2000-10-23 - The Holy Spirit

Part 4 - What Actually Happened? The Moment I Trusted Christ

John 16:13, "But when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."

We come to the fourth thing that happens the moment we trusted Christ for salvation.

4. I Received the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)

   The words of Christ above, from the book of John, speak of the coming of the Holy Spirit. One of the key passages on the Holy Spirit is found a couple of chapters before in John 14:16-31. In John 14:17, Jesus explicitly says the Spirit will abide in us and not in the world. And it is in the next verse where Christ comforts the disciples by saying that as a result of Him sending the Spirit they would not be orphans. In other words, the sending of the Spirit is to comfort them and to confirm to them that Christ is still with them through the Spirit which He sent to them.

   A modern doctrine in the church today is the teaching on the second blessing experience of the Christian life. When I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ in college we had two booklets to use to talk to people. One was a guide to lead people to receive Christ as their Savior, called The Four Spiritual Laws. The other booklet was one to share with people who said they were already Christians. This we knew as the Holy Spirit booklet or blue booklet. The idea behind this booklet was to lead people who were already Christians to receive the Holy Spirit.

   I was never comfortable with this second booklet and refused to use the second booklet with people. It did not make sense to me that Christians should need to say a second prayer to receive the Holy Spirit. Over the years I have discovered that this second blessing teaching has not historically been a teaching in the church. It is a modern invented doctrine.

   A Christian already is the temple of the Holy Spirit, as in 1 Corinthians 3:16, "Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Or, again, in 1 Corinthians 6:19, "Or do you not now that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" Christ has sent the Spirit, and all who come to repentance and faith in Christ receive the Spirit.

   So while this fourth point, that we received the Holy Spirit when we trusted in Christ, is not agreed upon by all today, I still stand by it as both the faithful teaching of Scripture, and the historic understanding of the Church through the ages. I do believe in special manifestations of the Spirit, as in times of personal renewal, or regional revival. However, I also feel that since Pentecost (Acts 2), the Holy Spirit has dwelt in Christians as their helper, comforter, and guide. (1 Corinthians 2:12,13)

   There is a story of a young man who encountered a skeptic who laughed at the personal nature of the Holy Spirit. The skeptic said, "Why the Spirit is wind, breath, air: the very Greek word shows you this; for it simply means wind." The young man responded by an insightful quotation from John 3:5,6, "Be it so," he said, "then be so good as to tell me the meaning of this passage, 'except a man be born of water and of the wind, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the wind is wind.'" The skeptic had no answer and the young man said, "Your words are born of the wind, but not of the Spirit."

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

 brutefact@hotmail.com
http://www.cfdevotionals.org
http://www.peacewithgod.com