Baptism in the Spirit vs Filling of the Spirit by Michael Penfold

Our subject today is the difference between the baptism in the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit.

In John chapter 14, the Lord Jesus is in the upper room. He's about to go to Calvary, and he explains something to his disciples in verse 16: "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter." That's the Holy Spirit he's referring to there—another of the same kind—that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive because it seeeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him.

Notice the last expression in verse 17 of John 14: "for he dwelleth with you." That's pre the cross. "He shall be in you." That's post the cross. That is a very important statement. When the Lord Jesus was speaking at that point in time, the Holy Spirit was with the disciples. There's going to be a change, says the Lord Jesus. After I go back to heaven, he's not just going to be with you; he will be in you.

Come over to Ephesians chapter 1, please. Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 13 reads: "In whom, in Christ, ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, after that ye believed." Literally, in Greek, it could be translated—should be translated—upon believing. It's not inferring a gap. At the moment of believing, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance.

So you have two items there in connection with the Holy Spirit. At the moment that you trusted Christ, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and you received the Holy Spirit as the earnest or the pledge of a future inheritance.

Come over to chapter 5, please. Verse 18 contains a command. We are never commanded to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, but we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Verse 18 of chapter 5 says: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Holy Spirit."

Two more verses, please. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 13 reads: "For by one Spirit"—the word "by" in Greek is spelled en (epsilon nu)—"for in one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles." This is looking back to our salvation. At the point of getting saved, we were baptized into the body. How did that happen? By being baptized in one Spirit.

Finally, please look at Matthew chapter 3. Some people will talk about whether you have been baptized by the Holy Spirit. That is a complete travesty of scriptural truth. The Holy Spirit baptizes nobody and never has, and never will.

Matthew chapter 3, verse 11 tells us who does the baptizing in the Holy Spirit. "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance," says John, "but he that cometh after me, the Lord Jesus, is mightier than I am, whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He will baptize you in"—again, the word there, "with," is the Greek word en—"he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and with fire." Not the fires of tongues; that's looking forward to a fire of judgment.

Now may the Lord bless to us those scattered readings of his precious word.

We need to remember, as we begin our study today, that the Holy Spirit is a real person—not some sort of influence, not some sort of force. He is a real person, just as real as the Father and the Son. He is a person in the Trinity of God. He is Holy God; he is eternal; he is omnipotent. He was there at creation in Genesis 1: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He inspired the scriptures that lie upon your lap; they were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the scriptures.

But the Holy Spirit's relationship with us is different from it was with the Old Testament believers of a past dispensation. Look at your little sheet there. You'll find that, with the Old Testament believers, generally speaking, he is with them. But for us as New Testament believers, he is in us (John 14:17).

Generally speaking, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God came upon people for a limited period of time, for a specific time. He doesn't just come upon believers; he seals believers. He indwells believers. We are baptized in the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit left believers. You remember Saul: the Spirit of God left Saul. David could say, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me." Yet we know that the Lord Jesus said in John 14:16 of us, in this age, he will be with you forever.

Again, another difference in the Old Testament: the Holy Spirit bestowed not only spiritual gifts but practical gifts. Today, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are spiritual. If someone says to you that God has given them a gift to play the guitar in church, just give them a wide berth. The Lord doesn't give musical gifts for church use. He doesn't give practical gifts in that sense. People were skilled to make the tabernacle—divinely skilled, supernaturally skilled by the Holy Spirit.

All the gifts of the Holy Spirit—you may be talented at playing the guitar, but it's not a gift of the Holy Spirit given by the risen Christ.

Now there are a number of things that the Holy Spirit does the moment a person gets saved. For instance, you'll be very familiar with John chapter 3. When a certain person gets born again, the Bible actually says they're born again of the Spirit. It's a spiritual birth: "That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." We're actually anointed with the Spirit when we get saved. You can read about that in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 21, and in 1 John chapter 2, verse 27.

Now please don't pray that Brother Smith, as he preaches the gospel tonight, will have a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit. He can't have that, and he won't have that. We are anointed once with the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion.

We're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, so we're regenerated, we're anointed, we're indwelt. But what do we read in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13? We read two things: we're sealed, and we're given the Holy Spirit as the earnest. Those are two parallel truths that are most interesting.

A seal, a wax seal that you would imprint with a signet ring, would signify ownership. That's one thought behind the concept of a seal. So if you seal something, you're sort of saying, "That's mine; don't touch." The tomb was sealed by the Roman seal to keep everybody out: "Don't touch; the Roman seal is on this; this belongs to Rome."

