Study With Me - Acts Lesson 6

What is the difference between being filled with the Spirit and being baptized in the Spirit? Is there a difference?

I Corinthians 12:13 tells us that “in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body.” We learned earlier that in those passages that say that John baptized with water but Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, the word “with” is really the word “in”. John baptizes in water, Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. The passage in I Corinthians 12 tells us what that means. “In the Spirit” we’re baptized into the body of Christ. In the case of John, people were baptized in water into repentance. So I would define the baptism of the Spirit this way: Spirit baptism is that operation of the Spirit whereby a believer is placed into the body of Christ.

From the I Corinthian passage we can see that this baptism is true of all Christians. We have all been baptized in one Spirit. It’s not something that certain spiritual Christians experience.

The filling of the Spirit on the other hand seems to be something that can take place over and over again. We are told not to be drunk with wine but to be continually being filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18) Comparing the filling of the Spirit with wine makes me think that just as a person who is drunk is influenced and controlled by the wine, we should rather be influenced and controlled by the Spirit. There can be times when we don’t yield to that control and other times when we do. God would have us be controlled by the Spirit.

It seems to me that being filled with the Spirit is almost always related to speaking. If you look up the following verses, you can see that almost every one of them says something about speaking right after it talks about being filled. Even in the Ephesians 5:18 passage follows up the exhortation to be filled with the Spirit with “speaking to one another…”.

See Acts 1:16, Acts 5:32, Acts 8:29, Acts 13:1-4, Acts 16:6-7 and Acts 20:23

From this I gather that God would have us be controlled by the Spirit so that we could faithfully speak the truth of God’s Word to others.