing, freedom from death and many other immediate blessings. But here Paul makes this extend even further: “Shall he not also give us ALL THINGS”. I wonder what “all things” means?

This statement of Paul’s – that God has “given us all things” occurs in a chapter that is recognised as being Paul’s most in-depth exposition on the work of the Holy Spirit. In Paul’s mind there is a strong connection between the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gifts God has given us. We will see this connection again in the next two scriptures.

2 Corinthians 1:20-22.
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

“All the promises of God” (KJV) – no matter what it is about – are in Christ “Yes” to us. It doesn’t matter what promise you want to name – one in the OT, one in the NT – it doesn’t matter – all of them are “Yes” to us in Christ. God has given them all to us.

“He has… set his seal on us and given us his Spirit as a guarantee” - a guarantee of what? Of the promises he has given us in Christ, of course.

Paul is not saying two different things here – we need to be clear on this. We need to understand how he thinks as a Jew. He is writing in a Jewish way. What he is not saying is that God has given us two things:
1. All the promises of God and
2. The Holy Spirit.
To interpret it that way is to think like a Greek.
Rather he is using Hebrew parallelism to say the same thing twice in two different ways. In other words “all the promises of God” are “the gift of the Holy Spirit”.
He is not contradicting himself rather he is explaining what he means by “all the promises of God”.

The gift of the Spirit is the sum of the promises of God. It works this way:
1. God gives us every promise, every gift.
2. They come to us through, or in, the Son. He has purchased them all for us through his work on the Cross.
3. They are brought to us by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is the bearer of every gift of God.

He who takes the Son gets everything.

A third scripture:
Ephesians 1:3.
“God who has (past tense) blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ”.

Later on Paul goes on to explain in other ways what he means by giving a list of these blessings. But he summarises them all again in v 13,14:

Ephesians 1:13,14.
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”

We have been given the Holy Spirit who is the down payment on what God has for us. The full settlement, Paul says later in Ephesians 4:30, is when Christ comes again. But what we have now is this “down payment” of the Spirit. In other words the gift of “every spiritual blessing” that Paul talked about in v3 is the same thing as the gift of the Holy Spirit he talks about in v13,14.
In the Greek this identification is clearer than in English. In the Greek from verse 3- verse 14 it is all one sentence. Paul gets carried away talking about the things God has given us in Christ and forgets to stop to make grammatical sense of it. But the fact that it is all one sentence shows that he hasn’t changed subjects. In talking about the gifts God has given us he is talking about the gift of the Spirit.

So again we see the same picture as we did in 2 Corinthians 1:
1. God gives us every promise, every gift.
2. They come to us through, or in, the Son. He has purchased them all for us through his work on the Cross.
3. They are brought to us by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is the bearer of every gift of God.

He who takes the Son gets everything.
The gift of the Spirit is the gift of every spiritual blessing.

[John B]

4. THIS GIFT OF THE SPIRIT IS SUMMED UP IN TWO RELATIONSHIPS WE HAVE WITH THE SPIRIT.

As we saw earlier, it has always been the teaching of the Church that there are two ways the Holy Spirit relates to men. In the OT he only came “on” men. But in the New Covenant added to this “on” relationship would be an “in” relationship.

A simple lesson on prepositions.

What is a preposition?
The word comes from two words:
Pre – meaning "before", or "in front', and
Position – meaning "a place", or placement.
So a preposition is a word used in a sentence to indicate where one thing being talked about – the subject - is in relation to the place of another thing – the object.

A preposition is a definition of relationship.

To illustrate this: Imagine I have a shoe box and two pieces of paper.
* I take the first piece of paper and fold it up then I put it in the box.
When I say, “the paper is in the box” the preposition is the word “in”. The subject is the paper and the object is the box. The relationship of the subject, the paper, to the object, the box, is described by the preposition “in”.
* I take the second piece of paper and hold it in several places in relation to the box: Under, in front, behind, beside, above, ON (I finally put it on the box).

So now we have a box with two pieces of paper. One piece is in the box and the other piece is on the box.

Can you see the difference?
“In” and “on” do not mean the same thing.

Now let’s use this revelation of preposition, or place, as we turn to the scriptures.

2 Corinthians 1:21,22 (NIV)
“He has put his seal on us
And put his Spirit in our hearts.”

Question: The relation of the seal to us is described by what word?
Answer: “On”.
Question: The relation of the Spirit to our hearts is described by what word?
Answer: “In”.

Question: What is the seal that is on us?

Ephesians 1:13.
“…you were sealed in Him (Christ) with the promised Holy Spirit…”

So the Seal that is “on” us is the Holy Spirit.

So the Spirit is “on” us, and the Spirit is also “in” us.
Neither in English, nor in Greek, do these mean the same thing. The Bible makes a clear distinction between them.


There are two ways that the Holy Spirit relates to us and these relationships are defined by the prepositions “in” and “on”. This is no “new doctrine”. The distinction I am putting forward is not my idea, it is the commonly held view of the Church:

* It is standard Evangelical doctrine and has been the teaching of the Church since the beginning.
* Pentecostals assume this distinction. It is part of classic Pentecostal doctrine that you can be born again, i.e. have the indwelling Spirit, and yet not be baptised in the Spirit, i.e. have the “on” relationship. In this assumption Pentecostals are in agreement with the teaching of the Church from the beginning.
* Charismatics (who are often from infant baptism background) also assume this distinction as they have always taught that a child (infant) when baptised is born again of the Spirit, and receives the Spirit in a different way at confirmation.
(I am not in any way endorsing the doctrinal applications of this assumption in these streams, just pointing out that the assumption of there being two different relationships of the Spirit to the believer is common to Christian thought.)

