CHAPTER 7
BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT
In the order of redemptive history (examined by biblical theology), the Spirit’s work moves from the external and universal-cosmic to the personal. Sent from the Father, in the Son, at the end of the age, the Spirit is poured out on “all flesh”—Jews and gentiles, male and female, slave and free—in order to begin the new creation. Consequently, the Holy Spirit enters into the inner recesses of individual hearts, liberating them from bondage to sin and death and making them citizens of the age to come. Among others, Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos reminded us of the dangers of reducing the “new creation” to individual believers.1 This is a perennial danger, especially in the wake of pietism and revivalism where the Spirit’s work of applying Christ’s redeeming work is reduced to a psychological process within the individual soul. The new creation is not merely each individual believer nor even a conglomeration of such; it is first of all a reality as extensive in its scope as the first creation.
However, in the application of redemption (examined by systematic theology), this order is reversed: we first experience the Holy Spirit within us, individually, as he unites us to Christ and, in Christ, grants us free access to the Father. Uniting us to Christ as our head, he simultaneously unites us to his body, the church. Once more, it is important to recognize the broader redemptive-historical horizon when we come to baptism with the Spirit and his gifts. It is particularly associated with holiness.
“HOLY TO THE LORD”: CONSECRATION IN OLD TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE
There are few distinctions as definitive in the law of Moses than clean/ unclean and common/holy (Lev 11:47). Mary Douglas points out that this distinction is bound up with “the relations of order to disorder, being to non-being, form to formlessness, life to death.”2 Through such an expansion of categories we are reminded of Genesis 1:2 (ESV): “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” “Formless” (tohu) and “void” (bohu) do not as yet carry overtones of personal, much less ethical, agency. Yet after the fall, tohu and bohu do bear that connotation, as transgression leads to disorder, uncleanness, and death, and the land itself shrivels away from a flourishing garden to a howling wasteland. Personified as Jacob, Israel was discovered by Yahweh. “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye” (Deut 32:10 ESV). The wilderness between Sinai and Canaan as “a land of deserts and pits . . . a land of drought and of the shadow of death . . . a land that no one crossed and where no one dwelt” (Jer 2:6 NKJV). And yet, this is precisely the state to which Canaan itself succumbed when the Spirit evacuated the temple (Isa 13:20; Jer 9:11; 10:22; 49:18, 33).
The creation narrative, with its division of the chaos into distinct spheres and the filling of each sphere with creatures and their rulers, with Yahweh entering his Sabbath enthronement, is echoed in the exodus-conquest-rest pattern of Israel’s history. Having covered this ground, there is no need to dwell on this further except to underscore the crucial point that all the laws given at Sinai pertaining to purity, diet, and time (weeks, months, years) as well as space (land) focused Israel’s attention on the God who separates Israel from the nations. In this context, even an obscure and seemingly pointless prohibition of wearing clothes of mixed fabrics (Lev 19:19) is intelligible.
Common and Consecrated
Under the old covenant, there are three categories for the status of people, places, and things: corrupt, common, and holy. We could even reduce the categories to two: the consecrated and the common. Obedience is a crucial component of the biblical doctrine, but these terms do not refer in the first place to a moral quality but to a status; they refer not to a claim we have on God but to a claim that he has on us. For example, where human beings are concerned, to be holy to the Lord is to be placed within the visible sphere of his covenant people. To reject the covenant is to be “cut off” (excommunicated). Common persons, places, and things are never cut off because they were never holy in the first place.
Motivated by a proper concern to affirm God’s gracious upholding of all things, including the kingdoms of this age, many Christians today have challenged any sacred-secular distinction. But this blurring of holy and common has no exegetical basis. Furthermore, it flattens out the dynamic history of revelation, overlooking the distinguishing characteristics of the various administrations of the covenant of grace. There was a time when there was no secular/sacred (or common/holy) distinction. The creation mandate given to Adam and Eve in Eden was to “be fruitful and multiply” with the intent of ruling and subduing creation to Yahweh’s ultimate suzerainty. Every moment and every activity was holy and a direct furtherance of God’s kingdom in the world. Moreover, the theocratic kingdom of Israel was holy, set apart from the nations as God’s special possession. There will be such a time again when even beyond anything experienced in the first creation there will be an order that is entirely subservient to the righteous, loving, and just rule of the Great King.
Yet in this time between Christ’s advents, the redemptive program centers on the calling out of a people from the kingdoms of this age. Those who remain outside of the covenant of grace are not holy, but they are consecrated. As God’s image-bearers, all human beings are “set apart” to the Lord for covenantal obedience. However, precisely as consecrated (i.e., as set apart as belonging to the Lord), they are in a state of rebellion and are therefore under God’s wrath. For the time being, God has lifted “martial law.”
This is not the era of holy wars and holy land. Even those who are presently under God’s wrath today may be united to Christ by the Spirit tomorrow. For this conquest by the Word and Spirit, all borders must be lifted, not defended. All land must be common, not holy. It is a stay of execution. In this time between Christ’s two advents, God sends providential blessings to the evil and the good alike (Matt 5:45). Those who do not believe are even now set apart to the Lord for destruction: “The wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36 ESV). But this verdict is not yet final! And until it becomes final, the kingdoms that the ungodly build are neither holy nor condemned but are common. To raise any one of them to the rank of holy would be to invoke God’s immediate judgment upon them. Instead, they serve an important but far-from-ultimate role in history. Even pagan rulers who persecute the church are ministers of God for good (Rom 13:4). Even the kingdom that Jesus and the apostles knew, which crucified Jesus and his followers, was—paradoxically—legitimate, as Jesus himself said to the astonishment of the Pharisees (Matt 22:21) and yet was destined to perish as belonging to “this present age” that is dying.
Christ’s death deprived Satan of ultimate triumph. “This Is My Father’s World,” as we sing. This is true not only in creation but especially in the wake of Christ’s victory (1 Cor 15:27). “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control” (Heb 2:8 ESV). Nevertheless, the writer to the Hebrews adds, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:8–9 ESV).
The whole earth and everything in it is under God’s covenantal claim by right of creation. However, as we have seen, God took Israel to himself as his holy nation. The exodus cut away Israel from Egypt, and circumcision cut away the foreskin (representative of the passing down of original sin), so that the whole person may be saved. Once more in history, Yahweh claimed people, places, and things as his own—either for destruction or for deliverance. The Spirit divides and fills. Canaan was his footstool, the stage for his dramatic parable. And once again this means that Yahweh will rule directly as Israel’s Great King, with “holy war” rather than common defense (“just war”) as the policy. By God’s command and the presence of his Spirit, Canaan was no longer a common land, but a holy land. The ordinary rules of common war were suspended as God acted directly and immediately as Israel’s warrior-king. Like Adam, Israel was to drive the serpent from God’s holy land. Everything in the land that is corrupt must be eradicated, and the holy people of God must keep the commands or the land will vomit them out (Lev 18:28). The Spirit’s presence was as much judgment as comfort under these circumstances, as the nation was bound to Yahweh as its Great King. God threatened to bring upon them exactly what he had just brought upon the godless nations that he had driven out from before them (Deut 28:1–68; 29:10–29; 30:11–20).
