Word of Salvation – Vol.41 No.17 – May 1996
Samaria’s Baptism With The Spirit And Ours
Sermon by Rev. R. Brenton on Acts 1:1-8, Acts 8:4-8, 14-17, 25
Dear Congregation,
John the Baptist said: “I baptise you with water, but Jesus – the one who comes after me – will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.” Has Jesus baptised you with the Holy Spirit? If you don’t know the answer, or you’re not sure well, maybe you’ve never been asked the question. Or you may be confused by what some Christians are saying about the Spirit. Some of them talk about themselves being Spirit-filled in a way which suggests that other Christians are not.
The idea behind such talk is that the Christian life has two levels of experience. On the ground level – at the foot of the cross – is the experience of the sinner being converted to the Lord Jesus Christ; it’s sometimes called being saved, or justified by faith. The convert is then urged to claim the higher ground of a second level experience. He must seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit in order to become a complete Christian, one who is filled with divine power for effective witness and service. Many of today’s professing Christians own this two-level idea as an article of their faith.
How did these Christians get this idea in the first place? It comes mainly from looking at the way other churches fail to operate. Open your eyes and see what the average church is doing – or not doing. Look especially at churches that have been around for a long time – they say – or churches that follow traditional ways. What do you see? You see Christians who are sound asleep or moving sluggishly about in slow-motion doing next to nothing by way of witness and service.
What’s wrong? According to “higher ground” Christians, ordinary church members suffer from a power shortage! The problem is that they haven’t made the effort to claim the higher ground and receive the Holy Spirit. As one “higher ground” advocate has said: Most Christians stop short and do not receive the gift of the Holy Spirit; they have the forgiveness of sins through Christ, but they do not have the fullness of the Spirit. Another put it like this: while every Christian has been baptised by the Spirit into the body of Christ, not every Christian has been baptised by Christ with the Holy Spirit!
To accept that claim is to deny the good news of 1Corinthians 12:13, which is that every member of Christ’s body (the church) has been given the one Spirit to drink. Baptism incorporates or sets the believer in Christ as a member of His body. As a member he receives, as a gift, the Holy Spirit. Yet, the “higher ground” Christians withhold the gift’s guarantee. They say that the Spirit is available for all Christians, but not all of them will necessarily receive God’s gift.
Why not? Because receiving God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is seen by them as the Christian’s responsibility. What the Lord has promised to give unconditionally to all believers is assigned to the Christian’s responsibility. It appears, however, that not all Christians take their responsibility. So, they do not receive the Spirit.
The official “higher ground” doctrine reads like this: all believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, according to the command of Christ. This was the normal experience of all the early Christian churches. With it comes the endowment of power for life and service, the bestowment of the gifts and their uses in the work of ministry. Now get this! – this wonderful experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth.
There you have it! A second experience that is different from the new birth and which comes after the new birth – one which guarantees to make the Christian complete. To have this experience one must want it and seek it because it isn’t included with the new birth and it isn’t to be found at the foot of the cross. If the diagnosis to the problem of being an ordinary Christian is correct, namely, that the ordinary Christian has no power, then there can be only one cure: the ordinary Christian needs the Holy Spirit. But he will not have him unless he wants him, expects him, and seeks him. The “higher grounders” have learned all of this from their own observation.
But that is only the half of it! They want us to believe them not just because of what they have seen, but because of what the Bible says. They want the backing of authority. So, they look for specific incidents in the Bible which square with their own observations. In the Book of Acts, which is the record of the early Christian church, they claim to find accounts of Christian experience which agree with what they have seen.
Acts chapter 8 is their trump card! Here they find an incident in which the baptism of the Holy Spirit is received apart from and after conversion to Christ. In the verses 14-17 we read that the Samaritans accepted the Word of God and were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. All of this without the Holy Spirit coming upon any of them! It looks like the water-baptised believers of Samaria had stopped half way. They got Christ and the forgiveness of sins. But they came up empty on the Holy Spirit.
What are we to make of Samaria? Is Samaria concrete evidence that converts to Christ must seek and find higher ground? Or was something else going on there? Some have suggested an insincere faith or some fault with Philip’s evangelistic campaign? Let’s consider Samaria. What really happened there?
Let’s begin with the claim of the “higher grounders” who pounce on this passage as their only sure scrap of evidence. Truth is, this is the only Bible account of a group of persons accepting God’s Word and submitting to Christian baptism apart from receiving the Holy Spirit (although what happened with Cornelius’s household in Acts 10 is an interesting variation on the same theme). One “higher grounder” makes the claim: it is evident from the example of Christians at Samaria that even after Pentecost, men could come to faith and be baptised without having been baptised in the Spirit.