My point here is that all sides of the debate agree on these facts:
* There are two relationships of the Spirit to the Believer – an “in” relationship and an “on” relationship.
* These were promised by the Father in the OT as part of the New Covenant.
* This promise was fulfilled at Pentecost.
So the New Covenant gift of the Spirit includes, as a minimum, these two relationships of the Spirit to the Believer. On this we all agree.

We can see the distinction between the "in" and "upon" relationships of the Holy Spirit most clearly in the case of Jesus.

(a) Born of the Spirit.

Luke 1:35.
Unlike us, Jesus was born spiritually alive because of his relationship with God as his Father. This is a mystery and we don’t seek to understand or explain it.

(b) Baptised in the Spirit.

Matthew 3:16,17.
“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

Here the Holy Spirit descended ON Jesus like a Dove. The two OT quotations explain the meaning of the gift:

(i) "this is my beloved son" - from Psalms 2:7.
The idea of "sonship to the gods" in that culture meant that the person was the anointed king, thus this means "Here is my King, the Messiah." It was at this point in time that Jesus of Nazareth became "Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One", meaning, "The King".

(ii) "with whom I am Well pleased" - from Isaiah 42:1.
This is from the first of a series of four "songs" in Isaiah commonly called "the Servant Songs". The last is ch 53 which tells of Jesus’ suffering and death.

The combination of these two quotes gives the meaning, "Here is my King who is going to suffer and die for his people".

The Baptism in the Spirit is a gift of power to reign as kings, but the power/authority is not yet released in Jesus.

(c) The power was released through temptation/testing/suffering.

Luke 4:1,2,14.
"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
… Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, …”

He went into the Wilderness “full of the Spirit” but came out “in the power of the Spirit”. There is a growth here, a releasing of the potential through testing.
In these scriptures Christ is being portrayed as our prototype. We are to follow in his footsteps.
Christ was anointed King, but he had to undergo temptation in the area of kingship and overcome so that he could enter into his rule.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, UNLESS that character of the person has first been tested and proved to be true.

Hence there is an indication here sense, from the life of Jesus, that whatever this "Baptism in the Spirit" is, our appreciation of it in experience can grow.

What are these two relationships of the Spirit?

(i) "IN" = the Indwelling of the Spirit. This begins with being born again, when the Holy Spirit enters into our spirit and we are made alive spiritually again.
As we shall see, this is primarily to do with personal relationship with God as “sons” and also with character – we are to be transformed by the work of the Spirit in us into the image of God.

(ii) "UPON" = the clothing, anointing, or baptism of the Spirit.
This is primarily an equipping or empowering of the Spirit for ministry. Just as in then Old Testament the coming of the Spirit “on” someone is for a task, a purpose.
Two scriptures to show this:
Luke 24:48.
“I am going to send the Promise of my Father”
“You will be clothed with power from on high”

The idea of being “clothed with power” is very OT language and scholars accept that it is referring to the OT experience of being empowered, equipped to do a service for God.

Imagine clothing – e.g. a jacket.
Question: When I wear a jacket do I have it “on” or do I have it “in”?

Acts 1:4,5,8 (above).
Another account of the same conversation between Jesus and his disciples – here Luke fills out details of what Jesus said that he didn’t include in Luke 24. Remember Luke wrote Acts as well as his gospel so he is not likely to be contradicting himself.

“ the gifts of the Promise of my Father”
“you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.”
“you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you”

So the “clothing of the Spirit”, the “Baptism with the Spirit” and “power from on high” are all phrases that refer to the same thing – The “on” relationship of the Spirit.
But the aim of the “coming upon” is that we will “be witnesses”. It is ministry related.

Both of these relationships of the Spirit belong to the "gift of the Spirit" in the New Covenant. If you receive Christ, and hence the New Covenant, then you automatically have both.

St. Paul makes this quite clear in Ephesians 1 and 2 Corinthians 1 (above) – if we are Christ’s then we have the Spirit in us and the Spirit on us.
Both of these aspects of the Spirit's work are ours’ because of our position in Christ. In other words the baptism in the Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit belong to Jesus. We get to share in them because we are “in Christ” i.e. in his body.



Now I want to make clear at this point that I am not suggesting that the Holy Spirit is two people so that he can be both "in" and "on". Nor am I suggesting he is a split personality. Rather the idea in scripture seems to be that the Holy Spirit has different "offices". Let me illustrate.


Say I own a business and my son works for me. This creates a number of different ways I relate to him. He is firstly my son. But in the context of my business I am his boss and he is my employee. There are times when I have to override the "father/son" relationship with the "employer/employee" relationship if the business is to succeed. I do not thereby become a split personality or two people, it is just that I have to relate to my son in difference ways in different contexts for life to proceed normally. This illustrates a little of how it is the Holy Spirit relates to us in different ways.


Isaiah 11 talks of different "anointings" of the Spirit - different ways he meets us at our points of need - "Wisdom", "Understanding", "counsel", "power", etc. It is not that he changes who he is, but out of the many depths of his being he relates to us in different ways to meet our need at that point. It is in this sort of way the Spirit relates to us as "in" and "upon". Not as a different person, but in fulfilling in and through us a different function.

[John B]

5. Regeneration.


In the previous studies we saw that the gift of the Spirit included two relationships of the Holy Spirit to the Believer. These are the "in" and the "upon" relationships.
We also saw that the (new) covenant gift of the Spirit contains two relationships of the Spirit to us: the Baptism (the Spirit on us) and the Indwelling of the Spirit (the Spirit in us). When we enter the covenant we receive these covenant gifts.

The TRUTH, then, is this: - Every Christian has both the indwelling and the baptism of the Spirit. They are covenant gifts which come when we receive the covenant.
The Bible position is clear (as we shall see): Every Christian receives the Spirit at conversion – both baptism and indwelling.
This is also the position of Conservative Evangelical theology, but it is clearly at odds to the Pentecostal position. How it impacts the Charismatic position we shall see later also.
But remember that I am, for want of a better category, a Pentecostal – I have experienced a Pentecostal experience and speak in tongues and have also moved in many of the other gifts of the Spirit. So how can I reconcile my experience with the doctrine that is abundantly clear?