I have argued that the Sinai theocracy is like Hamlet’s play-within-a-play: a grand parable of the larger human story. Israel too is found to be “in Adam,” but with the system of laws and sacrifices that direct them to Christ for redemption. In this direct reign of Yahweh, heaven actually occupies a sliver of earthly real estate: whether Eden or Noah’s ark, the burning bush encountered by Moses, Mount Sinai (during the covenant-making ceremony), the tabernacle, and the land of Canaan. Anyone or anything that lives within that consecrated zone is devoted to God, either for destruction or deliverance. “Holy to the Lord” can mean death as well as life. A holy zone is not a playground. The Holy Spirit was Israel’s judge, not its mascot. “Holy to the LORD” is, quite literally, a double-edged sword. It is dangerous to be set apart covenantally to the Lord and spurn his blessings (a running theme especially in Hebrews chapters 4, 6, and 10). Even in the new covenant, to abuse the Lord’s Supper is to invite temporal judgment according to 1 Corinthians 11.
Even within these places, such as Eden and Canaan, there were concentric circles of increasing holiness—and therefore danger. The tree of life in the garden of Eden was the nucleus of concentrated holiness. The holy of holies (with the ark of the covenant and its mercy seat) was the innermost locus of the divine presence in the Jerusalem temple from which God’s holiness radiated throughout the land. The specific instructions that God gave in the law created a replica of heaven on earth. The vertical was made horizontal, with the most holy in the center. And yet, the horizontal aspect underscored a holy history, as the cloud kept moving the people toward the promise, with the tribe of Judah out in front leading the way to the Lion of the tribe of Judah.3
The goal of the priest is to “guard and keep” the sanctuary so that nothing unclean enters its sacred precincts. When Adam failed to expel the serpent and even succumbs to his temptation, he was cast out—again, for his own good. To remain in the holy place, much less to eat the fruit of the tree of life, would ensure his (and our) confirmation in everlasting death. Mercifully, the Lord saw to it that idolatrous curiosity would not overthrow his plan of redemption. Posting the cherubim at the entrance of the holy of holies in Eden, Yahweh ensured not merely his own sanctity but the safety of his fallen creature and expelled the couple from his holy land. Removing his sacred throne to heaven, God mercifully deconsecrated the land, rendering it common. And in prosecuting God’s case against Israel, the prophetic writings draw explicitly on the imagery of the curses brought upon creation with Adam’s breaking of the covenant: “Like Adam, they transgressed the covenant” (Hos 6:7 ESV), and Yahweh cuts them off from the temporal land. The kingdom of God was no longer associated with a geopolitical theocracy on earth. Now the elect and reprobate both live “east of Eden,” intermingling but forbidden to intermarry.
However, the prophets long for the day when the types and shadows will give way to the reality. It will be a new Eden, even greater than the first paradise. They will not only be living, biologically, but alive in the Spirit. “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. . . .And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezek 11:19–20). Yet separated from Christ, the last thing that we should want is for the Spirit to be poured out on all flesh. It would be a plea for destructive fire from heaven apart from our being united to Christ. To be consecrated is to be no longer common, under God’s patient reserve; rather, it is to be either set apart for destruction or for reconciliation with the Holy One.
Jesus Underwent Our Judgment-Consecration in the Power of the Spirit
Jesus underwent the ultimate cutting-off, not merely circumcision but excommunication. “By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?” (Isa 53:8). Imagining that the arrival in Jerusalem would culminate in the consecration of the messianic king, James and John asked to be seated on his right and left hand. “Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?’ ” (Mark 10:38–39 ESV). The royal consecration of Jesus was his baptism into death, the devotion of his body and soul to condemnation for us. And now all who are baptized into him pass through the waters of judgment unharmed.
As Paul reminds us, “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank of the same spiritual drink” (1 Cor 10:1–4 ESV). No one was baptized into Christ through this typological exodus and cloud; it was a different covenant, with different promises and terms, particularly because it had a different mediator: Moses, a servant, rather than Jesus, the Son. And yet everything in it pointed to Christ. The context of Paul’s remark is the seriousness and holiness of communion—both the sacrament and the koinōnia that it generates—over against the Corinthians’ profanation of both by chaotic worship and sectarianism. While the typological baptism drowned Pharaoh’s hosts, it saved the Israelites who passed through safely on dry ground “and all ate the same spiritual food” (the manna), and “all drank of the same spiritual drink” (the Rock, which was typologically Christ himself [v. 4], although Christ identifies the Spirit as the water [John 7:37–39]). He adds, “Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (v. 5). While all were baptized into this covenant with Moses as mediator, not all made it into the promised land. Rather, “most of them” failed to enter his typological land of rest. They are “an example to us” (v. 6) because now that Christ—the reality—has come as the mediator of the new covenant, we are especially obligated to embrace our baptism and participation in his flesh and blood through the Lord’s Supper with all seriousness.
The signs must lead us to the reality. Some who had been outwardly baptized into Moses failed to enter the earthly and typological land—indeed, including Moses himself. How much greater then is our loss if we fail to enter the everlasting rest even though we have been baptized. Paul’s argument here is echoed in Hebrews 4, 6, 10, and 12.
It is this biblical theology that we should bear in mind when we speak of the Spirit of holiness. The Holy Spirit is not a harmless dove. All talk of the Spirit as the vulnerable person of the Trinity, the shy one, the “still-small voice,” which often becomes the Archimedean point for finding a weak spot in the Godhead, must be put to flight. The Holy Spirit is the sovereign God. He brings judgment throughout the history of revelation: in Eden, in Israel, and now in the new covenant as he works inwardly to convict us of our guilt and lead us to Christ. This unique work of the Spirit is evident at Pentecost, when hearers of Peter’s proclamation of guilt and grace are “cut to the heart” and trust in Christ (Acts 2:37). Because of the Spirit, the seventy return with the news that the demons are subject to them in Jesus’s name, and the Lord himself says that he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Yet they are not to consider this cosmic conquest of the spirits but rather the fact that they are chosen and forgiven (Luke 10:20).
The Holy Spirit cuts us away not only from that which is corrupt but even that which is common. Jesus uniquely could say that he set himself apart or “sanctified” himself, as he did in his high priestly prayer: “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:19).
Consecration and Eschatology: Jesus, the Spirit, and a New Creation
“Circumcise your hearts,” God commands Israel (Deut 10:16). Yet in chapter 30, after prophesying the people’s failure, the new covenant far off in the distance is proclaimed: “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (v. 6 ESV). Thus even in the Torah itself—the very charter of the Sinai theocracy—the gospel is announced.
