Baptism in the Spirit

Today, over at Adrian's Blog he asks the question, "What is the Baptism in the Holy Spirit." Here are my thoughts along with a suggestion for further study that I would encourage all of you to tackle.

I think there is a lot of confusion related to terminology when it comes to discussing this subject. I don’t think that defining the baptism in the Holy Spirit involves whether or not spiritual gifts are present in the church today or whether or not speaking in tongues is involved. I also believe that as far as possible we should form our definitions from Scripture rather than by personal experience. That is why there is so much disagreement and confusion because of the fact that people’s experiences can and do differ.

In verses such as Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33 and Acts 1:5, John is said to have baptized in water but Jesus Christ would baptize in the Holy Spirit. In the passage in Acts, the Christians are told that this will take place “not many days from now.” Within a few days, of course, the day of Pentecost arrived with the sound of wind, the flames of fire and the speaking in tongues.

But the question remains. “What is the baptism in the Spirit?”

I think the biblical answer is given in I Corinthians 12:13. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” This verse uses the same terminology (in one Spirit we were baptized) as the other verses from the Gospels and Acts. This passage is in the context of the body of Christ having many members with many gifts composing but one body.

I take it then that every person who is a Christian and part of the body of Christ has been baptized in one Spirit into one body. I would suggest therefore that the baptism in the spirit is the operation of the Spirit of God that places us into the body of Christ.

I would like to pass along a suggestion that someone gave to me a long time ago with reference to understanding baptism, especially spirit baptism. That suggestion is to look at the prepositions the original language uses in describing baptism. Just to get you started, let me explain that there are basically three: in (en), into (eis) and upon (epi). The problem with English is that sometimes these are translated in a way that makes it impossible to tell them apart.

In Matthew 3:11, John says I baptize you in water into repentance, but He will baptize in the Spirit.

Matthew 28:19 describes baptizing into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So right there, between those two verses you have two different things that a person could be baptized into.

Acts 2:38 talks about being baptized upon the name of Christ into forgiveness. So the object of “into” is different from the other two and what looks like a similarity to Matthew 28:19 (i.e. being baptized in the name of Christ) is really different. One is a baptism into the name and the other is a baptism upon the name.

Some very interesting patterns emerge when you look at what people are baptized in and what they are baptized into. It clears up a lot of ambiguity on the subject, but it does take some digging using a good interlinear Greek New Testament.