This week’s question is from Sarah in TN, and it’s about when the Holy Spirit enters you.
“I’d love information on the Holy Spirit. Does it only enter unto people once they have accepted and been saved.”
Sarah, thank you for this question. I spent an enjoyable two weeks reading (or re-reading? – I can’t remember) an old book we had lying around, called The Spirit, by Douglas Jacoby, and examining the scriptures … only to discover that I had misread your initial question (chuckle). For some reason I thought you’d asked if we get the Spirit once, or does it come again and again?
But the study period certainly helped me to organise my thoughts to answer the question you actually asked. So here we go.
This post is part of my new #SoundDoctrine series where you submit your questions about the Bible, and I answer them. If you want to know more about the series and my qualifications, you can read this.
When Does the Holy Spirit Enter You?
The short answer is this: the Spirit enters you the moment in which you are baptised into Christ – after you have cleaned house to make room for the Spirit by repenting of your sins and declaring Jesus as Lord. Let’s take a look at a few scriptures.
The first is Acts 2:36-41, and it takes place on Pentecost just after Jesus had spent 40 days with his disciples post-ressurrection – sharing about the Kingdom of God – and after he was taken back up to heaven. The Spirit came upon the apostles (and I’ll talk more about this in a minute), so that they were able to preach the news in the languages of men coming from all different countries. This is the end of Peter’s discourse:
“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
There are two key points, I think. One is that many of these people had been in Jerusalem for the Passover and had witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, without understanding what they were participating in. When they heard that they had crucified God Himself, they were cut to the heart and wanted to know how to make amends. Brothers! What should we do?
Peter’s answer was to repent and be baptised for both forgiveness and the Holy Spirit.
The second key point to this scripture is that it’s a promise for their children. For succeeding generations. For us whom the Lord our God will call. We can trust it to answer the question, “What should I do?”
I think that scripture is incredible and gives illumination to how the first century church lived out their faith. But it doesn’t exactly explain how the Holy Spirit comes in baptism. So let’s take a look at Romans 6:1-4
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
What this scripture says is that baptism participates in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Just as Jesus died on the Cross for our sins, we die to our sinful life through repentance.
Just as Christ was buried in the tomb until the third day, we too are buried when we go under the waters of baptism.
Just as the Holy Spirit resuscitated Jesus and brought life back into his dead body, the Holy Spirit resuscitates us and gives us eternal life. We then share the same spirit as Christ. (You can also read Ephesians 2:14-18, which elaborates on the Spirit we share).
Three Exceptions:
If we are to put aside the Spirit of God entering people for His purposes before Jesus came (which is another discussion), there are three recorded exceptions to the Spirit entering people in the moment of baptism.
1. The Apostles. They were not recorded as having been baptised after Jesus’ death. But they were given the Spirit in order to preach a new covenant.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. You can read more about this in Acts 2.
2. The Samaritans. They had been baptised but didn’t receive the Spirit until the apostles prayed and laid their hands on them.
Why? The people from Samaria had a long history of being despised by the Jews because the foreigners sent to re-colonise Israel after Assyrian captivity intermarried with the people there and worshipped foreign Gods. (2 Kings 17). The Jews needed a visible sign that the Samaritans were also accepted by God, and this happened when they received the Spirit.
When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. This is in Acts 8.
3. The Gentiles. They received the Spirit before they were baptised. The gentile conversion was even harder for the Jews to accept than the Samaritan’s. Peter had to be told three times (when in a trance) to go preach the Word to Cornelius’ household. And when he arrived, he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it.
He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.
As he preached, the Gentiles received the Spirit, which validated their acceptance by God (which you’ll see just below). Only afterwards were they baptised.
While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
Then Peter said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” You can read about that in Acts 10.
There’s also Acts 19, where disciples in Ephesus had not received the Holy Spirit because they had only undergone the baptism of John, not the baptism of Jesus. This is a quasi-exception because they did need to be baptised into Jesus in order to get the Holy Spirit, but it manifested itself visibly when Paul lay his hands on them. See here:
While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.
But I call it a quasi-exception because it reinforces the idea that it’s the norm to receive the Holy Spirit when we are baptised into Jesus Christ.
For our intents and purposes, we as believers, should not focus on what occurred in the exceptions, but in the norm. We should focus our efforts on obedience in order to obtain “the promise for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
I hope this was helpful. Feel free to keep the questions coming! I am thrilled to do the research and answer them, and I thank you for reading. 🙂
Next Week’s Question:
Next week’s question comes from Melanie‘s thirteen year old son.
“If God knew we’d screw up and have struggles in this world only to fight to get to Heaven and return to Him, why’d He create us at all or why didn’t He just create Heaven and keep us all there? Thirteen-year-old inquiring minds want to know…”
Awesome question. I hope to see you then.
Jennie, I appreciate the time you took to answer this question and your knowledge of and dedication to God’s word.
I do not think it is wholly fair to the myriad communities of Christians to say we should concentrate solely on the norm. The baptisms in Acts are diverse. I do not agree that the way in which the Samaritan and Gentile people were granted the Spirit was concerned solely with proving their eligibility to the Jews. I believe it was more like God saying, “I will show mercy to whom I will.”