Intriguingly, the same command for the nation to circumcise its heart is issued in Ezekiel 18:30–32. But by chapter 37 it is absolutely apparent that there has been no repentance. People, prophet, priest, and king alike are spiritually dead, and all calls to repentance now are vain. With the cherubim packing up as it were, the Spirit evacuates the sanctuary; heaven is no longer on earth. Jerusalem will be laid waste. Yet the future is not closed. In spite of Israel’s disloyalty to the covenant the people swore at Sinai, Yahweh will not—cannot—be faithless to his promise to Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and David. God will circumcise their hearts, replacing their heart of stone with a fleshy heart and putting his Spirit in them. Remarkably, Ezekiel is given the privilege of speaking the equivalent of “let there be light!” in this new creation. As he proclaims life into the valley of dry bones, the Spirit enters them and clothes their parched, lifeless, and naked skeletons with flesh and life. Not only mere existence—like resuscitation, but lavish and abundant resurrection life appears as the whole community stands on its feet like an army ready for battle. The grand vision of Ezekiel 37 is of a whole people brought into the new creation by the Spirit of life.
Yet there is a danger of overreaction against the individualistic emphasis. We see this tendency especially (in rather different ways) in Karl Barth, Ernst Käsemann, in the various versions of the new perspective on Paul where eschatology and ecclesiology are set over against “getting saved,” and in liberation theologies wherever cosmic and sociopolitical revolution eclipse personal salvation.
In many ways, these various proposals are to be faulted more by what they leave out than by what they affirm. As with election, the recipients of redemption and its application are particular people. So too is regeneration. While it is indeed proper to see this new creation first and foremost as a sweeping eschatological reality encompassing the whole cosmos, the palingenesia (re-creation) of which Jesus spoke (Matt 19:28), it is just as true that each believer is a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Every believer is a microcosm of the renewed cosmos anticipated in Romans 8:18–30. Precisely because this new age has dawned, the individual is included. It is a question of logical priority. The historia salutis not only comes before the ordo salutis; the former is the canvas on which the particular figures are painted. In other words, the individual is part of the new creation because there is a decisive, epochal and cosmic new creation in the first place with Christ’s uniquely redemptive work as its achievement and “firstfruits.”
Although indisputably central in the biblical drama, the cross of Jesus is the culmination of an entire life of suffering and obedience on behalf of his people. The incarnation itself was an act of sacrificial love as the eternal Son set aside his regal splendor to assume the form of a servant, obedient throughout his life even “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6–8 ESV). By assuming our humanity, the eternal Son became the last Adam, undoing the first Adam’s treason. Nevertheless, we are not yet redeemed merely by his having taken our nature to himself nor even by his fulfillment of all righteousness and curse bearing in our place. He who was laid in the borrowed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is the same person who was raised but in a radically new condition.
The difference in these two conditions—and its significance for us—is explored in 1 Corinthians 15, especially verses 20–57. Gordon Fee notes that Paul’s argument targets those who considered themselves too “spiritual” (pneumatikos) for a resurrection. “In their view, by the reception of the Spirit, and especially the gift of tongues, they thought that they had already entered the true spirituality that is to be (4:8); already they had begun a form of angelic existence (13:1; cf. 4:9; 7:1–7) in which the body was unnecessary and unwanted, and would be finally destroyed.”4 Here we meet again the metaphysical dualism that I have touched on before. On the contrary, for Paul the flesh-Spirit contrast is that of the old age under sin and death versus the new age of righteousness and life.5 Christ is raised as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20). Thus, Jesus’s resurrection and ours are part of the same event; his is the beginning of the new creation, “but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (v. 24 ESV).6 Already the age to come has dawned in the middle of the history of this fading age of sin and death. Death is “the last enemy to be destroyed” (v.26). Carried along in the violent current, humanity is rushing toward a waterfall, plunging the race into everlasting death. Christ has emerged from the raging foam not merely as a survivor but as one who has in fact died but then emerged in an entirely new condition.
A farmer does not sow the plant that he harvests but a kernel. Every living thing has its own body with its own seed that determines its species, even if the seed is quite different in appearance from the plant it generates.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (1 Cor 15:42–44)
Jesus had to die not only to bear our guilt but to put an end to his existence (and ours) as corruptible flesh. Even the righteous Servant was a “living being” (nephesh) like all children of Adam, who could not live forever (Isa 53:12; see Gen 2:7). If he was to become the “life-giving Spirit,” his old existence—however untarnished from original and personal guilt—had to be buried in the earth before he could be reborn in everlasting glory. In the power of the Spirit, the risen Christ is not a different person but is a different sort of person than he was before, and not only as a private individual but as a public representative:
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor 15:45–49 ESV)
A striking comparison and contrast has been drawn frequently between 1 Corinthians 15 and Philo of Alexandria’s exegesis of Genesis 2:7. A contemporary of Paul, Philo was a Jewish philosopher who is also recognized as a founder of Middle Platonism. Like Stoics and Platonists generally, Philo believed that the highest and most refined creaturely material was a spiritual ether, akin to the idea of the world soul in Neoplatonism. However, like the Word (Logos), the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures is taken by Philo to be something or someone still more transcendent than a mere creature.7
Engaging Philo’s treatment, John Levison notes that Philo describes the spirit as “ ‘something if such there be better than aether-spirit, even an effulgence of the blessed, thrice blessed nature of the God’ (On the Special Laws 4.123), as ‘a genuine coinage of that dread [unseen] Spirit, the Divine and invisible One, signed and impressed by the seal of God, the stamp of which is the Eternal Word’ (On the Planting of Noah 18), and as the ‘divine breath that migrated hither from that blissful and happy existence for the benefit of our race a copy or fragment or ray of that blessed nature’ (On the Creation of the World 146).”8 Regardless of whether there was a direct influence on the Corinthians (or Paul), the parallels are as striking as the contrasts. Philo’s On the Creation of the World 134 cites the LXX translation of Genesis 2:7 exactly: “God formed man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life.”9 Philo argues that the first man was an ideal form (according to God’s image), “consisting neither of male nor female and ‘by nature incorruptible.’ ”10
The man of Genesis 2 is a copy of this ideal, a mortal made of body and soul, man or woman. In another treatise, he interprets Gen 2:7 even more tersely: “There are two types of men; the one a heavenly man, the other an earthly. The heavenly man, being made after the image of God, is altogether without part or lot in corruptible and terrestrial substance; but the earthly one was compacted out of matter scattered here and there, which Moses calls ‘clay’ ” (On the Allegorical Laws 1.31).11
Paul, however, reverses the order and makes Christ the “last Adam.”12 The first Adam is not spiritual and immortal (an eternal archetype) as in Philo, but earthly and not yet confirmed in immortality. This adam was living—he had existence from the Spirit who breathed the breath of life into his nostrils—but Christ is the source of resurrection or new-creation life for all united to him. Appealing to Romans 1:3–4, Levison notes the inseparability of the Spirit and Christ’s resurrection, but concludes that Philo is more consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures than Paul. This is part of Levison’s central thesis that according to the earliest and most dominant Israelite texts, “spirit” is something that God breathed into humankind in creation and that each living creature—human and nonhuman—has from the beginning rather than an endowment given later. “Philo recognizes, in a way that Paul does not, that the man of clay received the divine breath in full measure.”13
However, even if one accepts his thesis with respect to important and early texts (I remain unpersuaded), the main deficiency in Levison’s learned study is an underappreciation of eschatological and redemptive-historical development. Nothing in Genesis 1–3 suggests that Adam and Eve possessed the Spirit “without measure.” In fact, the first time that we encounter that description is in John 3:34–35 with reference to Jesus. Further, Levison’s chief presupposition (assumed rather than defended) is his identification of the Holy Spirit (understood in Christian terms as the third person of the Trinity) with the created spirit or breath of life that animates humans and animals.
