THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT
[p. 209] THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT
John 1: 29 - 34; Acts 11: 15 - 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12,13; 1 Corinthians 12:27
What has been much before me is the thought that there is nothing now on earth for God outside of the Holy Spirit. I should take small account, except as to responsibility, of that which has been built up by man in the name of Christ. I think it is a mistake to confound what has been built up by man in his use of God’s testimony, with what is really of God here. These things may work together, for God has been pleased to send various testimonies into the world, and every testimony which God has sent has been committed into the hands of man. Israel was the depository of a testimony, afterwards God sent prophets, and the prophets were men; then Christ came, the crown of all testimony, and now we get the witness to Him of the Holy Spirit, still, through men. Christ is now the testimony; and God’s testimony has been entrusted to man and is presented by man. A great system has thus been built up here upon the earth, but it is a mistake to confound that with what is really of God. I used to have the idea that the house of God had become the “great house”. I do not think so now. What man has built up here has become the great house, but I do not confound the great house with the house of God, because, in regard to the house of God, nothing goes beyond the Holy Spirit; God’s house is a spiritual house. I do not think that God would own what men have built up as being His house, though men have their responsibility in having taken the ground of Christianity, and in dealing in the things of it, and undoubtedly will be judged on that ground. There are many saints — true people of God — mixed up in the great system which has been built by [p. 210] man, but that does not make it the house of God. The house of God is His household. All those who compose the house of God are “living”, it is a house built up of living stones — “a spiritual house, an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. I refer to that because it is explanatory of what is before my mind at this time. I seek to pursue what I might call the line of the Spirit. My first subject was righteousness, and the seal of righteousness, which is circumcision, and circumcision is now spiritual, not an outward rite; it is in the spirit not in the letter, and is impossible apart from the Spirit of God. No man could put off the body of the flesh, the only power for it is the Spirit, hence circumcision lies in the Spirit.
Last time we had the subject of salvation, and salvation cannot now go beyond the Spirit. Salvation, as I pointed out, is connected with the glory of the Lord, and the testimony of that glory is in God’s house down here. I sought to bring two things before you: one was, that we have a good conscience toward God by Christ’s resurrection, and the other that we see the glory of the Lord. He has “gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him”. I have no doubt that salvation is realised at the present time in beholding the glory of the Lord, and we do not behold the glory of the Lord but by the Spirit. When the Lord comes He will bring salvation to His people.
Now I come to another very important point, and that is the baptism of the Spirit. I daresay I shall not do much justice to it, but of the importance of the fact I have no doubt. The baptism of the Spirit brings us to the truth of the “one body”. We can see the progress of the truth in regard to it. In John 1 John the baptist hails Jesus as the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit; and on the day of Pentecost the baptism of the Holy Spirit took place according to [p. 211] the word which the Lord spoke to the disciples, “Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days hence”. And then in the chapter I have read the baptism of the Holy Spirit was extended to the Gentiles in the case of Cornelius. Then in 1 Corinthians 12 we get the doctrine, “For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body”, etc., and afterwards in the same chapter is the statement that the saints were Christ’s body; in fact, in the early part of the chapter we read, “so also is the Christ”.
My first point is to give you an idea of the meaning of the baptism of the Spirit. I think this will enable you to see the force of the succeeding passages, where we get the same thing spoken of. Jesus Himself drew the contrast between John’s baptism with water, and His own with the Holy Spirit; and undoubtedly in Christianity the baptism of the Spirit is very distinct from baptism with water. The baptism with water connects itself with God’s testimony down here, and is administered by man, and a great many people are baptised who have no part in the baptism of the Spirit. Baptism with water connects itself with one order of things, and the baptism of the Spirit with another. That the baptism of water was incumbent on those who received the testimony is evident from the Lord’s word in the last chapter of Mark: the apostles were to preach the gospel to every creature, and “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”. Baptism was incumbent on those who received the testimony, and it was administered by man.