I now propose to examine these two aspects of the Spirit’s work – “in” and “upon” with the aims of:
(i) Clearly establishing the Biblical doctrine and
(ii) Finding a way of reconciling Pentecostal experience with Conservative theology.

I will thus start with the “in” relationship of the Holy Spirit and later go on to the “upon” or “baptism” relationship of the Spirit.

In the next four posts we are concerned with the "in" relationship.
Here three words are important:
A) Regeneration.
B) Indwelling.
C) Filling.

These three words describe the "in" relationship of the Holy Spirit. We will look at regeneration in this post.

We need to understand how we were originally made and what happened to us if we are to understand the effect of the gift of the indwelling Spirit in our lives.

HOW WE WERE MADE IN CREATION.

Genesis 2:7.
“…the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

This verse describes to us the construction or make up, or “psychology”, of the human personality as God intended in creation.

There are three things here:
1. God took dust from the earth and made a human body. Essentially our body is made up of chemicals we find in the soil and water. Our identity with this physical world was thus established long before science proved it to be true.
2. He then breathed into that body “the breath of lives”. The Hebrew word for “breath” is the same word as for “spirit”, so this tells us that into the body he had made God imparted spirit. God’s breath, God’s spirit, was given to man in such a way that we are not just physical beings, we are spiritual beings. In this man differs from the animal kingdom. Like the animals we have a physical body, but unlike the animals we have “spirit”, and in this possession of spirit we are made in “the image of God”.
3. As a result of the imparting of spirit into the body man became a “living soul”. The word “became” here indicates that something new came into being. Body and spirit had existed before, but now a new thing, called “soul”, came into being as a result of the joining of body and spirit. “Soul” is thus something unique to man in this sense. Animals do not have “soul” in this sense, as they do not have "spirit", not having been brought to life by the breath of God. Angels do not have “soul” in this sense because even though they are spirit they do not have a physical body. It is through the joining of "body" and "spirit" that “soul” is created and this is unique to man. Soul is a sort of “buffer zone” between the other two elements.

In God’s creation of man we were made one being with three distinct parts: A spirit, a soul and a body. We are designed to operate as a unity, but the understanding of the three parts is helpful in understanding the whole and how it works.

Diagram:
God, The Holy Spirit was to speak into


Our Human Spirit which in turn was to illuminate


Our Soul (the mind) which in turn was to, by the will direct



Our Body.
[IMG]file:///E:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.gif[/IMG]
The body has 5 senses by which it interprets the world around it – sight, taste, feel, hearing and smell.

The human spirit was created with many functions “in the image of God”, who is also spirit. Included in this are:
* Conscience: the ability to discern right from wrong.
* Intuition: the ability to perceive knowledge/truth spiritually without rational reasons.
* Communion: the ability to relate to God.
* Creativity.
* Sustaining of Life.
There are others but this is enough for our purposes here.

The soul is the seat of our personality and has three primary functions, mind (intellect) will and emotions.

The central issue for the human personality is knowledge – our soul needs knowledge to operate. When the Bible talks of men as being “living souls” the emphasis is on the fact that we have free will, we are a decision making being. For us to live effectively we need to make decisions and those decisions are based on what we know. So the heart of all of our life and actions is having knowledge. That is why the test in the Garden of Eden was to do with knowledge – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The choice was – were we going to follow God’s knowledge source or some other source?

It was God’s purpose that we be dependent on the Holy Spirit for knowledge.

We were created in such a way that the Holy Spirit would dwell in our human spirit.



Probably the best way to envisage this is with the picture of a hand and a glove.
A glove is designed to be “filled” with a hand. By itself a glove can do nothing, it is dead. In as sense

it is almost nothing, it lies flat and cannot be seen easily. But if a person puts a hand into the glove then the glove is “filled out” and it becomes visible and can do things it couldn’t do before. The glove exists without the hand but it is not the same.

In a sense our human spirit is like a glove, the Holy Spirit is like the hand that fills it. We were made to be Spirit-filled. The human spirit exists without the Holy Spirit in it, but it is only a “flat” representation of what God intended and its presence is not easily seen.


THE RESULTS OF THE FALL.

When Adam rebelled against God, in what we know as the Fall, there was a major disruption in the human personality.

1. Spiritual Death.

The first thing that happened was that man died spiritually.

By this we do not mean that mankind now has no spirit at all, nor that it does not function at all. Man’s spirit still exists – we acknowledge this in:
* The fact that we believe, e.g. that a baby’s spirit is fully conscious from conception and
* That a person’s spirit goes to God when they die and
* People are still creative (a spiritual function).
These are true even for the non-Christian. We acknowledge every person still has a spirit that works.

What we mean when we say, “Man in sin, apart from Christ, is spiritually dead” is that his spirit has lost contact with the spiritual realm, in particular the Spirit of God who he was created to relate to in a unique way. The Holy Spirit withdrew from the human spirit, just like when a hand withdraws from a glove. The result is that even though there still is a human spirit, just as there still is a glove, but it is flat, weak, performing below God’s original intention.

The link between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit was broken. Man no longer could receive knowledge from the Holy Spirit. But his soul still needed knowledge to survive so he turned to the body to gain knowledge through his senses – that is what “eating of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” means. This is what we call “scientific knowledge” – it is always good and evil at the same time. The knowledge man gets by his own effort is always cursed with this fact: It is both good and evil. There is always an upside and a downside.

