The Ascension Appearance, Part 2
The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:1-8 NASB)
The final words of Christ to His twelve-now-eleven apostles were recorded not in the gospels but in the book of Acts that chronicles the early beginnings of the Christian church. By doing so the scripture teaches us that these final words were not the end of His earthly life so much as the beginning of the church’s experience with His Spirit. They do not have a finality about them, like any great person’s final words, rather they have a profound sense of the inauguration and anticipation of a new day, the day of the Holy Spirit.
The convincing proofs of His bodily resurrection: That Christ was with them physically in His new incorruptible body was plain to them. Christ was no ghost or apparition, a mere magical mist that moved here and there like a fog. He was no hallucination, rather Christ had a real body.
The new body which Christ received, and which we will receive (1 John 3:2), is also called a “spiritual body” or soma pneumatikon in the Greek (1 Cor. 15:44). Only in this oxymoronic way are we able to grasp this new reality. Christ has, and we will have, a body which is fit for eternity, one that perfectly combines the spiritual reality of the Christian with the physical reality of human life. Just as God looked upon His original creation and said, “It is good,” so shall He look upon the new Creation that is redeemed by the blood of Christ and say as well, “It is good.”
The church’s spiritually empowered witness: Just as the new resurrection body which we will receive fits us for eternity, so the new spiritual reality of each believer fits us for a life of service and witness to Christ on this earth. We could not enter eternity without this new spiritual body, and we cannot serve and fulfill the plan of God for the church without this new spiritual reality in this life.
Baptized with the Spirit describes the experience of every believer. In the New Testament baptism describes:
- An initial act that is associated with salvation, Ephesians 1:13-14, Romans 8:9.
- An overwhelming act of God, Luke 12:50. Christ described His death on the cross as “a baptism to undergo.” It is the idea of getting caught in a deluge, or being swept away in a flood.
These two ideas – (1) an initiation or an inaugural act of the Spirit in a believer’s life and (2) an overwhelming reality that changes everything about us – has led Christians to different interpretations of what the baptism of the Spirit means. I will attempt a brief but adequate description of both of these interpretations. It first must be admitted that the epistles never seek to explain what the baptism of the Spirit consisted of. Some have found its definition in Romans 6:3-4, that the Spirit takes us and baptizes us into Christ Jesus, (see also Galatians 3:27), and this is certainly a true teaching, yet the question remains whether or not this was the baptism of the Spirit that Jesus referred to.
The Baptism of the Spirit as a Universal Experience of All Believers: Most of those who are of the Free Evangelical persuasion see the baptism of the Spirit as something that happens to every believer at salvation. It means the entrance into a new life. The Spirit of God did not come upon every believer in the Old Testament, nor did He remain upon them for the whole of their life. But in the New Testament, each believer is indwelt by the Spirit, as Romans 8:9 plainly teaches. There it is proclaimed that anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ. In our interpretation the Baptism of the Spirit in Acts 2 is a description of the inauguration of a new day of the church, where the Joel 2 prophecy, that God will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, is now being fulfilled.
This interpretation has the Bible on its side, for there is no command in the epistles to receive the Spirit. Peter, in fact, on the day of Pentecost announced that only repentance was required to receive the Spirit (Acts 2:38). The two command verbs in that verse, “repent” and “be baptized” were in different forms. “Repent” was in the plural and connected with the plural “and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” whereas “be baptized” was in the singular and was a command directed only toward the one who repented. Later in Acts 11, as Peter explained to the apostles and others what had happened at Cornelius’ house (Acts 10:24-48), the considered opinion was that “God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18). It is abundantly clear from these passages that the early church associated repentance and faith with the receiving of the Spirit, and not as a second act of grace.
The passages that speak of the baptism of the Spirit are: Matthew 3:11-12; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16-17; and Acts 1:4-5. Only the last of these came from Christ, and the others were from John the Baptist. The context has to do with the purification of hearts and lives, to burn away chaff of sin in our lives through the fire of the Spirit’s convicting power – something that applies to all believers, and not to just a few. So the biblical record and teachings lend themselves most strongly to understand this as the initial and universal experience of every believer.
The Baptism of the Spirit as a Special Experience of a Few Believers: Yet there is a point to seeing it as a special experience, simply because most believers seem to languish in a less than pure spiritual condition. When we read the experiences of these apostles, and other believers, of the power of their witness, the miracles they performed, the joy and boldness they received, we immediately assume this is something special.
The problem comes when we try to duplicate the circumstances. Numerous efforts have been made, and suggestions have been given, such as praying for ten days, as they did (Acts 1:14). Add such matters as fasting (Matthew 17:21) and the laying on of hands (Acts 8:17). When these steps are taken – none of which are given as a requirement for receiving the Holy Spirit – we have tried to reduce the authority of God and replace it with mechanisms, “tricks of the trade,” and human powers. The biblical emphasis is clearly on repentance and faith. Everyone who received the Holy Spirit received Jesus Christ as Lord, and this is the only consistent requirement taught in scripture.
It seems to me that the wiser interpretation of all of these matters is to place the emphasis on the power of God and the presence or the weakness of one’s faith, and not upon the mechanisms. The Spirit is poured out upon all flesh today, and all people and any person who repents and believes, who bows his heart and soul before Christ as his Lord, will receive the Spirit and can live in the power and reality of the Spirit each day. It is not the mechanisms that bring the Spirit into our lives or into dominance in our lives, rather it is a truly repentant and believing heart: “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God” (Psalm 51:17 NLT).
Tomorrow we will examine the fruitfulness of the Spirit in our lives, and how He is able to empower us to bear eternal fruit.
Today let us simply repent from sins and believe in Christ, and surrender to Him as Lord.