Paul disagrees on both counts. First, the animating breath is creaturely, distinct from the animator who is God the Spirit. Second, Paul (like John) regards Jesus as the eschatological firstfruits of the new creation. Only with his resurrection and glorification can the Spirit be poured out on all flesh to bring all believers into this new relationship and condition in which humans possess not merely biological life (spirit/breath) from the first Adam but eschatological life (the indwelling and regenerating presence of the Holy Spirit) from the last Adam. Dunn writes that “the implication is clear . . . that in Christ, the last Adam, God’s purpose in creating Adam/man had been fulfilled” and that “Christ, that is the Christ who died and has been resurrected, provides the pattern for God’s saving purpose.”14 Thus, as we have come to expect, the Holy Spirit completes the human person, endowing the immortality and glory that Adam never experienced because he forfeited his vocation.
Born from the seed of Adam, even apart from the fall we would have been creatures of dust. Jesus too was “from the earth” with respect to his incarnation (cf. 1 Cor 15:47 ESV). Yet he is now “the man of heaven” (v. 48 ESV). By his resurrection and ascension, he has taken our humanity and its history with him into the glory of the age to come. He did not give this present age a new lease on life, improving the unregenerate through moral uplift. In his own person he took our unclean and mortal humanity into the grave, ending its existence under the curse. Yet he did not leave the nature that he shares with us in the grave but raised it to the right hand of the Father on high in a glorified condition.
Consequently, our confidence is not that we will leave behind our human nature as such but that it will be transformed into the image of the last Adam. Paul emphasizes that “we shall all be changed,” not into someone or something else but into a new condition of existence beyond our wildest imagining (vv. 50–52 ESV). It is not that our human nature will be replaced with a different body, but that “this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (v. 53). The same body sown in dishonor will be raised in honor. What Paul elsewhere calls “this body of death” (Rom 7:24 ESV) will not be repaired or even resuscitated but instead will be buried with all of its sin, suffering, and misery. Only by thus dying can this body be raised immortal. Further, Paul identifies the causal chain that leads to death in the first place: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (v. 56). Or elsewhere, “The wages of sin is death . . .” (Rom 6:23).
As long as the law has dominion over our destiny, the death sentence due to our transgression (both in Adam and our personal sin) remains in effect. But Jesus has been buried as the vicarious transgressor, “cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isa 53:8 ESV). He has left this condition—sin and death—in the grave, but not himself. Death has therefore lost, for himself and for us, its sting as a curse, the harbinger of the “second death” (Rev 20:14). Instead, death becomes the end of the old and the beginning of the new. This happens inwardly in regeneration but will happen publicly and visibly on the last day when Christ returns and the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us with him in immortal glory (Rom 8:11). “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57 ESV).
Consequently, the history of salvation (redemption accomplished) finds its proper and inseparable intersection with the order of salvation (redemption applied). Properly speaking, Christ himself is the new creation. He has been rendered such by the Holy Spirit, and everything united to him by the Spirit is not only a living being as in the first creation but fully alive in a way that no one before Christ’s advent had experienced. The same Spirit—who fashioned the human nature of the Son in the virgin’s womb, drove Jesus out into the wilderness for his temptation, upheld him in his distress, and empowered him as the righteousness-fulfilling, wonder-working, and Father-revealing Servant, and who also raised Jesus from the dead—this same Spirit now regenerates hearts by uniting us to Christ and indwelling us as the pledge and guarantee of our final resurrection. Jesus Christ indwells believers and the church, but by his Spirit, not immediately in the flesh (2 Cor 1:22; cf. Rom 8:17, 26; 1 Cor 3:16; Gal 4:6; Eph 5:18).
This new creation is the work of God. Not even the chosen people could circumcise their own hearts, but God has done this. How different is this vision from that of the Qumran community that separated from Jerusalem in order to consecrate themselves, believing that they were the new temple and Eden. The rigorous rules to which the members dedicated themselves were the means not only of their own participation in the new creation but of making atonement for their compatriots. Whether Paul had any explicit knowledge of the Qumran sect, it was this sort of confusion of the new covenant and its Spirit-powered emphasis with the Torah-observance of the old order that he had in view.
Further, this new creation is really new. It is not a return to paradise before the fall but something far greater: the Sabbath consummation that Adam forfeited as our representative head. Kuyper explains that “the dust of the ground out of which Adam was formed was so wrought upon that it became a living soul, which indicates the human being.”15 He continues:
The result was not merely a moving, creeping, eating, drinking and sleeping creature, but a living soul breathed into the dust. It was not first the dust, and then human life within the dust, and after that the soul with all its higher faculties in that human life; nay, as soon as life went forth into Adam, he was a man, and all his precious gifts were natural endowments.16
Only if he had succeeded in his commission would Adam together with Eve and their whole posterity have been endowed with supernatural grace.
Kuyper adds, “Sinful man being born from above receives gifts that are above nature. For this reason the Holy Spirit merely dwells in the quickened sinner. But in heaven this will not be so; for in death the human nature is so completely changed that the impulse to sin disappears entirely; wherefore in heaven the Holy Spirt will work in the human nature itself for ever and ever.”
Adam differed from the child of God by grace in not having eternal life; he was to attain this as the reward for holy works. On the other hand, Abraham, the father of the faithful, begins with eternal life, from which works were to proceed. Hence a perfect contrast. Adam must attain eternal life by works. Hence for Adam there can be no indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There was no antagonism between him and the Spirit. So the Spirit could pervade him, not merely dwell in him. The nature of sinful man repels the Holy Spirit, but Adam’s nature attracted Him, freely received Him, and let Him inspire his being.17
But now the Spirit “must come to us from without.”18 Jesus’s in-breathing upon the disciples, as a sign of Pentecost, showed that this fuller indwelling was now necessary.19
When we come to this subject, it is true that we should begin with the broadest eschatological horizon rather than with the individual’s experience of the new birth. The new creation is not simply the sum total of regenerate believers making a difference in the world. “Jesus said to [the Twelve], ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ ” (Matt 19:28). The ESV translation of palingenesia (“new world”) is more accurately rendered in the NIV as “the renewal of all things,” although the most precise would be “the regeneration of all things.” There is both an individual and collective import to this palingenesia, as implied in 2 Corinthians 5:17. The ESV reads, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” but I think that here also the NIV is closer: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” Both versions offer nearly identical renderings of the next clause: “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (ESV) and “the old has gone, the new is here!” (NIV). However, the ESV rendering of the first clause already prejudices a more individualistic and less eschatological view of the “new creation” (kainē ktisis).