An Aside Question:
This presents a problem of understanding that some may think of here. The gift of God’s “breath” in the beginning was clearly a gift of God’s Spirit. Man’s spirit thus originally had its ground in the Spirit of God. With the fall this “ground” was lost. There are two ways of understanding the present fallen state of man:
1. When God created man the gift of “spirit” involved more than just a gift of the Holy Spirit to man’s body, but involved the creation of a new form of “spirit”, independent of God’s Spirit but capable of having the Spirit of God dwell in it. Thus with the fall, even though the Holy Spirit withdrew, the spirit of man still existed. This, I think, is probably the commonly held view. It conforms to the whole idea of creation wherein God, by his Spirit, created the universe, physical and spiritual, yet gave it a real existence independent of himself. This is the view held by this author.
2. The other view is that the gift of God’s Spirit was in some sense permanent. The human spirit is thus part of the Divine Spirit. In this view there is a sense in which every man has a relationship with the Spirit of God, but it is not the full relationship God intended. This gives us a hint of how it can be for Christians who have “received the Spirit” through being born again, but may not be fully living in that reality. This view tends to animism or pantheism, depending on how it is understood. But there may be an element of truth in it.
Which view is correct we don’t know for sure.

2. The Merging of Soul and Spirit.

After the Fall the remaining functions of the human spirit merged with the soul and we became soulish.

The human spirit, then, though it still exists, is largely invisible. Like a glove without a hand we cannot see it “do” anything, so it can’t be seen.

This is why, when secular philosophers and psychologists look at man they decide that man is made up of two parts – body and soul, which they sometimes call “spirit”. This belief is called dualism. Because they can’t “see” the human spirit” they assume it doesn’t exist. Because of this failure to acknowledge the third part of man’s personality, secular thinkers are unable to address the deep issues of man’s heart and provide answers that satisfy. They cannot bring healing to the whole personality because they deny that one whole part of our being even exists.

3. Personal Bondage to the Body.

In turning to the body for knowledge the soul became dependent on the body so a reversal took place in the human personality.

Diagramme 2:


The Body became the source and hence the boss of

The Mind.


The Human spirit, now disempowered, merged with the Soul so it cannot be seen independently.



This is what we call the “fleshly, or carnal, man” because the fleshly appetites of the body are now the dominant drives in human beings. An exact reversal of the human personality has taken place.

We are less than human because:
* Our spirits can no longer communicate freely with the Holy Spirit and the rest of the spirit realm.
* The soul is dependent on the body for knowledge so has a limited knowledge source.
* The body dominates our desires in an unhealthy and destructive way.
* Our human spirit has lost independence and is merged with the soul.


WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEONE BECOMES A CHRISTIAN?

Two Events:

(1) Our Sins are forgiven:

Sin has two effects in our lives:

(a) Guilt. This is a legal condemnation before God that results in a feeling of guilt in our conscience. It is the sense of estrangement from God because we are unworthy.

(b) Death (Romans 6:23). Death is a power of destruction in our lives. Every time we sin the power of death works some destruction in our lives.

The work of Christ is designed to remedy both of these problems but there is a difference between them.

(i) At conversion guilt is immediately removed, the legal condemnation before God is remitted. We should then feel free from guilt, though the feelings may not follow immediately. Thereafter if we sin our conscience will sense guilt, even though God has already forgiven us all our sin - past, present and future. This the Bible calls justification.

(ii) However the destruction sin has wrought in our lives through death is not immediately removed. The distorted human personality has to be reconstructed into the image of God. This the Bible calls sanctification - it is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ.

Hence thought the guilt of sin is removed, the consequences of sin are not. The destruction of sin remains in our lives.

(2) We Are Born Again:

The Holy Spirit enters into our spirit again and gives us spiritual life, the death in our spirit is reversed and we are made spiritually alive. This is called being “born again”.
We become “one spirit” again with God.

Romans 8:9-11.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

* Our body is still in bondage to the power of sin and so is “dead”: i.e. unable to live in the way God wants. Sanctification will fix this.
* Our human spirit is made alive (by the Holy Spirit re-entering it).
* God’s purpose in this is that we will learn how to release the life of the Holy Spirit in our spirit so that the Holy Spirit can “give life to our mortal body”.


1 Corinthians 6:17.
“But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”

The function of Communion (relationship with God) in our spirit, which has been dead, comes to life again. As a result the other functions of our spirit begin to work again with greater accuracy and sensitivity. Conscience becomes more acute; revelation begins to flow in our Intuition.

Another Aside Question:
Question: The promise of the New Covenant is that God will put a new spirit into us. Doesn't that mean at new birth that I get a new human spirit?
Answer: Evangelical teaching has (often) taught that this is so, but the Bible does not say so. Yes, a new (human) spirit is promised, but the Bible nowhere indicates that we receive it at conversion. In fact examination of the human spirit would show that this does not happen. If the spirit of man includes conscience, intuition and communion then - if we received a new spirit at conversion (presumably a good one from God, not tainted by sin) - then we would expect that from conversion our conscience would always work perfectly, we would always know right from wrong; our intuition would always hear God's voice perfectly; we would always be able to have perfect communion with God. Clearly this is not the case. This implies we have the same corrupted human spirit.

Also on the negative side:
* Christians sin and so pollute their spirit so it needs cleansing again and,
* Christians are people and so can be wounded in spirit, just like anyone else, and so need healing in our spirit.
These would not be true if we received a new perfect spirit at conversion. If we received a new, perfect spirit at conversion then every time we sinned (and we do) then we would need to be born again, and this is not the case.


Rather the Bible teaches that our spirits, though inhabited by God's spirit, is on a path of renewal. Hence 1 Thessalonians 5:23 makes sense - we are to become holy in our spirit. We wouldn't need to become this if it were already true as a gift.


THE CHRISTIAN'S CONFLICT.

Even though God dwells within us by his Spirit, the fallen nature (the flesh) is still with us. The soul and spirit are not, in our experience, totally divided again and they are still dominated by our bodily passions. The flesh is not removed at conversion, nor are we automatically set free from its bondage. Rather, we are to learn to grow spiritually, and to subdue the flesh by walking in faith and obedience to the word of God. A conflict results between the flesh and the new nature of God, living in our spirits (Romans 7).

