What is Spirit Baptism?

Luke 3:16; Acts 1:5; 2:1-4; Romans 6:3-4; 1 Corinthians 12:13

When a company introduces a new product, service, feature, or system, we call this a “rollout.” And such rollouts (or “launches”) are pivotal moments in the life and success of a company, industry, and sometimes entire culture and society. Perhaps you remember some of these iconic product launches in recent years?

• Dyson Vacuum Cleaners (1993)
• Sony Playstation (1994)
• Microsoft Windows 95 (1995)
• Apple iPhone (2007)
• Tesla Model S (2012)

Major rollouts represent the culmination of months or even years of research, development, investment, and marketing. A successful launch can move a company forward to new heights, while a poorly executed launch can bring a company to an end.

In God’s great plan for history, from creation to eternity, he has been systematically, faithfully working out the way of rescuing mankind from the horrible problem of sin and death and bringing us back into a close, never-ending relationship with him.

The Old Testament records for us approx. four thousand years of this plan, from the Garden of Eden to the kings and prophets of Israel and the powerful empires of the world. All of this culminates in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is revealed as both God and man, our perfect, once-for-all Savior and King.

In the New Testament, Spirit baptism was introduced.

It is at this point in God’s great plan of redemption that he begins to introduce something new called “the church.” This major launch, though something new, was the culmination of centuries and millennia of faithful, loving preparation, planning, and investment by God and would be his special way of bringing people throughout the world into a close relationship both with him and with one another in a way never before possible.

And while the church began (or was “launched”) on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 and continues to this day, its actual “roll out,” so to speak, begins in the Gospels. For instance, Christ spoke about the church as something that was coming in the near future when he said, “I will build my church” (Mt 16:18).

In this brief statement, he revealed that the church would be an assembly of people who brought together by God through a shared belief in Jesus Christ as God and Savior. This would begin to happen at some point in the near future (he said, “I will,” not, “I am,” or, “I have,” etc.). Also, this would be a personal project for him as he would be the primary one bringing this group together and this assembly would belong to him (“my church”). This statement was a part of his “rollout” strategy for the church.

But there was another key part of his rollout strategy, too, and this key part was a series of progressive announcements about something called “Spirit baptism.” Let me show this series of announcements to you now.

John the Baptizer predicted Spirit baptism. (Lk 3:16)

Before Christ began his public ministry, God called a man named John the Baptizer to prepare people for the teaching ministry of Christ. As part of his method for preparing people, he baptized them in the Jordan River as the way for them to publicly acknowledge their need to turn from sin and to begin a new way of life, which would be following and trusting in Christ whenever his public teaching ministry began in the days ahead. In some ways, his ministry served like a spiritual “Kickstarter Campaign,” in which people agreed ahead of time to follow Christ when he was finally revealed. As part of his teaching, John the Baptizer said this:

I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Lk 3:16)

So, John used his water baptism method in the present to explain something that Christ would do for his followers in the future. John baptized people with water, but Jesus would baptize them with the Holy Spirit, instead.

The word “baptize” means “to immerse.” It does not mean to dip something into water or to sprinkle something with water. It doesn’t even mean to pour water over something. Both in the Bible and in ancient writings outside of the Bible, it only and always means to immerse. In other words, it means to be completely and fully submersed and surrounded by water. Though John the Baptizer didn’t offer any details about what this immersion by the Holy Spirit would be, he did say that Christ would do it for all of his followers, just as John the Baptizer immersed all of his followers in water.

Jesus Christ promised Spirit baptism. (Acts 1:5)

As you already may know, the same man – Luke – wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts; these two books are like a two-volume set, with the first book telling us what Jesus began to do and teach through his life on earth and the second book telling us what Jesus continued to do and teach through the church on earth in his place. Knowing this, can you see how Luke points back to what John the Baptizer said about Jesus?

John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. (Acts 1:5)

When Jesus said this, he had risen from the dead approx. forty days earlier and was about to ascend upwards into heaven to sit on the throne of God within minutes. It’s at this very moment that he chose to bring up what John the Baptizer said about him baptizing or immersing his followers with the Holy Spirit. Pretty neat, right?