So Moltmann, liberation theologians, and others are perfectly right to broaden the eschatological horizon, but an implicit postmillennialism fails to do justice to the difference between the Spirit’s work “in these last days” and his work when Christ returns “on the last day” of the old order. Paul points this up in 2 Corinthians 4: “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. . . . And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing” (vv. 1–3 ESV). But for those whom the Spirit is drawing, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (v. 6 ESV). Christ’s ambassadors follow him now in his humiliation, suffering for the sake of the gospel, to reign with him in glory in the future. For now, we are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (v. 10 ESV). “So,” he repeats, “we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (vv. 16–17). Notice that in both cases of his stating that “we do not lose heart,” Paul’s reason is not that things are getting better visibly. The world and our own bodies are falling apart—but we have a ministry that is powerful, advancing by Word and Spirit, and we are regenerated and being renewed inwardly in anticipation of the resurrection.
This is hardly the picture of a gradual conquest of the nations and cultures of this age. On the contrary, the installment of the new creation that dominates this present age is the regeneration of sinners and their incorporation through Spirit-given faith into the body of Christ, his church. Any notion of this world being destroyed would be anathema to the apostles, a denial of Christ’s resurrection. Nevertheless, there is no expectation in the New Testament that this phase of the palingenesia is going to transform the kingdoms of this age into the kingdom of Christ. Christ is saving his church by his Word and Spirit. The church is that part of the world that is being penetrated by the powers of the age to come, and whatever effects (sometimes notable) that the church has on the wider cultures it inhabits as sojourners is indirect fallout from Christ’s kingdom reign through his Spirit in his ecclesial body.
Thus, there is an alternative to either a truncated view of the new creation as simply something that the Spirit does within our hearts or an overrealized eschatology that makes us the agents rather than Christ of realizing the full effects of his cosmic redemption. According to this alternative (amillennial) view, the palingenesia occurs in two stages: first, an inward renewal of the elect by the Spirit; then, at Christ’s appearing the resurrection of the body and life everlasting in a wholly renewed cosmos. Despite all appearances to the contrary—including the continuing decay of our own bodies—our final resurrection-glorification is guaranteed by the Spirit’s indwelling presence as a security deposit. And the whole creation will rejoice to share in this release from the curse of sin and death (Rom 8:18–24). “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (v. 25 ESV).
Consequently, the Spirit’s descent brings disturbance and conflict into this present evil age. His indwelling presence brings both assurance of participation in Christ’s victory and warfare with the “old self.” The Spirit gives us new birth in that precarious intersection of the two ages. The Spirit’s work in our lives now is precisely what Jesus had indicated: “He will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14 ESV). The Spirit is at work wherever Christ is exalted in his saving office. Paul was so profoundly struck by the wonder of his identification with Christ that he thinks of Christ’s death and resurrection as his own—not because he was a profound mystic or had a vivid imagination by which he can place himself in Jesus’s shoes; much less because he saw Jesus as a model in whose footsteps he could strive toward Mount Zion. Rather, all of this is because the Holy Spirit is the one who united the former persecutor of the church to Christ.
The world thinks that what is necessary is a better creation, not a new one; it teaches that we need a more earnest dedication to bringing about the dream of a united humanity in service to an ethical kingdom through the education of the human race. Western culture is particularly dedicated to the natural heresy of the fallen heart: Pelagianism. But to the extent that regeneration is valued the Spirit will be valued as well. There is an analogy with Christology. If one thinks that postlapsarian humanity is basically healthy but lacking good examples and instructions, it follows that the remedy is a moral reformer who leads us back to God. Jesus gets us back on the right path after we have strayed. By following his example, we can regain our coordinates and make our way toward moral improvement. If instead we are the “ungodly” under divine condemnation, we require nothing less than divine rescue. Similarly, if we are merely sick, not “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1 KJV), then we need divine assistance and persuasive exhortation, not regeneration by the direct act of God himself who indwells us.
BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT: WHAT IS IT?
At last we are in a better position to consider baptism with the Spirit. Although it is first of all a cosmic, eschatological, and sweeping redemptive-historical reality, the new birth is something that can only be received personally. God has not only poured out his Spirit in history; in doing so, he has “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5 ESV, emphasis added).
The regeneration of all things began with Christ’s bodily regeneration-resurrection and will be consummated with the resurrection of our bodies and the restoration of the entire creation. Until then, each of us becomes inserted into this palingenesia by baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, as Titus 3:5 above attests (cf. Rom 6:1–10). To paraphrase Sinclair Ferguson, this palingenesia works from the outside in, not from the inside out. It is not first of all something that happens within us that may have some effects in the world but “transformation from without and from above, caused by participation in the power of the new age and more specifically by fellowship through the Spirit with the resurrected Christ as the second man, its first-fruits, the eschatological Adam (ho eschatos Adam, 1 Cor. 15:45).”20 He adds, “This is the note which became muted in the teaching of the post-apostolic church but which must be recovered.”21 Certainly growth in Christ requires effort on our part as we attend to the means of grace. Yet just as the fundamental reality is union with Christ, not just imitation of Christ, baptism in the Spirit is not something that the individual believer attains by ascesis (self-discipline) and ascent (mystical contemplation). It is first of all an objective reality, the Spirit who comes from the age to come, enveloping us in his cloud of glorious energies.
Seen in this light, our new birth is no longer treated merely as something that happens within us because of what Christ accomplished so long ago; it is a participation in his death and resurrection by the baptism of the Spirit. We are not only raised spiritually (and one day bodily) because Christ died and was raised; his resurrection and ours belong to the same event, as we have seen already from Paul’s analogy of firstfruits and full harvest. Before that consummation of the regeneration of all things, the Spirit is at work within us to raise us from spiritual death.
Baptism with the Spirit is Union with Christ
Strictly speaking, Jesus Christ is the new creation, and baptism with the Spirit is union with Christ. We have seen how the Spirit gave us Christ (in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension). The Spirit unites Christ to our humanity and then, after glorifying that humanity, unites us to Christ as our federal head (Rom 5). In Romans 6, Paul’s answer to the question, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” is to give more gospel (v. 1 KJV). All who are united to Christ in his death for forgiveness are united to him in his resurrection for new-creation life. One is either “in Christ” or not, but one cannot choose which aspects of his saving work to embrace.
One tragedy of contemporary debates is the separation of baptism into Christ from Spirit baptism and the separation of both from the sacrament of baptism. I will touch on this second point in the next chapter, but I want to focus here on the first problem. While there is, I believe, a distinction-without-separation between the sacrament of baptism and regeneration, I am not aware of a single passage that suggests even a distinction between baptism into Christ (for salvation) and Spirit baptism (for power). We are only “in the Spirit” because we are “in Christ.” It is better to say that we are baptized into Christ by the Spirit. Union with Christ through one and the same act of faith gives us every spiritual gift. There is “one baptism” (Eph 4:5) that is administered “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit” (Matt 28:19). To see the Spirit as a distinct source of heavenly blessing is to make him another mediator alongside Christ. Yet, as I have emphasized, every good gift comes from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.