The Christian psychology immediately after new birth looks a bit like this:



Diagramme 3:


The Body is still dominating



The Mind (and Emotions) which is still directing The Will


The Human spirit is still merged with the soul, only now the Holy Spirit dwells in oyr human spirit again.



So, initially at last, the dominating force in the Christian life is still the flesh. To become spiritually mature we need to learn to hear the voice of the Spirit of God and choose to do his will and not fulfill the desires of the flesh. As we choose the Spirit over the flesh our personality is progressively restored into the image of God, who is Christ, in whom the Spirit fully ruled his spirit, and his spirit ruled his soul, which in turn ruled his body – just as with Adam in creation. There have only been two real men, Adam before he fell and Christ.

Sanctification is the process of personal renewal into the image of Christ.

THE WAY TO FREEDOM.

Christ is the answer to every problem. He has given us Full Salvation through his work on the cross. However we need to learn to appropriate and live in each facet of this salvation, one step at a time.

The Process:

John 8:31-35
“you shall know the truth, and it shall set you free.”

* Freedom comes by the “truth”, i.e. the word of God.
* To “know the truth” is a Hebraism. It means not just intellectual understanding but also living the truth. To know intellectually and to not do is deception and just increases bondage.

Hebrews 4:12
“the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, divides …between soul and spirit.”

* One of the things the word of God will do in us is divide our soul and spirit. We are a unity - but even God knows that the parts have to work in a particular order and that sin has brought about a false unity.
* One can only divide between two things if the two things are essentially different. If soul and spirit were not essentially different then they could not be divided. This is one of the clearest indications in scripture that soul and spirit are different things and that a person has both a soul and a spirit.

Notice how the answer is the real antidote to the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem was seeking false knowledge; the answer is to know truth from the tree of life. To "know" in Biblical thought is to experience, to live in. Intellectual knowledge is involved, but it is not the end. When we know intellectually we must obey, or the truth does not set us free. In actual fact to know the truth AND NOT DO IT will only serve to bring us into deeper bondage (James 1:22, 4:17; Isaiah 28:9-13).

The first step of personal renewal, to bring us back into the image of God, is regeneration.

WHAT IS REGENERATION/NEW BIRTH?

(1) A Divine Act of Re-Creation.

When we become Christians the Holy Spirit enters again into our spirit. This means that again we can have direct spiritual contact with the spiritual realm and with God. Where we were spiritually "dead" - unable to communicate with the spiritual realm, we are now made spiritually "alive". This experience is called REGENERATION, a word which comes from the Latin:

re = again,
generate = to be born.

John 1:12,13.
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.”

John 3:3-8.
“Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

John 3:14-16.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

* Regeneration is a gift of Eternal life; i.e. of God's sort of life.
* The Greek is in the aorist, implying that this is a single event which has effects abiding for all time – and for eternity. We cannot be "reborn" twice.
* The way to be born again is to “believe in Him, i.e. Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-5.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.”

This describes the change from death to life that happens at conversion.

James 1:18.
“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”

This new birth comes to us through the operation of the power of the word of God in us.

(2) An Ongoing Experience.

This act of rebirth begins a process in our lives in which God makes us new, i.e. he regenerates us:

Titus 3:5.
“he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,”

Here the Greek is in the continuous tense, indicating a process that carries on forever.

WHAT REGENERATION IS NOT:

1. It is not “becoming perfect” or wholly sanctified, not even in our human spirit.

1 Thessalonians 5:23
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul is writing to Christians and he expresses his desire that they would be perfectly sanctified in their spirit, soul and body. The text implies that there is as much need for sanctification in the spirit as there is in the soul and body. Our spirit has a need to remain “blameless” just as much as the rest of our being.
Nowhere does the Bible say that we are perfectly sanctified in spirit from the moment of conversion. Logic tells us this would not be so. Sin is not just a physical thing but is spiritual also. Even as Christians we sin and so we pollute our human spirit so it needs cleansing again.

2. It is not becoming spiritually mature.
New birth is called a birth because there is implicitly an understanding that we are like babies at new birth.

3. It is not an instantaneous restoration of the human personality.
The scenario I have painted of the reversal of the human personality shows that the personality is not automatically reversed because we become Christians. We are required to learn how to restore our personality in the power of the Holy Spirit as part of our sanctification.

[John B]

6. INDWELLING.

From the moment of our new birth the Holy Spirit makes a permanent home in our spirits. He lives inside us, or "indwells" us. The Bible talks of this in many ways:

1 Corinthians 6:19,20.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.”

The Greek words for “you” in this passage are the second person singular, so they refer to the individual Christian, not to the Church as a whole.

Romans 8:9-11.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”


The “ifs” in this sentence are not there to express any doubt about the fact of the Spirit’s indwelling us. Rather they are logical argument “Becauses”. It means “If the Spirit dwells in you, and He does, then this is the case…”

* In three sentences Paul says in four ways that the Spirit lives in us - just in case we miss the point.
* Not just the Spirit, but the whole of the Trinity lives in us. It is the "Spirit of God...who raised Jesus from the dead", it is "Christ in us", "his Spirit who lives in you".

This is the mystery of the Trinity. The Church has always held that they inter-permeate each other. Each of the three persons of the Godhead are fully present in each of the others. Thus the Father and the Son indwell us in and through the Spirit.

John 14:15-17,
"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

This is called the "Indwelling of the Holy Spirit".

The miracle of the Spirit’s indwelling is the absolute grace he shows to us. We are not yet perfected but he chooses to dwell in the hearts of unclean people. In principle we are clean – washed in the blood of the Lamb, but in practice we continue to sin and get polluted. Even though he is holy the Spirit continues to abide with us. Just as Christ was incarnated into a sinful world and dwelt with us to secure our redemption, so too the Spirit deigns to dwell in sinful hearts with a view to their eventual sanctification.