Notice how he basically quotes or paraphrases what John the Baptizer said, but then he gives a more specific explanation of the time when this would happen. He doesn’t just vaguely imply that this would happen sometime in the future (as John did), he says that it would happen “not many days from now.” Can you see how this roll out is happening? Months, weeks, or days before the ministry of Christ began, we are told that Jesus would baptize his followers with the Holy Spirit sometime in the future. Now after the ministry of Christ is complete, we are told that Jesus would baptize his followers with the Holy Spirit within days.

Luke reported Spirit baptism.

Not long after Christ said this and ascended up to heaven to sit on the throne of God, he sent the Holy Spirit just as John the Baptizer had predicted and Jesus had promised. This happened only ten days later as the Jews were celebrating the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-4).

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now, when this happened, the crowd consisted of Jewish people. But a similar event actually happened again in Samaria with a crowd of people who believed on Christ but were not Jews but ethnically mixed Jew/Gentiles, called Samaritans (Acts 8:4-8, 14-25).
Then another similar event happened later on farther north, in Caesarea, with yet another crowd of people who believed on Christ but were fully Gentile and not Jewish at all (Acts 10:44-48). About this third occurrence, Peter said this when he explained it afterwards:

Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If therefore God gave them the same gift as he gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:16-17)

From this explanation, we see four important details that help us to better understand what Spirit baptism is and why this was an important roll out in God’s great plan of redemption for the world.

• First, we see that Spirit baptism was for every person who believes on Christ. This is not something Christ does for Jewish believers, or partially Jewish believers, but for non-Jewish believers, too. In other words, Christ will baptize with the Holy Spirit anyone in the world who believes on him as God and Savior from any cultural or ethnic background. He does not favor one culture or ethnicity over another.
• Second, this is the very thing that John the Baptizer predicted, and Jesus promised; that’s why Peter quoted here what Jesus had said in Acts 1:5.
• Third, being baptized with the Holy Spirit is a gift from God (specifically from Jesus Christ). It is something that God does for us and gives to us by his grace and is not something that we can earn or somehow achieve.
• Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, Christ gives us this gift and does this for us and to us at the very moment we believe on Christ as God and Savior. Notice how Peter says, “he gave [this] to us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.” This happens when we believe on Christ.

So, we see that after John the Baptizer predicted Spirit baptism before Christ’s public ministry, then Jesus promised it himself after his public ministry was complete. This was – as it were – the preview marketing campaign. And after this, we see that Spirit baptism was officially rolled out in Acts, first to a Jewish audience, then a partially Jewish audience, then to a non-Jewish audience, making it clear that Spirit baptism was for any person from any ethnic or cultural background. We also see that this is a gift that Christ gives to everyone who believes on him as God and Savior and that he does this for us the very moment that we believe on Christ.

Paul explained Spirit baptism.

This brings us to how this relates to the church. Only a few short years after these key events which introduced Spirit baptism occurred, Paul wrote a letter to a church in the city of Corinth, a church which had not been directly involved in any one of those key events previously mentioned. And in this letter he describes the church as a body – not a physical human body with many parts but a spiritual body with many parts, and this spiritual body is brought together and assembled by and through Spirit baptism (1 Cor 12:12-13).

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

Now, we will learn more about what it means for the church to be a body or “the body of Christ on earth” in a future, later sermon. But for today, the important thing that we need to focus on is how being baptized or immersed in the Holy Spirit not only brings us into a close relationship with God but how it also brings us into a close relationship with one another.

The church is a group of people who are brought together by Spirit baptism.

Okay, now let’s try to pull all of this information together in a way that improves how we think, feel, and behave towards the church. The way that we can do this is to first realize that the people of the church, a church, are a group of people who are assembled and gathered together by two important features: our spiritual belief and our spiritual identity.

As a church, we are joined together by a shared belief that Jesus Christ is our God and Savior. Though the Bible, God’s Word, speaks about many other things which also influence the way that we think, feel, and behave as a church, this is the central, defining factor through which God brings us together as an assembly, a building, a gathering, and a group. We are not (or should not be) joined together around a shared focus on any other cultural, social, political, professional, financial, recreational, or other belief. We are (or should) be joined together by a shared belief in Jesus Christ alone as God and Savior.