In Christ our humanity has not only been restored but has been glorified—an exalted status that no human eye has ever seen, something beyond anything Adam and Eve experienced before the fall. Unlike Adam, Christ has passed the test and after his “six days” of labor entered the Sabbath glory of his Father in conquest over the powers of death and chaos. When we hear that Christ is “the radiance of God’s glory” (Heb 1:3), we should think not only of his deity but of the whole Christ, including his humanity. It is the Spirit’s active presence in us that keeps our eyes focused neither on himself nor on his work within us but on Christ to whom he has united us; and, not to Christ in general but to the Savior who died, was raised, and is seated at the Father’s right hand in glory. Contrary to popular misconceptions concerning the Spirit’s work, this actually keeps us from an unhealthy subjectivism.22 The Spirit’s ministry is to rivet our entire focus to Christ, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2 ESV). Any view that separates these two unions or baptisms is seriously in danger of undermining the gospel itself.
If pressed to identify the two principal gifts of the new covenant, the biblical answer seems clear: the forgiveness of sins and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There is a remarkable consistency on this point from the Old Testament prophets to the New Testament epistles. In the lodestar passages in the prophets anticipating the “new covenant,” it is these twin benefits that are especially highlighted (Jer 31:31–34; Ezek 36:25–27). Similarly, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as both “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and as “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (v. 33 NRSV). The double benefit of the good news of salvation and forgiveness brought by the Jubilee-Lord is bound up with the work of the Spirit when Jesus read Isaiah 61:1–2 in his first public appearance at the synagogue and announced himself as the Servant on whom the Spirit rests (Luke 4:18–19, quoting Isa 61:1–2).
At Pentecost, Peter proclaims forgiveness of sins in Christ as well as “the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Only after establishing the judicial basis—the ratification of the new covenant in his blood—could Jesus give the Holy Spirit to his people as the indwelling presence and pledge of Christ’s own dominion over sin and death. And, as John Stott points out, “Paul designated Christian ministers ‘ministers of a new covenant’ and went on at once to describe it as both ‘the dispensation of righteousness’ (i.e., justification) and ‘the dispensation of the Spirit’ (2 Cor 3:6–9).”23 Just as we have both justification and sanctification (and let us not forget glorification) in union with Christ, the Spirit’s baptism is the sign and seal of both. He is the Spirit of judgment and power.
Union with Christ is the motif that encompasses all of the gifts we receive in salvation. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” around 160 times.24 Its goal is to make us adopted children of the Father and coheirs with Christ. As Calvin observes, we do not seek for some saving gifts in Christ and others elsewhere, even in the Spirit. We find even our anointing with the Spirit by being united with Christ in his baptism. “Therefore, let us drink from that fountain, and no other.”25 Yet, Calvin adds, “No particle of grace from God may come to us except through the Holy Spirit.”26 The danger of identifying Jesus and the Spirit as two sources of different baptisms is that we forget that every good gift always comes from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit’s work. We do not look to Christ for one level of salvation and to the Spirit for another, but we look to Christ who works by his Spirit through the word.
To Israel God says that as long as the people obey his law, it will be “my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5–6 NRSV). And yet, in Christ this same designation is true of all believers because of what Christ, the true Israel, has accomplished and the Spirit has applied. Not only the common but even the ungodly can be justified and cleansed, even those who “were not a people” and “had not received mercy” (1 Pet 2:9–10; cf. Eph 2:12–13).
Jesus’s baptism by John was merely typological of the baptism that he experienced for us at Calvary. In his active obedience, we are holy (John 17:19). Because he was cut off for us in his hellish baptism and was raised and glorified, in our baptism we pass through the waters of judgment safely on dry ground. We have been saved out of the world. Therefore, even before Jesus tells the disciples about their own fruit-bearing life as part of the vine he declares, “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3 NRSV).
SPIRIT BAPTISM: A “SECOND BLESSING”?
If it is true that the Spirit unites us to the whole Christ for all spiritual blessings, the New Testament just as emphatically teaches that all believers share equally in the Spirit’s baptism (2 Cor 12:13; Eph 4:4). There is no difference in legal status among adopted and justified heirs, and there are no degrees of regeneration: one is either dead or alive. Even in sanctification, though some believers are more mature in their faith and love, all are definitively holy, set apart to the Lord as his own special people.
Exceptions in Acts
Advocates of a separate baptism of the Spirit appeal to examples in Acts. In Acts 8, some Samaritans who had “received the word of God” and had been baptized “in the name of the Lord Jesus” received the Spirit only when the apostles arrived to pray and lay hands on them (vv. 14–17). Something similar happened in Ephesus, reported in Acts 19. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” Paul asked a group of believers (v. 2 ESV).
And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. (Acts 19:2b–6 ESV)
Here is an instance of the limits of inductive Bible study. The meaning is obvious and noncontroversial to both sides in the debate. The decisive question is more deductive: the interpretation of particular passages in the light of other relevant passages. Pentecostals come to Acts 8 and 19 presupposing that they are paradigmatic for us today, and non-Pentecostals come to the same passages presupposing that they are unique episodes in the first generation of believers. For example, John Stott comments:
Because this Samaritan incident was so clearly abnormal, it is difficult to see how most Pentecostal and some charismatic Christians can regard it as constituting a norm for today that the Holy Spirit is given subsequently to conversion. It is equally difficult to justify the Catholic view that the Spirit is given only through the imposition of apostolic hands (which they understand as meaning the hands of bishops regarded as ‘in the apostolic succession’). Is it not clear from the rest of the New Testament that both the timing and the means of the gift to the Samaritans were atypical?27
For exegetical-theological reasons that I hope to have demonstrated above, it should not surprise anyone that I share Stott’s perspective. The book of Acts is less a blueprint than it is the announcement of the acts of Christ by his Spirit through the apostles, of whom there are no living successors. There is no reason to assume that all of the marvelous signs of the Spirit’s outpouring in the apostolic era are normative today. This is true especially when the norm for all Christians is spelled out so clearly in the Epistles, which teach that baptism into Christ is the Spirit’s baptism and that all those who are in Christ share in his anointing.