However such pollution does upset the Spirit:

Ephesians 4:30.
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

We need to try to avoid sin so we do not grieve him, but if we do sin we can plead the blood of Christ which cleanses us and makes us holy again.

THE PURPOSES OF THE SPIRIT’S INDWELLING:

1. To teach us.
John 14:26
“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

2. To convict us. To bring us to repentance, i.e. life change.
John 16:7-11.
“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned."

3. To tell us of things to come.
John 16:12-14.
"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

The Spirit is prophetic. Christianity at its very heart is prophetic – we believe in a God who tells us the future – not just of world events, but he guides us into things that are still future. This is true – not only of world events – but also of future events in our own lives.

4. To guide us.
Romans 8:14
“because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”


The greatest proof that you have been born again is the fact that the Spirit guides you.

5. To include us in the family of God.
Romans 8:15,16.
“…but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, <"Abba,> Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.”


6. To assure us of our salvation.
Romans 5:5
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

7. To give us victory over sin.
Romans 8:4-6.
“…in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;…”

8. To fill us with God’s presence. See next study.

[John B]

7. Be Filled with the Spirit.

Even though regeneration and indwelling are marvellous they are not the fullness of God's intention for us through the “in” relationship of the Spirit. His desire is for us to be FILLED with the Spirit. We are indwelt in order to be filled.

THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF “FILLING” OF THE SPIRIT.

The phrase, “filled with the Spirit” is used in two quite distinct ways in scripture.

This is not clear in the English translations but in the Greek it is crystal clear. We need to know the difference so that we don’t end up being confused by them. The difference is indicated by the Greek tenses.

(a) Firstly, to denote a temporary experience - a special gift of power and inspiration from the Spirit to meet a need or crisis. The end aim of such experiences is the proclamation of Christ.

Luke 1:41,67. Greek: “Filled with the Spirit (temporarily)”
Acts 4:31. Greek: “Filled with the Spirit (temporarily)”

In modern jargon this is often called an "anointing". It is an empowering for a particular purpose and a particular limited time. This time can last as long as the need is there. This can be only minutes or it can be for months or years. In this sense the temporary "filling" of the Spirit is really related to gifts and ministry and is like an outflow from the empowering of the Spirit given through the Baptism in the Spirit. I have experienced this many times in giving prophecies, preaching, or when counseling or at other times. One doesn’t always feel it at the time but others recognise the anointing on you, or afterwards you realise you were specially empowered at the time.

It is in this sense that the OT talks about being “filled with the Spirit”. Really it is a coming on the person and the person is empowered and filled with the Spirit temporarily rather than a permanent dwelling in the person. This type of “filling” can give prophetic inspiration, ability to speak, do miracles, special feats of strength and so on.

Examples:
Deuteronomy 34:7
Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 14:6,19, 15:14.

Some of the judges were empowered in this way and the “filling of the Spirit” lasted their whole lives.
We will all experience this from time to time and for different lengths of time, but it is not the thing I want to discuss here.

Because it is also called in scripture “being filled with the Spirit” it is often confused with the other kind of “Filling with the Spirit” referred to in scripture, but it is not really the same sort of thing.

(b) Secondly, the phrase “Filling of the Spirit” is also used to denote a permanent experience.

Luke 4:1. Jesus.
Acts 6:3. The original 6 deacons.

In both of these the tenses indicate a permanent filling.
This is to do with the permanent manifestation of Christ in our lives.

The Ultimate Aim.

John 7:37-39.
“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

God's aim is that our lives be so full of the Spirit that he is able to gush out of us like a mighty river or spring. This brings blessing to others.

THE NEED TO BE PERMANENTLY FILLED.

The need is expressed in the fact that it is commanded of us.

Ephesians 5:18: The Command:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit...”

"filled" Greek verb here is a continuous imperative.
(i) Imperative, means that it is a command. Hence it is not an option. God wants this to be true of us. We need to obey it. Not to be filled is to miss out on God's intention and actually is a sin, it is disobedience.

But having said that it is not an option, it is an option in the sense that we have to choose for it to happen and obey the conditions for it.

(ii) Also an imperative means that it is our responsibility to do so. We must therefore find out how it is done and live in it. God doesn’t do it for us.

(iii) Continuous, means we must experience this all the time. This is not to be an occasional experience, nor is it to be restricted to only a few. It is not to be a high we feel from time to time - such experiences are called "anointings" (see above).

(iv) The fact that this is a command to “be continuously filled with the Spirit” indicates that it is a real possibility that we could be Christians and not be filled with the Spirit. In other words it doesn’t happen just because you become a Christian.

(v) The fact that this is commanded as something we must do means that there must be a way we can tell if we are filled with the Spirit or not. There must be some sort of criteria for describing being “Spirit-filled”. This is a fact that eludes many people, but it must be true – otherwise how can we know whether or not we are fulfilling the command?

Many Christians miss out on this dynamic experience because:
(i) They do not know it is God's intention for them.
(ii) They do not know it is possible.
(iii) They confuse the filling of the Spirit with other spiritual experiences, e.g. the Baptism in the Spirit (see a later study on this).
(iv) They do not fulfill the conditions.

Question: Why does Paul make it a command for us to be filled with the Spirit?

Answer: Two reasons:
1. Because we leak.

We were created by God as human beings to be filled with the Spirit. We were made “in the image of God” so that God’s Spirit could dwell in us and fill us. Our human spirit was made a bit like a glove. By itself our spirit doesn’t have a lot of substance as it is designed to be a home for the Holy Spirit, he “fills out”, if you like our human spirit so that it is robust and strong. Without the Holy Spirit in it our human spirit is crippled and weak – or as the Bible calls it “dead”.

However the Fall has fractured the “image of God”. We are full of cracks and the Spirit “leaks out” the cracks. This is true even though we are saved. Basically, we are all a lot of cracked pots.