The Bible is the infallible word of God, but we also understand it does not contain everything, every possible path by which vastly different individuals with entirely different circumstances and backgrounds can come to Jesus. It does not even contain everything Jesus said or did, for even John writes as the end of his Gospel (John 21:25), “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” Paul also writes (2 Thessalonians 3:15), “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.”
In Luke 11:13 Jesus says, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Later in Luke the “Good Thief” acknowledges his sin and acknowledges Jesus as he is dying. Though he could not be baptized, Jesus answered him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
I think your explanation is Scripturally good, but God is not limited in his ability to save, not even by Holy Scripture.
Though I absolutely believe I received the Holy Spirit in baptism as a child, my confirmation a few years ago more closely resembles what many adults experience in their baptisms. After preparing for it for several months through study and by confessing my sins, the priest laid his hands on my head and prayed, just as the apostles did centuries ago for believers who had not yet received the spirit or who needed confirmation in a special ministry, on Holy Saturday Night, Easter. Since then I have definitely felt the presence of the Holy Spirit more powerfully in my life and have become more involved in ministry with his help. We cannot discard people’s personal experiences of salvation simply because they are not perfectly “by the Book”, especially when we see the love of Christ in their hearts through their speech and actions as they strive to keep his commandments.
Hillary recently posted…Ghost No More, my review
Hey Hilary, I know your thoughts on this matter since you’ve already expressed them in another post. So I think for us, this issue falls into the case of Philippians 3:12-16, like I mentioned in my comment to Gina above. I have learned and am convinced of this. You have learned and are convinced of another thing. Let us each continue (in love, peace, and unity, my sister) in what we have learned and have become convinced of, and God will make his path clear. That you have an amazing devotion to the Lord is very evident to me in everything you write. Whether you are saved or have the Holy Spirit is not something God has granted me the authority to know or declare, nor is it the point of this post.
The point of the post was simply to answer the question “When does a person receive the Spirit?” and my goal in this series is always to answer with scriptures, not personal examples. God can absolutely work outside of the path he inspired Peter to lay out for us. He can turn stones into his disciples, after all! 🙂
But what about the person who just wants to know, “Brothers, what shall I do?” – who didn’t grow up in the faith as you did? That person deserves a simple answer, using scriptures, to direct his path.
I agree with you, Jennie, in that people new to faith deserve a simple answer founded foremost in Scripture when seeking Christ, and I think you are highly qualified for that, because you do indeed study and pray. I reflected on that yesterday.
I don’t seek agreement in commenting, but I am trying to gain understanding for my position and for others’ positions. We need to understand each other. I know you are aware that Catholics believe in a tradition continuing from the time of Peter and the apostles as well as the power of Scripture, and so the oldest Christian Church has viewed baptism and receiving the Spirit – being born again – also in its relation to circumcision and believes baptism should not be denied to infants of Christian parents, though they have no personal sin yet and cannot repent. We believe it is enough that we are all born under Original Sin. We view what Christ said, “Let the little children come to me and do not prevent them,” also in the light of baptism, though many other communities do not. We stand on the shoulders of earlier Christians such as Irenaeus (a second century Christian teacher), Cyprian (third century), Augustine (fifth century bishop), John Chrysostom (fourth century bishop) and others who supported infant baptism. Augustine supported an earlier point of Cyprian’s when he wrote in A.D. 412, “Cyprian was not issuing a new decree but was keeping to the most solid belief of the Church in order to correct some who thought that infants ought not to be baptized before the eight day after their birth [because of the old law of circumcision]…He agreed with certain of his fellow bishops that a child is able to be duly baptized as soon as he is born.” I also understand Peter’s words differently when he says, “This promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” This is a part of where I come from in understanding when we are able and how we can come to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I believe children can be filled with the Spirit. I have encountered some remarkable believers in little kids.
I have great respect for you, Jennie, and for your position; thank you for replying in your habitual wisdom and love. I see things a little differently, but I have loved ones – whom I believe to be filled with the Spirit – who differ from my view and understanding. I think God works through our circumstances and the people we encounter in our faith journeys. As a priest once told me, “He has worked through your dad and through the Church, and it’s not like he has dropped you off…he is still working!” We have to trust in his mercy in that, if we are truly seeking and trying to please him in our love for him and for our fellow creatures, he will bring us to where we need to be.
Hillary recently posted…Ghost No More, my review
Exactly! It’s not like He has just left you here, Hillary! How could he not adore you. It’s rare that I meet anyone with as much love and devotion for God as you have. 🙂 He SEES that!
I don’t want to strike a debate here because it’s soooo hard to do online when tone can be misconstrued. I wish we could sit face to face and pray together first. But I think it’s worth mentioning a couple of scriptures for you to consider as you weigh everything …
1) Galatians 1:8-9 – it doesn’t matter how spiritual the saints were. Even if an angel appears from heaven and changes the gospel, let him be eternally condemned. (There’s simply not a single mention of infants being baptised in the scriptures). In context, this is talking about circumcision, but I think it’s worth the mention.
2) Revelations 22:18-19 John says the same thing after having had this incredible vision.
3) Mark 7:1-13 Jesus warns against setting aside the commandments of God through church traditions.
4) 2 Timothy 3:15 – the Holy Scriptures make you wise for salvation. Favor this over whatever the spiritual leaders say. God has given you the wisdom to understand them.
Hugs!!!