Is he right? Did what happened in Samaria happen in this way just to prove that it is possible – even normal – for people to come to Christ without receiving the Holy Spirit? Let’s hold our response in abeyance until after we deal with a related attempt to explain Samaria – the theory that the Samaritans were insincere when they accepted the Word of God and were baptised.
What about Samaria’s insincerity? Some scholars think that Samaria’s conversion to Christ and baptism in his name wasn’t for real. They maintain that the Samaritans believed in Christ with their heads but not with their hearts – or vice versa. Anyway, head and heart were “out of sync” due to the evangelistic fervour. It was a classic case of mass-evangelism run amok: a “feeding frenzy” in which the crowds, their needs having been met through the preaching and miraculous signs, got caught up in the euphoria and carried away by the gospel bandwagon.
Even Philip (the theory goes) didn’t want a bandwagon full of bogus believers. So, the Apostles had to come down from Jerusalem to put things right. This they did by imparting the gift of the Holy Spirit. By providing Samaria with the higher level experience the Apostles made their bogus faith for real.
As feasible as this scenario may be to the imagination, there is no hint of any of this having happened. Acts 8 makes no mention of the state of Samaria’s faith – whether sincere or insincere. Acts says nothing about the source of their faith – whether from the head or from the heart. And nothing about Samaria riding the bandwagon of the world’s first Billy Graham.
Instead we read that the people paid close attention to Philip’s preaching (vs.6), and that the gospel came to Samaria with great joy (vs.7), and that the people accepted the Word of God (vs.14), and were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus (vs.16). Nothing bogus about that! Samaria was for real! Authentic believing and baptism. They received everything God had to give except for the Holy Spirit.
So our question remains: Why? Why did Samaria not receive the Spirit at the point of believing and baptism? Why the gap in time between their conversion to Christ and their receiving the Spirit? It is because Samaria was an exceptional situation. When Philip evangelised Samaria the mission of Jesus Christ crossed the threshold of Jerusalem and Judea into the world. From Jewish insiders (the people with the promise) to non-Jewish outsiders.
The Samaritans, you may recall, were about as close to being Jews as people can possibly be without being Jews. They were a mongrel race, a mix of Israelite “trash” that was left behind in the Assyrian invasion some 800 years before. Do you remember how the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were forcibly removed from the land and scattered over the earth – lost forever? Well, the “trash” that was left behind inter-married with the Canaanites and developed their own culture and religion. Doing this put them at odds with the Jews (the people of Judah, the former Southern Kingdom ruled by the dynasty of David). Race and religion put Samaria on the other side of Jerusalem and Judea. And between the two sides was a huge gap filled with hatred, discrimination and distrust. That’s history!
But alas! When the gospel comes into this world’s history with the power of God’s future, something has got to give. Something must give if the same gospel accepted by Jerusalem and Judea meets with acceptance in Samaria. Think of it! Two races of people who are hostile toward each other have now found the same Christ! It is crucial now – for the sake of Christ’s mission – that the two find each other; and find in each other their brothers and sisters in the Lord.
The Christian mission to Samaria puts the unity of Christ and his church on the line. If Jews and Samaritans don’t find each other and forgive each other, Christ will be divided. A Jewish church on this side. A Samaritan church on that side. Could this be the Lord’s will? Never!
Now you can see how crucial the mission to Samaria is, and what an exceptional situation this is. How will the Lord Jesus bridge that awful gap between Judea and Samaria? What measures must he take to incorporate Samaria into his living church made almost exclusively up of Jewish believers? How can the Lord move them to accept each other?
John Stott, in his inspiring book on the message of Acts, finds a solution to the “time gap” problem in the light of Samaria’s history with the Jews. He queries: Is it not reasonable to suggest, in view of this background, that in order to avoid the disaster of a divided church, the Lord deliberately withheld the Spirit from these Samaritan converts? But only temporarily, giving the Apostles time to come down from Jerusalem to see for themselves what God had done, to endorse Philip’s bold evangelistic programme, to pray for the converts and lay hands on them as a token of Christian fellowship and unity, and thereby give a public sign to the whole church that the Samaritan converts were bona fide believers in the Lord, to be incorporated into the redeemed community on precisely the same terms as the Jewish converts had been.
Think of it! Each Samaritan convert will get the same endowment that every Jewish convert gets: the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit, and both of them freely given! But the Jewish Christian church needs to see God’s grace to Samaria with their own eyes, and realise that Samaria is equally endowed as heir of the gospel. Can you think of a better way to open Judea’s heart to Samaria than having the Apostles validate Samaria’s conversion with the laying on of hands and the imparting of the Holy Spirit? Can you think of a better way to demolish the wall of hostility between two peoples and maintain the precious unity of the church than this?