So we need to be continuously refilled to replace what is lost.

This is not an ideal way to describe what happens because the Holy Spirit is a person, not a fluid, but I can think of no other way to explain it. We lose the filling of the Spirit, and this loss can be a gradual thing simply because we don’t maintain it. Anyway it is a perfectly scriptural way of describing the Spirit as the Scripture symbolizes the Spirit with fluids such as oil, wine, water.

2. Because we fill up our lives with all sorts of other things that take the place of God.

Illustrate: Take a glass full of water – start filling it with stones. Is the Glass still filled – yes! But not with water. We have shunted some of the water out of the way to make room for stones. In the same way we shunt the Spirit out of parts of our lives by not allowing Christ to be Lord of that area and becoming involved in things that exclude the Spirit of God from that area of life.

The reality is that when we initially ask God to fill us with his Spirit we already have all these things cluttering up the space. So the Spirit has to just fill up those bits in us that he can fill. The other areas of our lives he leaves for us to control for ourselves. In a sense we are Spirit-filled, but in another sense, if we were to remove all the junk, we would find that we are not very Spirit –filled at all.

A definition: What is the filling of Spirit?

It is to do with possession of our inner nature by Christ. The Holy Spirit comes and fills our spirit. Not possession in the sense of ownership or control. He never overrides our own will or control. But it is to do with the Holy Spirit living in us, being Lord of our lives and empowering us so that the person/ nature of Christ is seen in us.

In Ephesians 1 Paul talks about the Holy Spirit as, “The power that is in us…that raised Christ from the dead” I.e. it is resurrection life.

But to get to resurrection you have to die.
Therefore being “Spirit-filled” works on the principle death and resurrection. We are only filled with the Spirit to the degree that we have died in Christ. When we allow an area of our lives to die on the Cross the Holy Spirit comes in and fills it – but not before. We have to yield each area of our lives in turn for the Spirit to take possession.

Another way of looking at this idea of being “Spirit Filled”.
Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ put out a booklet called, “How to be filled with the Spirit.”
In it are described three types of people:
(i) The Non Christian.
(ii) The Carnal Christian.
(iii) The Spirit filled Christian.

Bright illustrates with diagrammes, but I can't seem to do that here so I will describe the diagrammes as best I can.

Each diagramme consists of a circle, which represents the sphere of a person's life.
Inside each circle is a throne, the place of rulership of that person's life.
There are two other elements to each picture: a small "e" representing the person's ego, or will, and a Cross, representing Christ.
The first circle depicts the non Christian, and in this picture the "e" is on the throne, and the Cross is outside the circle, thus showing that the man is ruling his own life and Christ has not been invited in to his life.
The Second circle represents the carnal Christian. In this picture the "e" is still on the throne, but now the Cross is inside the circle, thus indicating that Christ has been invited in to his life but the man is still running his own life.
The Third circle puts thhe Cross on the Throne, and the man's ego, the "e" in front of the throne, at the feet of Jesus. thus indicating now that Christ is ruling this life.

What Bill Bright is saying is this – to be Spirit-Filled is to have submitted your life totally to the Lordship of Christ.

At Salvation we say, “I give my whole life to you, Lord” but in reality we don’t know what that means and we don’t, in fact, do so. But God graciously fills us as much as he can in those areas we yield to him. Again we do the same at various points of committal along the way – but each time we really don’t understand what “giving our whole life to Christ” means. The reality is we only give our lives to Christ one area, one issue at a time. Being Spirit filled is a progressive series of crisis experiences where we give some area of our lives to Christ and then walk in that death and resurrection.

Being Spirit – Filled is bringing ever-increasing areas of your life under the Lordship of Christ.

This does not mean that we have to know all there is to know or be perfectly holy but:
(i) Our general attitude must be one of submission and obedience to Christ as our personal Lord.
(ii) We must be committed to PROGRESSIVELY increasing our knowledge of God's will and be seeking ways of doing it.
(iii) We need to be in a process of removing the things in our lives that stop the Spirit really having full reign in our lives.

The things in our lives: Four main areas of problem here:
1. Sin – this is obvious. Sin displaces the Spirit until it is confessed and we ask for refilling.
2. Other activities that are not sinful in themselves but squeeze God out of our lives. It might be sport, or computer games, or romance or some other thing that is not in itself wrong or sinful but takes a priority in our lives to the detriment of our relationship with God.
3. Areas of our lives that we have not yet submitted to the Lordship of Christ. The Spirit is a gentleman. He only fills those areas of our lives that we submit to Christ. When we become Christians we are Spirit-filled at that moment. The same is true when we enter into the Pentecostal experience. But we are only Spirit filled in a limited sense – to the degree we have submitted our lives to Christ.
4. Pollution. By virtue of the fact that we live in a fallen world we get exposed to things that pollute us and so restrict the life of the Spirit in us.
* TV
* Billboards
* Music
* Books
* News reports.
These are not “sin” but are defilement. We get polluted by our contact with the world.

Illustration: In the outer court of the Tabernacle were two items of furniture. The Laver and the Altar.
The Alter speaks of salvation – accepting Christ as Saviour. We only have to do this once as the priests only had to offer sacrifice once at the beginning of their priestly service. There the blood cleansed from sin.
The Laver speaks of the need for continual cleansing on a daily basis. Every day the priests had to wash at the laver before they performed their daily duties.

Because we get polluted, either by sin or by the grime of this world, we need to ask for cleansing every day.

The filling of the Spirit thus has various depths of experience; it is relative to our growth in Christ. We enter into a deeper infilling as we learn greater submission and conformity to Christ. The more we learn to die in Christ, the more his life will show through us.

Spiritual growth is nothing more than giving ever increasing areas of our lives to Christ to come under his Lordship and be filled with the Spirit.

