Hello again and thank you for listening to Ask Pastor John. Whether you're commuting to work or at the gym or running errands or doing chores, wherever you are, we are certainly glad to have you along. I'm your host Tony Reinke and John Piper joins me over the phone for today's question.

It's an important one. What are we to make of the baptism of the Holy Spirit? The phrase seems to mean very different things in the Bible and it certainly means very different things to different denominations and church practices. Here's today's question sent in to us anonymously from Berlin, Germany.

Hello Pastor John and thank you for this podcast. I've struggled to understand and embrace the baptism of the Holy Spirit, especially manifested as someone laughing and rolling around on the floor or even passing out for 30 minutes or longer. I've seen churches do this and put a lot of focus on these experiences, which make me quite uncomfortable.

Can you explain what the Bible means by the baptism of the Spirit as it relates to both number one, our initial salvation experience, and then number two, in explaining whether or not we are to expect or seek after subsequent baptisms of the Spirit later in the Christian life? Pentecostalism is usually defined as a movement in Christianity that thinks of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second experience, usually after conversion, marked by speaking in tongues.

That's the stereotype anyway of what Pentecostalism means. That really is an oversimplification. I just finished a book by Alan Heaton Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth, a History of Pentecostalism, 2013, Oxford University Press, and he shows that there are far more diverse understandings of the Holy Spirit in his work among global Pentecostalism than we thought.

What is common among many branches of Pentecostalism is not a singular view of baptism in the Spirit, but rather a strong emphasis on the experiential nature of the Spirit's presence in the life of the believer. And I think that is precisely why this emphasis on the experiential nature of the Spirit, that's why the movement has been so globally dynamic and effective, because people everywhere are hungry for experiential reality, not just doctrinal facts or historical facts which are affirmed with the mind.

That's the stereotypical way of thinking about Western Christianity. We have a list of doctrines, we have a list of behaviors, we believe the doctrines, we do the behaviors, and we infer that we belong to God and something supernatural is happening and nobody experiences anything. That's why Pentecostalism is succeeding the way it does, because they're right on this.

Their right to have the Holy Spirit is to have a reality that one experiences. So it's important that we clarify the meaning of biblical terms like "baptism in" or "with" the Holy Spirit, because it is a biblical term and it's part of Christian experience. So what I'm going to suggest is that the way Paul uses the phrase in 1 Corinthians 12:13 and the way Luke uses the phrase, or Jesus, reported by Luke, uses the phrase in Acts 1:5, are not the same.

That's my basic premise, which would avoid a lot of confusion if people bought this, so you can check it out for yourself. Which means that when we ask, "What does the phrase 'baptism in' or 'baptism with the Holy Spirit' mean?" We have to ask, "Are you talking about Paul's use or Luke's use?" as he quotes Jesus.

They're not contradictory. I'm not arguing that there's any conflict. I'm just saying we use different words, or the same words, in different ways, and they use the same phrase in different ways. So let me clarify each of those. 1 Corinthians 12, Paul says, 12, 12, "Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." Or you could say, "By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." Jews are Greek, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. I think virtually everyone agrees that Paul's understanding here of baptism by the Spirit is the act by which the Spirit unites us to Jesus Christ and His body, the Church.

In other words, it's conversion, it's becoming a Christian. This is what it means to be a Christian, to be moved upon by the Holy Spirit in such a way that we are brought to faith and united to Jesus. Now I don't think that's the way Jesus and Luke are using this similar phrase in Acts 1, 4, and 5.

Here's what Jesus says as Luke quotes Him in Acts 1, 4, "While staying with them, Jesus ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, 'You heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.'" That's Acts 1, 4, and 5.

He's quoting John the Baptist from Luke 3, 16, where John says, "I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming after me, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie." He will baptize you. He, Jesus, will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Now I don't think Jesus means that His disciples will be converted from unbelief to belief in this baptism that they're supposed to wait for in Jerusalem. I think Luke sees the apostles as genuine, born-again believers before this promised baptism happens to them. Luke ends his gospel like this, with a description of the apostles before the experience that they're supposed to wait for, called the baptism of the Spirit.