The Samaritans in Acts 8 had been dazzled by Simon the Magician’s tricks (vv. 9–11). “But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (v. 12 ESV). The contrast between Simon’s magic and Philip’s preaching of the gospel and baptism seems more than passing. “Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip”—but the next clause is telling: “And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed” (v. 13 ESV). (Later, he tried to purchase the apostles’ power to bestow the Spirit [vv. 18–24].) Rejoicing at the news of the gospel’s success in Samaria, the apostles “sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit” (vv. 14–17 ESV). They had not received the Spirit when they believed, but not because their case was normative; rather, the explicit reason given for their not having received the Spirit is that they had “only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It is a step beyond John’s baptism, but it is still not the triune formula that Jesus mandated in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20). Pentecost is now being brought to the next ring, from Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria. Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, “preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans” along the journey (v. 25 ESV). We are not told whether the gospel met with success in these villages, but if it did the apostles would have baptized them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
If Samaria is one ring outside of Jerusalem and Judea, Ephesus belongs to “the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8 KJV). So it is not surprising that the Ephesians were even more deficient in their understanding than the Samaritans. Acts 19 identifies them as “disciples” (v. 1). Paul asks them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (v. 2). This is not a normative question for us to ask believers today, but it is a reasonable question for an apostle to ask Ephesian disciples who had not yet known about, much less received, the Holy Spirit and had received only John’s baptism. “They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit’ ” (v. 2). And notice the logic in Paul’s response: “Into what then were you baptized?” (v. 3 ESV, emphasis added). Assuming that Jesus is the author of the triune formula for baptism in the Great Commission and that this formula was already standard for legitimate baptism in Paul’s day, I would insert “name” into Paul’s question: “Into what name then were you baptized?” This interpretation is supported by their answer at v. 3: “Into John’s baptism,” which of course lacked a Trinitarian formula.
Now it all makes sense, Paul must have been thinking. John’s baptism was different from the one that Christ inaugurated. It is not that John was non-Trinitarian (at least implicitly) but that the Spirit by whom we are baptized had not yet been poured out. Paul explains to them, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus” (v. 4 ESV). So Paul laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and prophesied (v. 6).
The Lord’s commission to send the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then to “the uttermost part of the world” is already being fulfilled at Ephesus. There were no gentiles (apart from converts to Judaism) at Pentecost, but now a little Pentecost is brought to them, and the apostles interpreted these episodes as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the speeches of Peter and James at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:15–18). Explaining how by his own mouth gentiles were embracing Christ, Peter says that God gave “them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith” (vv. 8–9 ESV).
In this foundation-laying era of the extraordinary ministry of the apostles, we would expect extraordinary foundation-laying episodes that are not normative for our era of the ordinary ministry. Luke concludes this report in Acts 19 by saying, “There were about twelve men in all” (v. 7). Perhaps it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that Luke finds the number significant. Though hardly the twelve apostles, they represent the movement of the Great Commission from the inner and second rings to the third.
In any case, even if these instances are normative, they would be only in relation to a specific set of circumstances—with disciples who profess faith in Christ but are unaware of the Holy Spirit and have been baptized by John or “in the name of Jesus” apart from the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit. If anything, these passages press us to see not only a closer relationship between Christ and the Spirit but between the sacrament of baptism and baptism into Christ by the Spirit.
Baptism, Filling, and Sealing
I appreciate Stott’s argument that while Spirit baptism is enjoyed by all who are united to Christ through faith, there are degrees of “filling.” He notes that the emphasis in 1 Corinthians 12:4–13 on all believers sharing in one baptism by one Spirit prohibits the idea that “some have it, others have not”; rather, “it is the great uniting factor.”28 Paul makes the same point in Ephesians 4:4–5: all believers share equally in “one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism. . . .” Therefore, Stott concludes, “When we speak of the baptism of the Spirit we are referring to a once-for-all gift; when we speak of the fullness of the Spirit we are acknowledging that this gift needs to be continuously and increasingly appropriated.”29 He notes, “No apostolic sermon or letter contains an appeal to be baptized with the Spirit. Indeed, all seven New Testament references to baptism with the Spirit are in the indicative, whether aorist, present or future; none is an exhortation in the imperative.” Nowhere are believers called to be baptized with the Spirit, but they are called to be filled more and more with the Spirit—that is, “under the influence” of his intoxicating grace (Eph 5:8, 18–21).30 The “unspiritual” in Corinth (1 Cor 3:1–4) “had been baptized with the Spirit, and richly gifted by the Spirit, but they were not (at least at the time of his visit and letter to them) filled with the Spirit.”31 I would only want to emphasize that this “filling” is continual and fluctuates. It is not necessarily the case that we become more filled with the passing of years in Christ. Like natural breathing, there are times when we take in pleasant aromas more deeply. We long for the Spirit’s indwelling presence to fill every nook and cranny of our thoughts, hopes, dreams, loves, and actions—to be led by him rather than by our sinful passions.
As with consecration, “filling” deserves to be placed in its broader redemptive-historical context. In Exodus 28 God commands Moses to bring Aaron and his sons to him “to serve me as priests” (v. 1 ESV). “And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood” (vv. 2–3 ESV). Once more, “a spirit of skill” is a translation decision. However, the verb “filled” seems to suggest that the Holy Spirit is intended: God has “filled [them] with the Spirit of wisdom” (ruakh khokmah), so that these artisans may deck Aaron and his sons with “glory and beauty,” frequent associations with the Spirit. The garments mark the priests out as new officers of the Adamic vocation. A similar event occurs when God calls Moses to set apart Bezalel to construct the tabernacle and its furnishing along with the garments for Aaron and the priests. “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (Exod 31:3–5 ESV). (The ESV translation does render the phrase “the Spirit of God” here, supporting the same translation in Exodus 28:3.)
Stringing together seminal examples, John Levison observes that in both cases, filling is central. “They are filled with all that it will take to design and to construct a tent for God’s presence in a desert that otherwise is apparently empty, void of God.”32 He continues:
This verb’s sense of full-filling is especially apparent in temporal contexts, when periods of time must be completed or fulfilled. A period of purification could be completed—‘filled’ (Lev 12:4, 6). A vow could be ‘fulfilled’ (Num 6:4). Sieges [sic] could come to an end—‘be filled’ (Esth 1:5). Babylonian exile would eventually be over—be filled (Jer 25:12). All of these sorts of completion are depicted by the verb ml’, which functions synonymously with the verb tmm, to indicate completeness, fullness, or an end (Lev 25:29–30). . . . This verb, which takes us to the experience of completion, of fulfilling, also appears in spatial contexts. God is able to fill the tent of meeting (Exod 40:34), the earthly temple (1 Kgs 8:10), and the heavenly temple (Isa 6:1). . . . This is very much the case with respect to the glory of God, or the cloud, which fills the temple (1 Kgs 8:11; Ezek 43:5).33
Thus, “Filling connotes completion, full-filling, fruition, wholeness, fullness.”34 In Exodus 40:35, Moses couldn’t even enter the tent because God’s glory filled it.35 This is consistent with the many examples that we have seen of the Spirit’s identification with completion of the Father’s work in the Son—hence, his identification especially with the “last days.”
This great work of the Spirit within us is not only described as a baptism and a filling but also as a sealing, as in Ephesians 1:13–14 ESV: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” A similar form of expression occurs in Romans 8. The indwelling Spirit is a guarantee of our sharing in Christ’s resurrection glory (v. 10), even as his presence also makes us “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23 ESV). All believers are equally sealed by the Spirit for glory. As the other “attorney” (paraklētos), the Spirit inwardly convicts us of our guilt but also of righteousness—that is, our justification in Christ. The legal aspect of his job description is uppermost. It is by this Spirit’s inner testimony to the gospel that provokes us to cry, “Abba! Father!” (v. 15). “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs . . .” (vv. 16–17).