It has often been said, however, that we have no record of the baptism of the first 120. There was no one to baptise them. They were baptised with the Holy Spirit; and the testimony went forth from them, and all who received the testimony were baptised with water and brought in that way into Christian fellowship. It was a work which God was doing down here by means of His testimony, but you must distinguish [p. 212] that from the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now if you will just refer to John 1: 29 - 34, you will see two things which John the baptist predicated in regard to Christ. One was, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”, and the other, “the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Spirit”. In connection with the Lord Himself you first get the descent of the Holy Spirit. There had been types of this in the Old Testament, the meat-offering was invariably mingled and anointed with oil. You get there a figure of the Holy Spirit connected with perfect humanity, for I suppose that the fine wheat set forth pure humanity, untainted by anything which is of man. It prefigured Christ in that sense, and Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit. It was a new departure on the part of God that the Spirit of God should descend upon a man. It has been pointed out that in our case there is no type of the baptism of the Holy Spirit until the blood is there; but in the case of the Lord it was different. But there was something almost more wonderful, that there should be One here who could baptise others with the Holy Spirit. In a sense, it was not wonderful that the Holy Spirit should descend upon Christ when you consider who Christ was, but it was very wonderful that others could be baptised with the Holy Spirit.
But there is a previous thought in connection with Christ, and that is, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. You want to put the two thoughts together, that is, the removing the sin of the world, and baptising with the Holy Spirit. It has been said that the sin of the world is not yet taken away; but the Lamb of God has been here, “once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin”. The sacrifice has taken place, but the sin of the world is not yet taken away. The taking away the sin of the world is an act of power, and will be brought to pass by the coming of God into the [p. 213] world. The instant God comes into the world sin will be taken away. The sin of the world is lawlessness, the spirit that will not have God, it finds its head and development in antichrist, who in the absence of God usurps the place of God; but the moment that God comes in (as He surely will) the sin of the world is taken away. Lawlessness can no longer be when God sees fit to come in, as He will, in righteous judgment. I do not think that people quite understand what the sin of the world is. I believe it to be the working of the principle of antichrist, the principle that shuts God out. It is the principle of the world at the present moment. Men will name the name of God and talk about God, but practically they will not have God. Because the very first principle connected with God is what I might call the law of the moral universe, namely, righteousness, and men prefer lawlessness. But when God comes in, and takes up His abode, another principle must come in, and that is holiness. Holiness becometh God’s house. When the Israelites had been brought out of Egypt, they sang, “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto the abode of thy holiness”. Now holiness is what man’s mind is entirely unaccustomed to. Man’s mind may entertain the idea of righteousness, as between man and man, but it has no idea of the righteousness of God. Hence it must be quite unaccustomed to the idea of holiness, and when God comes in He brings in holiness. This is what the apostle Paul had to impress upon the minds of the Corinthians: “The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are”. How is it holy? On account of the One who dwells there. The One who dwells gives character to the house of God. My point is that the moment God comes in, there must be an end to sin as an active principle in the world. Infidelity will necessarily be proved in that day to be perfect folly,
[p. 214] and so, lawlessness will be proved to be what it is, and it will be dealt with as that. Do you think God will be trifled with? People act as if they did think so, but they will be undeceived. Lawlessness will be declared to be lawlessness, and dealt with as such, for the moment God comes in, He brings all under what I may call the law of the moral universe, that is righteousness and lawlessness will find its own place. It is said in regard to the throne: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom”. I say all this in connection with the point that when God takes His place in the world there is an end to sin; by the very fact of God having come in, lawlessness is at an end. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world because He can bring God into it. We read at the close of Revelation of the coming in of the Word of God. All the boasting and arrogance of man will be laid low in that day. Men will not be lifted up in that day, all that kind of thing will be broken down. If you read the beginning of Isaiah you will see what the day of the Lord means. Man may boast in the absence of God — but the moment God is present, the haughtiness of men is brought low. Pride is proved to be folly, and lawlessness no longer prevails.
Now I come to the second point. He baptises with the Holy Spirit. Baptising with the Holy Spirit really means a subjective work in regard to man, and the practical result of it is, that man becomes the vessel of the life of God, that is, in a moral sense. I think that is the idea connected with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is certain that the life of God cannot go one bit beyond the Spirit of God and His work. And when I talk that way, I do not mean to exalt man to deity, but it is the way of God by the Holy Spirit that man should be made the vessel of the divine life morally. That is the answer that God has given to the power of evil — the sin of the world. The sin [p. 215] of the world has been the work of the devil. Man is alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him. Do you remember, on the other hand, the description of the new man? Christians are said to have “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”. That is what I understand, and desire to convey, by the life of God. Nothing short of that is the new man. It is after God.