It says in Luke 24, 52, "They worshipped Him," they worshipped Jesus, "and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, blessing God." So here's a group of men worshipping Jesus, they have great joy, they're blessing God through Jesus in the temple. These are not unregenerate disciples waiting to be born again by the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

What then does Jesus mean in Acts 1, 5, and in Luke 3? I think when He says, "You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit," He means you will receive extraordinary power for Christ-exalting ministry. That's what I think He means. You will receive extraordinary power for Christ-exalting ministry. Now that experience may come in an unusual, decisive experience after conversion—a day, a week, a year, it might, or a minute—followed by subsequent outpourings or fillings or baptisms of the Spirit periodically throughout life.

Or that experience may come at the very moment of conversion, followed by lifelong, subsequent experiences of empowering in the Holy Spirit. Or it may come in various ways and fillings and blessings and empowerings of the Spirit throughout a lifetime that are just unpredictable and very various. So I think it would be a mistake to limit baptism in or by or with the Holy Spirit to a single, second event after conversion.

Even though you might experience one, that doesn't mean it's the normative way that this baptism is to be understood. I think the kind of filling and empowering that we receive in such experiences are needed again and again and again in the Christian life. And they're not consistently the same in every season of the Christian life.

It is right, I think, to ask for a fresh baptism. That's the language of Puritans, that's the language of Martin Lloyd-Jones, that's my language again and again as I approach the pulpit and seek to preach. I say, "Oh God, I need a fresh baptism, I need a fresh anointing, I need a fresh filling, I need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit." I think the language is very various in the book of Acts for these kinds of things, which are not continuous.

You have Paul on Cyprus, and he's about to speak, and it says, "Filled with the Holy Spirit," and then he has an extraordinary power to deal with this magician there on the island. That's the kind of thing that I think Jesus was saying, "I want you to know this experience as you head out to evangelize the world." Now let me give four quick bullet points of reasons why I think that, why I think Luke and Jesus used the term that way.

Number one, Luke describes the first baptism with the Spirit as being filled. He uses the filling language in Acts 2.4. He says, "Wait for this baptism," and then when he describes it in 2.4, he says, "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit." So for him, these are overlapping realities, fullness and baptism, and throughout the book of Acts, the term "filled with the Holy Spirit" is a recurrent, repeated experience in the believer's life, not just a one time.

That's argument number one. Number two, Luke says that being baptized with the Spirit is a fulfillment of the promise of Joel 2. Wait for the promise, and then the promise that gets fulfilled is Joel 2 in Acts 2.16 following, and the promise of Joel 2 is not the new covenant promise of new birth.

It's the covenant promise of prophetic power. You're going to speak with extraordinary power there in Acts 2. Number three, Luke describes being baptized with the Spirit as receiving power for witness when the Holy Spirit comes, Acts 1.8. When you receive the Holy Spirit, you will have power so that you can be my witnesses to the end of the world.

And that's the immediate description of what's going to happen if you wait for the baptism. So it's an empowering for global Christ-exalting effectiveness. And then finally, number four, Luke says that being baptized in the Spirit is being clothed with power from on high so that the message of Christ can be taken effectively to all the world.

That's the message of Luke 24.49, where he tells them, "Wait in Jerusalem till you are clothed with power from on high." So my understanding of baptism with the Holy Spirit is that Paul uses a form of this phrase to refer to what happens at the new birth, and Luke uses a form of this phrase, and Jesus quoting Jesus, a form of this phrase for the empowering by the Spirit, which, to answer the question about the peculiar signs, may or may not include various signs like tongues or other unusual manifestations.

So I think every Christian should seek fresh baptisms in this sense again and again and again for effective ministry. So helpful to be careful with the different ways terms and phrases are used by particular authors in the Bible. Thank you, Pastor John, for that word. And thank you to the listener from Berlin with the excellent question, as always.

Thank you for listening, and you can search or browse our past episodes or send us a new question of your own. Go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. We now break for the weekend and return on Monday to talk about Calvinism and Arminianism, and specifically in how they differ when it comes to the power of God's grace, the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism on the power of God's grace.

That is next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday. 1 1 1