We have encountered this close connection between the Spirit and judgment several times. Not only does Jesus speak of it directly in John 16:8, but Peter’s Pentecost sermon is judicial—the announcement of God’s vindication of Jesus Christ, and the Spirit brings inward conviction that leads to repentance and faith as the people are “cut to the heart.” Yet there is one more possible connection: the ruse of Tamar in Genesis 38. Having survived her husband and brothers-in-law yet without issue, Tamar poses as a prostitute, and her father-in-law, Judah, impregnates her. In order to have proof of his intention to make the child an heir, she demands his staff, cord, and signet ring as a pledge. If Paul has this story in mind when thinking about a seal or pledge, then it is probably for the reason suggested by John Levison:
Perhaps the most obvious answer is that Perez, one of the twins who was conceived by this sexual union, was the ancestor of David, the messiah. Tamar herself is included among the ancestors of Jesus in Matthew’s genealogy (Matt 1:3). In other words, Judah and Tamar occupy a pivotal point in a long lineage of promise. . . . This story of promise fits perfectly the context of the conclusion to 2 Corinthians 1. Paul is passionate in his affirmation that all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ Jesus.36
It is within this context that we can better understand the sealing of the Spirit in Ephesians 1:13–14. First, it assumes adult converts are the audience (especially gentile converts, since he switches from “we who were the first to hope in Christ” to “in him you also, when you heard . . . and believed in him, were sealed . . .” [1:12–13 ESV]). Adult baptism must always follow a credible profession of faith. Second, this sealing is consequent upon trust in Christ. This faith is not merely adherence to certain facts but is the result of hearing “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation” (v. 13 ESV). Here again the Spirit and the Word are intertwined. The Spirit does not give faith directly or immediately but through the preaching of the gospel. Third, trusting in Christ, these converts were then “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” which is the New Testament way of saying “baptized” (v. 13 ESV).
The Spirit is the “guarantee” or “pledge of our inheritance” (v. 14). The old covenant law forbade requiring a poor person’s cloak as a ransom or a pledge for repayment. Closer to our experience is the credit system. Jesus Christ has already purchased our entire redemption. Nevertheless, we do not presently enjoy our salvation in its fullness. Paul says in Romans 8 that we will not experience our adoption as children of God in the fullest sense until our bodies are raised. But the Holy Spirit has been given to us as the Trinity’s down payment, guaranteeing the disbursement of funds from the treasury of Christ’s infinite merit until one day we are not only justified and in the process of being sanctified but stand glorified and untouched by temptation in the world to come. That may be a future hope, but the present possession of the Holy Spirit is a pledge and in some sense a foretaste of that great and glorious day. Like baptism and unlike “filling” with the Spirit, the sealing with the Spirit is an objective reality. The Spirit witnesses within us, subjectively, but he appeals to the external Word. One may not “feel saved” in every moment. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit is the pledge that one is saved, feelings notwithstanding. As I argue below, water baptism is the sign and seal of this objective promise, which is why the Reformers and their heirs have encouraged those with an anxious conscious to look to their baptism as God’s pledge of goodwill.
Further, this sealing is for the praise of God’s glory in Ephesians 1. The ultimate aim of this plan of salvation, from election in v. 4 to our glorification for which we hope, is God’s everlasting glory. This phrase “to the praise of his glory” (eis epainon [tēs] doxēs autou) or “to the praise of his glorious grace” (eis epainon doxēs tēs charitos autou) appears in v. 6 in connection with our election in Christ, in v. 12 in connection with our trusting in Christ, and finally in v. 14 in connection with our glorification. This sealing with the Spirit orients us toward the future. Levison notes:
Filling with the holy spirit [sic] is intended to provide certainty of the future and an orientation toward the future. If it does not—if this filling yields a preoccupation with the present, a spiritual narcissism—then the fullness of that pledge, the wholeness of that seal, the power of the holy spirit (Rom 15:13), is sadly diminished. Filling with the spirit, in brief, sets believers in the context of a magnificent drama that stretches from Abraham and Sarah to an unknown future. The seal and pledge of the holy spirit confirm for believers that their future is secure, that the God who fulfilled ancestral promises will fulfill the promise made to believers.37
This sealing is not just our personal possession but is a guarantee of our sharing in the family of God’s love. On the basis of its personal assurance, this sealing turns us outward to others.
The sealing, sending, and receiving of the spirit convey the transformation of a slave into a human subject, into a son or daughter. This is a jarring experience that turns a property owner and his or her property into brothers and sisters, that supplants a spirit of lifelong anxiety with a fresh influx of familial embrace, and that produces a passionate love affair stronger than death.38
God in his grace is the Alpha and Omega of our salvation. This is the logic of the whole chapter of Ephesians 1: God chose us in Christ, not in ourselves. That is the only reason we are holy and blameless before him. He loves us in Christ, not because we are lovely in ourselves. He gathers us together in Christ, in whose sonship with the Father alone we enjoy our adoption. Even our trusting in Christ is attributable only to God’s grace to us in Christ by his Spirit. God does it all, so he must receive all the glory.
1. Gerhardus Vos, “The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Concept of the Spirit,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001), 91–125; Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. John R. De Witt (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1997), 42–59.
2. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 5. See also Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1973); David P. Wright, “Unclean and Clean (OT),” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:729–41. Cf. The Mishnah, trans. Herbert Danby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), especially Kelim 1:1–9, and appendix four, “The Rules of Uncleanness” (800–804).
3. For excellent studies of the tabernacle and temple imagery, see G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004).
4. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 715.
5. One of the most superb treatments of this Pauline contrast remains Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. J. R. de Witt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 91–104.
6. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1987), 33–74.
7. See B. A. Stegmann, Christ, the ‘Man from Heaven’: A Study of 1 Corinthians 15, 45–47 in the Light of the Anthropology of Philo Judaeus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1927); cf. Matthew Goff, “Genesis 1–3 and Conceptions of Humankind in 4QInstruction, Philo and Paul,” in Studies in Scripture and Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Craig A. Evans, LNTS 15 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 114–25.
8. Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 247.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 310.
12. Ibid., 310–11.
13. Ibid., 311.
14. James D. G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 137.
15. Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri De Vries (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 34.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 35. He adds, “To Adam spiritual things were not a supernatural, but a natural good—except eternal life, which he must earn by fulfilling the law.”
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 35–36.
20. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 118.
21. Ibid.
22. See Sinclair Ferguson’s helpful comments along this line in Holy Spirit, 99–100.
23. John Stott, Baptism and Fullness, IVP Classics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 32.
24. Ferguson, Holy Spirit, 100.
25. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Lewis Ford Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2.16.19.
26. John Calvin, “1539 Institutes,” in John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 294.
27. Stott, Baptism and Fullness, 43.
28. Stott, Baptism and Fullness, 51.
29. Ibid., 62.
30. Ibid., 65.
31. Ibid., 66 (emphasis original).
32. Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 56.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 57.
35. Ibid., 57–58.
36. Ibid., 257–58.
37. Ibid., 259.
38. Ibid., 278–79.