Now, do you think the mind of man ever entertained such an idea as that? I do not know much about other systems, religious or philosophical, Buddhism and the like, but I have heard the idea of the absorption of man into deity. That kind of idea has been entertained. I do not think the authors understood what they meant, because they were so profoundly ignorant of deity. They did not know much about their own deities, or they would have found them to be devils; much less did they know anything about the true Deity. Men may talk about the absorption of man into deity, but the truth as we have it here, the way of God, is in perfect contrast to that, because the point of God’s way is to bring the life of God into man down here. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, but He baptises with the Holy Spirit so that man may be the vessel of the life of God. It does not matter how degraded man may have been. Take either Jew or Gentile. Nothing could be more degraded than the condition of the Gentile, as the result of idolatry, when the Apostle Paul preached to them. No matter how degraded, man was to become the vessel of the life of God. You get that thought brought out in what the Lord said to the woman of Samaria in chapter 4 of John’s gospel. The Lord does not say a word about her going to heaven; He says, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. In speaking of the virtue of the living water, the Lord says, “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. It is beyond question the life of God morally, springing up in the believer into eternal life. It is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and life in Christ Jesus means nothing less than the life of God in a man. It is that which came out in Christ. If you do not apprehend that, you do not know what Christ was. One loves to look at what Christ was morally. He was a true man, but there was the life of God in a man down here; and it is that which is reproduced in Christians — the new man is created after God in righteousness and true holiness.
Now think what a contrast that is to every thought of man. Do you think any philosopher entertained the idea of men — sinful men down here — being made the vessels of the life of God at the present time? Absorption and all such ideas refer to what may take place after death; but the passage I read has nothing to do with death, it is what Christ would do down here upon earth, that is, baptise with the Holy Spirit. The fact is, John, by the Spirit of God, discerned in Christ a new point of departure. The Holy Spirit descended and abode upon Him, there never was the like before. Christ was exceptional to anything that had taken place. John apprehended this by the Spirit of God, and said, “I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God”. Now all this is in contrast to anything that ever entered into man’s conception. In the scene of man’s sin and ruin and shame, in a person who had been a slave to sin and lust, there, by the Spirit of God, the life of God was to come out, and that was the effect of baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Now pass on to the passage in Acts 11: 15 - 17. Here was an important crisis in connection with the church, the point was the introduction of the Gentiles. The Jews could have understood it better if Cornelius [p. 217] had become a Jewish proselyte. That was not God’s way. He intended having the Gentile without his becoming a Jewish proselyte, and hence the Holy Spirit was given to the Gentiles. This comes home to Peter, and he testifies, “God gave them the like gift as he did unto us”. The Gentile was brought into the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it was a very important point in the history of the church, for the tendency was still to allow a special place to the Jews. You can understand that such a thing was impossible in connection with the baptism of the Spirit. The baptism of the Spirit meant the complete setting aside of all that was after the flesh. The Spirit was not coming here, as it were, in partnership with the flesh; and if not, there was necessarily the setting aside of the flesh whether in Jew or Gentile, because the Spirit was bringing in the life of God as that life had been set forth in Christ. What was there of Jew or Gentile in Christ? He was the living bread from heaven. The Lord was connected with the Jew outwardly. He became subject to the law; but there was nothing of Jew or Gentile morally in Christ. What was in Christ was of God. What was in Jew or Gentile was of the flesh. It might be Gentile or it might be Jewish flesh. Gentiles were affected by idolatrous associations, and Jews by Jewish. Christ was of God, nothing of man morally was there. That was the beginning. And the Spirit bade Peter go to Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit fell on them in order that the same thing might be brought to pass both in the Jew and Gentile. That was what Peter had to learn. He says, what was I that I could withstand God? They could not withhold baptism from them. God had overridden every hindrance and prejudice in communicating the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Gentile as to the Jew.