But this shared belief alone is not the only way that we are joined together, otherwise our relationship to one another as a church would be merely formal, intellectual, institutional, contractual, and organizational. But our relationship to one another as the church is more than intellectual and institutional – it is deeply personal and relational, too, because we are brought together by God at the deepest level of our being, which is spiritual.

This way that we are joined together is a real, actual connection that we have to one another in which we are all equally and completely united to God through Christ because we are completely immersed in, placed into, and filled with the third person of God himself, the Holy Spirit. So, we are not just intellectually “on the same page” or “in agreement,” as it were, about our shared belief in Jesus Christ as God and Savior, but we are, in fact, really and truly made by God to be members of the same family, brought into the closest possible union with God himself and therefore also brought into the closest possible union with one another, as well. We are actually brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is why, it seems, that the New Testament elsewhere describes the relationship between Christ and the church as a marriage and why it also describes the relationship between people in the church as a family. So, if we are going to cherish the church as Christ does, we must learn to view our relationship with Christ together as a marriage and our relationship in Christ with one another as a family. This is what Spirit baptism does – it brings us into a close, complete, and permanent relationship with God and one another all at the same time.

Spirit baptism spiritually connects us both to God and one another in a close, complete, and permanent way.

Pastor Dustin Benge describes the church this way:

We are brothers and sisters to Christ through our second birth into his family … By nature, we are born in sin, wholly separated from God, but in Christ, we are adopted into God’s family … Reading the New Testament is like looking through a family picture album or hearing the family history recited by a grandparent. The church is God’s household and our family.

So, with these thoughts in mind, please turn to Romans 6:1-14 to see how this close relationship we have from being fully placed, immersed, and baptized into the Holy Spirit at baptism should affect our daily lives.

It puts every believer into union with Christ.

From this passage, we see that through Spirit baptism (illustrated by water baptism), we are made one with Christ, united so closely, fully, and personally with him that his death has become our death, and his resurrection has become our resurrection. In other words, when he died, we died, and when he rose from the dead, we rose from the dead.

For this reason, we should choose in our daily lives to live in a way that corresponds or matches this actual, true reality. Though I may feel the strong urge to give in to temptation, to sin, or to make wrong choices, I must instead choose to “recognize” who I am in Christ, one who is freed from the power of sin, so who therefore is free to do right.

I must learn to recognize and act as though what I believe about Christ is actually true, because it is. Since Christ is my God and Savior, then I no longer have to give in to the power of sin at work in my life. It no longer has any mandatory power over me because Christ has placed me into union with him by the Holy Spirit, and sin has no power over Christ as God and Savior.

To illustrate, think back to a boss you had in high school or college who was not particularly nice but who you obeyed because they paid you. How did you feel when your boss gave you an order or called you up to demand that you come in for work? Now, how would you feel if that same boss called you up by phone years later, long after you had left that job and moved on to better things? You might still feel afraid or compelled to go to work, and of course you can voluntarily give in to those feelings.

But you don’t have to anymore. Why? Because you have an entirely different relationship with that boss today, one that is free from his power and authority over your life. Because we have been brought into union with Christ through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You don’t just believe that Jesus Christ is your God and Savior, you are in a close, complete, and permanent relationship with him, which frees you from the power of sin in your life. Though this is always true, we must train ourselves to live accordingly.

But we must let Spirit baptism and our real oneness with Christ change our mindset, affections, and behavior in one other important way. Our close relationship with Christ through Spirit baptism is the vertical reality, but our close relationship with one another is the horizontal reality that comes from Spirit baptism.

It puts every believer into union with one another.

As Paul said in 1 Cor 12:13:

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

This means that no matter what our ethnic, cultural, or social backgrounds may be, and what our other differences may be, our shared belief in Jesus Christ as God and Savior has made us so closely and completely connected to one another in a permanent and personal way that we should choose to treat one another the same way, too. This means, of course, that we should formally and actually commit ourselves to one another.