My brothers and sisters, let’s take a look at the text of Acts 8:16 and see how it supports this proposed solution. Acts 8:16 says that the Samaritan converts had simply been baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus, but not yet had the Holy Spirit come upon them.
The key words here – simply and not yet – reveal what the “norm” is for Christian experience. Think carefully about what Luke is saying with these key words. He is saying that to be simply (or only) baptised without receiving the Holy Spirit is abnormal to Christian experience. Luke’s mention that the Spirit had not yet come tells us that the Spirit does come with baptism. So, the Spirit must come eventually to the baptised convert. He belongs to those who are baptised in the Lord’s name.
Let me say it plainly: Christian believing and baptism is inconceivable without the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will be given to whom he belongs. And he belongs to the one who is baptised in the Lord’s name. Samaria’s situation – only baptised in the Lord’s name, but not yet with the Spirit – is clearly the exception which establishes the rule. The rule is that every baptised believer receives the Holy Spirit in his or her baptism. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And the Lord Jesus baptises his own with his Holy Spirit. Samaria – far from being the evidence for separating the blessings of forgiveness and filling to create two levels of Christian experience – is clearly the exception which establishes the rule of a unified Christian experience.
The sinner who believes on the Lord and is baptised receives at once the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is simultaneously justified and sanctified, for he has Christ for his righteousness and the Spirit for his holiness. The delay in Samaria between the believing with baptism and the receiving of the Holy Spirit happened to demonstrate to all the world, not that the two can or should occur separately in two stages, but that the two are discernible aspects of the one unified Christian experience.
The Jewish Christians were the first to learn this lesson. In learning it, they were compelled to accept the Samaritan converts as their brothers and sisters in the Lord. From that moment onward it was plain to all the world that every Christian has the same experience with the Lord and his Spirit: forgiveness and fullness.
Don’t let anyone sell you another kind of experience. Don’t let anyone tell you who have Jesus that you are short on goods and that there is more in store for you if you will only earnestly seek for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Listen! Christ is never without his Holy Spirit. You cannot have Christ without also having his Spirit. As Paul puts it in Romans 8:9, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.’”
Which brings me back once more to Samaria. Did you notice that all who accepted the Word of the Lord and were baptised in his name received the Holy Spirit? There is no sign whatsoever that a single convert missed out on receiving the Spirit. All of them received the Spirit, and all at the same time! Check it out. In every Bible-recorded instance of a group conversion to Christ, every member of the group receives the Spirit.
This was true on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), in Samaria (Acts 8), in Cornelius’s household (Acts 10,11), and in Ephesus (Acts 9). Since this is true, the notion that all believers should ardently expect and earnestly seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit is false. Turn away from that notion to the truth.
Consider this: there is no evidence of any Samaritans ardently expecting and earnestly seeking their Holy Spirit baptism as a pre-requisite for receiving the Spirit. Yet, the “higher grounders” insist on these kind of spiritual exercises to make one’s self fit for receiving the Spirit. Exercises like removing all known sin. They say: you can receive the Holy Spirit, but not with sin in your heart. Exercises like yielding completely to the Lord. They say: if we have yielded and live pure and holy lives in close fellowship with God, this mighty baptism must come.
These claims raise further questions. How can the Christian do such things like remove all known sin and yield completely without an indwelling Holy Spirit empowering him to do so? More basic than that question is this one: how is it possible to be a Christian at all apart from the Holy Spirit?
Let’s go back to Samaria one last time. Do you find Philip or the Apostles putting any conditions on the Samaritan converts? No you don’t! Because there are no conditions for receiving the Holy Spirit. Not a single word about ardently desiring or earnestly seeking the Spirit baptism. Why not? Because the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father in Heaven to all who trust in the Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus gives the Holy Spirit where there is believing and baptism. The Spirit is a gift – God’s gift. You cannot qualify yourself or make yourself fit or worthy for him. You can only receive him as he is graciously given in Christ.
This, my brothers and sisters, is normal Christian experience. When you come to Christ at ground level – at the foot of his cross – you receive salvation full and free. This means that eternal life is yours. This means that the Holy Spirit is yours, too.
From that moment on, your obligation is not to prove yourself fit or worthy to receive him. You can’t do that. You already have him. Your obligation is to live by the Spirit. Walk with him; and keep in step with him, putting to death the misdeeds of your sinful nature. Your obligation is to be who you are: a Christian. For you are now in Christ, having been baptised with his Holy Spirit!
Amen.