Now if we pass on to 1 Corinthians 12: 12, 13 and 27, we shall see this truth further. In that passage [p. 218] we are brought to a more definite and important point. We see what the baptism of the Spirit tends to. The baptism of water has in a sense built up Christianity as we see it in the world. I am not at all attempting to underrate the importance of baptism in its true meaning. The baptism of the Spirit had another end in view, and that was the introduction of the body here which was to be for God. You will find nothing at all about heaven in the chapter I read, the whole chapter is taken up with that which God had brought to pass here upon earth. The occasion of the chapter is the manifestation of the Spirit, and in order to enforce what he has to say, the apostle brings in the thought that “by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jew or Gentile”, etc. Now in regard to that, all national distinction is gone in the body. It is clear that in the baptism of the Holy Spirit we cannot talk about ourselves according to fleshly distinctions because “by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body”. We have to think of ourselves as in the eye of God; and if I realise that I am neither Jew nor Gentile in the eye of God, I shall not claim to be Jew or Gentile on earth. But there is another point connected with it, and that is, “So also is the Christ”. It is as the Christ under the eye of God. We are all baptised into one body, and that one body is “the Christ”. That is what the baptism of the Spirit was intended to bring about — the expression of Christ here. I do not think the baptism of the Spirit was intended to take us to heaven, but that there might be one body on earth which should be morally a reproduction of Christ. When the Lord was here you can understand that He was as Man under the eye of God, and for God’s glory — He was God; in Him was all the fulness pleased to dwell. The grace of God and the mercy of God toward man came out in Him; He presented God perfectly to man. But on the other hand, in Him man was presented [p. 219] perfectly to God, and that was the proper place of the church by the baptism of the Spirit; after Christ left this scene personally, the life of Christ by the Spirit was set forth in the body — “so also is the Christ”. It says, “and have all been made to drink into one Spirit”. Mark that expression — not many spirits, but “into one Spirit”. We have a further word in the latter part of the chapter, “Now ye are the body of Christ”, etc. The one body is Christ’s body. It stands in regard to Christ as my body stands in reference to myself. I may have to put off this, my tabernacle, but I do not come to an end if my tabernacle is dissolved. Peter did not come to an end, though his tabernacle was dissolved; and so, too, Paul’s tabernacle, his earthly house, was dissolved, but Paul is able to distinguish between himself and his body. My spirit is the life of my body. What I am to my body Christ is to His body. It is the body here on earth which is animated by Christ, Christ is the principle of this life by the Holy Spirit; and the baptism of the Spirit was intended to bring about the wonderful reality that the life of God morally should be reproduced in one body composed of Jew and Gentile. It is spoken of as the mystery because it is something which could not come to pass in the public ways of God — Jew and Gentile never could be one on earth, in the public ways of God, but they are one in the body of Christ. Nothing of that can go beyond the Holy Spirit. You can see the contrast of this to the Christianity which has been built by man. The latter is almost all outside the Spirit of God, and we have to withdraw in spirit from it to what is of the Spirit of God. Christ was the One who baptised with the Holy Spirit, He Himself had received the Holy Spirit in testimony to His Person, and the One upon whom the Spirit remained was the One who baptised with the Holy Spirit.
One word more, and that is this, the Lord prayed [p. 220] in regard to those who should believe on Him, that they all might be one in the Father and the Son. Evidently God intended the unity of the saints by the baptism of the Spirit; and the unity of the saints was the testimony here that the Father sent the Son. It was a wonderful thing that God should have brought about unity. The baptism of the Spirit is wonderful, not only as a fact, but in the moral bearing of it. It was in the divine purpose that there should be brought about here, upon earth, in unity the life of Christ, or rather, to take it in its true light — the life of God morally should be expressed as it had been expressed in Christ Himself as a Man here. I think we have to look to what has been brought about by the cross, the complete setting aside of the flesh — we “have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new”. But then the practical meaning of that is, that, having brought us to the abode of His holiness, God is the standard of our practice, properly speaking, down here. It would be painful to hear talk about having put on the new man, and not see the practice that is suitable to God, We have to look to it that having put on the new man our practice should be in accordance with the truth.