This is one reason why choosing to become a member of a church is so important. But more than that, our close spiritual union with one another requires us to treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ who unite together for life and Christian service. This means that we seek and accept one another’s input, support, and care, and that we commit to serving, supporting, and caring for one another in a close and personal way, meeting not only one another’s physical needs, but more importantly one another’s spiritual needs – for we are one in Christ.

To live this way is not natural – to do so is supernatural. We are more naturally drawn to relationships with a more physical aspect and to priorities which are more material and temporal in nature. What’s more, our cultural increasingly diminishes, downplays, and devalues the priority of church relationships and commitments, which causes us to drift further and further away from the spiritual reality of our oneness in Christ and the central place that church relationships, commitment, and service should have in our lives. Without this church reality as a prominent value in our lives, other priorities and gods fill the void and we live increasingly individualistic, isolated, and spiritually unfulfilled lives.

US culture (incl. Christian culture) over-emphasizes personal, individual discovery and satisfaction to the detriment of the social, community welfare and peace. The result is an increasingly anxious, hyper-fractured society that lacks relationship, resilience, stability and peace. The solution to this problem comes in part and in a major way by cherishing the church as followers of Christ. And if and when doing so is difficult and hard, we must choose not to abandon or withdraw from the church but rather to involve ourselves even more devotedly to her healing, help, and flourishing. This is what Spirit baptism makes possible and requires of those who follow Christ by faith.

That’s why we need to be taught about Spirit baptism because we cannot see the Holy Spirit with our eyes. Yet he is God’s gift to us at salvation who places us into a real oneness with Christ and also brings us together as a church into a real oneness of relationship. We must act upon this real, spiritual relationship that we share with one another and with Christ through our actions, choices, priorities, and prayers. The more we learn to cherish the church in this way, the more we will experience the spiritual reality of God’s plan and purpose for our lives.

Spirit baptism is the way that God unites believers together with Christ and one another. This immersion in the Holy Spirit makes the church a spiritual family. It binds us vertically to Christ, freeing us from sin’s power, and horizontally to each other, overcoming things which naturally divide us. As believers, we are called to live out this reality daily, embracing our union with Christ to overcome sin and our union with one another to love and serve as true brothers and sisters. Through Spirit baptism, God has not only saved us but has formed us into his body and family, where we reflect his grace and unity to the world. May we learn to cherish the church by committing ourselves to live as though we are one with Christ and one with one another.

Discussion Questions
Life101

• How often have you heard about Spirit Baptism in a church or other Christian context? If not often, why do you think that is?
• Dustin Benge said that “reading the New Testament is like looking through a family picture album.” How does Spirit baptism help us to understand this reality?
• How does Spirit baptism help us to view all members of the church as spiritually equal before God?
• Based on Acts 11:16-17, how can we respond to Christians who say that Spirit baptism is a second event after conversion of deeper experience of the Holy Spirit’s power and presence?
• Through Spirit baptism, we are made one with Christ, or, in other words, united to Him. What do we mean when we say we are united to Christ?
  • What are some habits that we could develop to apply our union with Christ to our daily lives?
• How would you describe a church body that is shaped by their shared union with Christ and connection to one another? How would they behave?
• If we understood and appreciated Spirit baptism as presented in the Scriptures, how might that affect our thoughts and feelings toward church membership?

Digging Deeper

• How often have you heard about Spirit Baptism in a church or other Christian context? If not often, why do you think that is?
• The church is brought together by a shared belief in Christ as God and Savior, and by a shared identity through Spirit baptism. Are both necessary? If so, what is the significance of each?
• Dustin Benge said that “reading the New Testament is like looking through a family picture album.” How does Spirit baptism help us to understand this reality?
• How does Spirit baptism help us to view all members of the church as spiritually equal before God?
• Based on Acts 11:16-17, how can we respond to Christians who say that Spirit baptism is a second event after conversion of deeper experience of the Holy Spirit’s power and presence?
  • What are some habits that we could develop to apply our union with Christ to our daily lives?
• How would you describe a church body that is shaped by their shared union with Christ and connection to one another? How would they behave?
• If we understood and appreciated Spirit baptism as presented in the Scriptures, how might that affect our thoughts and feelings toward church membership?