It is a process and it is unlikely for any of us that we will ever get to the point that we are filled with the Spirit in the way Jesus was. But we can be “filled with the Spirit” in as much as we are submitted to the Lordship of Christ and allow his resurrection life to flow through us.

The upshot of this is this: If you are tempted to say, “I got filled with the Spirit “x” number of years ago” then you are clearly misunderstanding what the Filling of the Spirit is. You are confusing it with the experience of the Baptism of the Spirit – and you may now not be Spirit-filled at all. You may be missing out. You will have leaked and it may be that sin or other things have pushed the Spirit aside.

The filling of the Spirit is a command to be obeyed continuously and this simple fact means it cannot be identified with any single experience that will last forever. Any such identification is wrong and will lead to not being “filled” sooner or later.

[John B]

8. HOW TO BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT - CONTINUOUSLY.


Being filled with the Spirit is obedience to a command. Hence there are things we need to do to be filled with the Spirit. Being “filled with the Spirit” is therefore conditional, it is not automatic. It is available through the Work of Christ, but there are things we have to do to get it – and to maintain it.

This means that being “Filled with the Spirit” is not an experience that happens only once and lasts forever afterwards.

Thus the Charismatic teaching which identifies the Pentecostal experience with the Filling of the Spirit is exposed as being false. And not only false – it is dangerous as it leads to people assuming that because they have had a specific experience of the Holy Spirit at a point in time that they are thereafter forever "filled with the Holy Spirit". Thus they are discouraged/ deterred from seeking continuously the filling of the Spirit. This is a tremendous danger And it arises directly out of calling the Pentecostal experience, the “Filling of the Spirit”. I shall return later to the relation of the Filling of the Spirit to the Pentecostal experience, but for now note the warning of a dangerous and false doctrine.

That the Charismatic stream identifies the Pentecostal experience with the filling of the Spirit is abundantly clear in their teaching. They actually, as a general rule, call this experience "being filled with the Spirit". They call it this because they have a general sense of unease in calling it "the Baptism in the Spirit" because in their theological background they know that the Baptism in the Spirit has something to do with conversion, not with subsequent experiences. So their identification of the two is clear and plain.

But the Pentecostal identification of the two is not so clear - after all they tend to call the experience "the Baptism in the Spirit". But that they identify this experience with the "filling of the Spirit" becomes clear in other statements Pentecostals regularly make. It is most clearly revealed in the following two questions Pentecostals ask regularly:
(i) "Is he Spirit-filled?" Where by this they mean, "Has he has a Pentecostal experience and speak in tongues?"
(ii) "Is it a Spirit-filled church?" Where by this they mean, "Do they believe in the Pentecostal experience and practice it along with the gifts of the Spirit, particularly speaking in tongues?"
These two questions both reveal the identification made by Pentecostals of the Pentecostal experience with the Filling of the Spirit. But again it is a wrong and a dangerous identification.
(i) Because the "Filling of the Spirit" can be lost a person can have experience a Pentecostal experience and still speak in tongues and not now be "Spirit-filled." He may be living in flagrant immorality. Would he thus be "filled with the Spirit" just because he had an experience in the past and can now still speak in tongues? I think not.
(ii) You could have a church who believes in all the Pentecostal stuff and all the members speak in tongues and all of them could be living in flagrant sin. Would they then be "filled with the Spirit"? I think not. The church could number a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand or a million. It would make no difference. They would not be a "Spirit- filled" church if they were all living in sin in some way - even if they all got together twice on Sunday and spoke in tongues for a hour.

So the identification of the Pentecostal experience with bing "filled with then Spirit" is both wrong and dangerous. Dangerous because it gives a false confidence in one's spirituality which has no basis in Scripture.

Here, then, are the basic keys/ conditions to being filled with the Spirit.

(a) You have to want to be filled with the Spirit.

Matthew 5:6.
"Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled."

If we have no thirst for God he will not come and fill it. The Holy Spirit is a gentlemen – he will never invade your life or any area of your life without an invitation from you. This is quite unlike the Devil who will invade your life whether you want him to or not.

We need to express this desire for more of God verbally. Express our need of him.

(b) Practice Spiritual Breathing.

Illustration: Try breathing in and out.
Breathing is amazingly simple – eh? But do we do it?
In the same way we need to learn spiritual breathing.

Breathe Out: Confess all known sin – be a cleansed vessel.

1 John 1:7-10.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.”

There are three areas of cleansing we need:
1. Cleansing from addictive or habitual sin.
2. Cleansing from specific acts of disobedience.
3. Cleansing from the pollution of the world.

How do we get cleansing?
(i) When we walk in the light the blood of Jesus automatically cleanses us from all sin.

What does it mean to walk in the light?
It means to be obedient to everything we know of the will of God at that particular point in time. God does not hold us responsible for what we don’t know but only for what we know. If we are being obedient to all we know then God’s grace in the blood of Christ covers and cleanses us from all other sin that we are unaware of.

Is there anything you know that you are not walking in obedience to? Baptism? Baptism in the Spirit? Tithing? The list could go on. Ask God to reveal any area of failure to obey and repent and then walk in it.
Sin is not just the things we do wrong – it is the failure to do the things we know are right. Sins of omission are just as much sins as sins of commission.

(ii) Through personal confession of known sins and uncleanness.

It is often said in this context, “Keep short accounts with God”. But I say, “Why keep any accounts at all?” Deal with sin as soon as possible.

The Spirit can only fill those areas of our lives that are cleansed by the blood of Christ. Any area of uncleanness that has not first been washed in the blood he cannot fill.

This is breathing out: personal confession of all sin and pollution and expression of need of God’s presence.

Breathe in: Three Steps:

a. Ask for the Infilling Daily.

Luke 11:10-13.
“For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

We need to ask the Spirit to come and fill us again every day – several times daily – for three reasons:
* Because we leak.
* Because sin and pollution has displaced him and He needs to c