So the seal, I take it—I'm happy to take it in this instance—there are other meanings, but I'm happy to take it that it's a seal of ownership. So when you got saved, God sealed you with his Holy Spirit, and in that act, he's saying, "You belong to me. You belong to me. You're mine; you're sealed."

But at the same time, as that, we receive the Holy Spirit as an earnest or a pledge. Now those of you who are married—those ladies here that are married—may have received an engagement ring at some stage prior to getting married. That engagement ring was a promise; it was a pledge. One day, we're going to be married. Here's a ring; I'm really serious about this. I'm not turning back; this cost me a fortune; here's a ring.

That word "earnest" in Ephesians 1:13 is still used in modern Greek, and it's used for an engagement ring. Mr. Vine has that in his dictionary if you're not sure about that. So when the Lord saved us, he gave us the Holy Spirit, just like a boyfriend gives a girlfriend an engagement ring. The moment you got saved, you were given the Holy Spirit as a pledge of what? Heaven to come—all the blessings that are eternally going to be yours as a joint heir with Jesus Christ.

So here's the two sides of it: when God sealed you, he says, "You belong to me." But when he gave us the Holy Spirit as an earnest, he's saying, "The Holy Spirit belongs to you. I've given him to you equally in measure," and that's a pledge of blessing to come.

Now, if you still have Matthew chapter 3 open before you, let's look again at verse 11. We need to understand this baptism in the Spirit. We're now going to move on to these two particular issues: the baptism in the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit. It's very important to distinguish them. You will read quite casually in the writings of evangelicals today, whether it be Walter Martin, John Piper, or whoever, that basically the baptism and the filling are all the same thing. They're not the same thing; they must be distinguished.

Now, let's get our terminology correct. Look at verse 11: "He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit." That is the correct terminology. We're not baptized by the Holy Spirit; we don't receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What happens is that the moment you get saved, the Lord Jesus baptizes you in the Holy Spirit.

Now, if you look on your little sheet, you'll find a comparison in the second set of columns between water baptism and Spirit baptism. Every time there's a baptism, there are four things: a candidate, an element, a baptizer, and a result.

When we're thinking of water baptism, the candidate is what? A saved sinner. The element is what? Water. The baptizer is another Christian, maybe an elder in a local assembly or an evangelist—another Christian. The result is that person has obeyed the Lord; they have a good conscience toward God in that respect.

Now, the same can be said of Spirit baptism. There are those four elements. So, who is the candidate for baptism in the Holy Spirit? Again, it is a saved sinner—a repentant sinner at that moment in time when they are being saved.

What's the element? The element is the Holy Spirit. They are literally spiritually immersed in and joined to, in eternal union, the Holy Spirit of God. Who is the baptizer? It tells us here in verse 11: "He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit." The Lord Jesus does that work for the Christian. And what is the result? We've had the result in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13: "For in one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." You actually come into the body of Christ the moment you're saved, and that is part of the process of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Come over to 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13 again. You may well go to school one day or a university, and somebody will say to you, "Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Do you speak with tongues?" The correct answer to that is yes to the first question and no to the second question. Verse 13 says all believers have been baptized into one body. In other words, it's not possible to be in the body of Christ unless you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. So, the idea that there's a Christian out there who's not baptized in the Holy Spirit means that person is not in the body of Christ either. How can you be a Christian if you're not in the body of Christ? You actually get into the body of Christ through this great baptism in the Holy Spirit.

So, if you're not baptized in the Holy Spirit, you're not saved. "Any man who hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his." This whole concept that you get saved in March and get baptized in the Holy Spirit in April or May or June or July is completely unscriptural.

Now, what about the filling of the Holy Spirit? Well, we read in Ephesians 5 that the filling of the Holy Spirit is a command. The Lord commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If I had a bottle in my hand, even the youngest child here knows the difference between filling that bottle and baptizing that bottle. If I fill a bottle, I'm putting water into the bottle. If I baptize a bottle, I'm putting the bottle into the water. It's very obvious, but often missed, that we have two different operations going on here.

So, the moment you got saved, you were placed into, immersed into, and united with the Holy Spirit of God by the Lord Jesus. At that same moment in time, the Holy Spirit took up residence in you and filled you completely.

You might say, "Well, if he's filled me completely, then why do I have to keep being filled? Can't I just sit back and say, 'Well, I've been baptized in the Holy Spirit when I got saved; I've been filled with the Spirit, so that's it'?"

Well, the concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit is also something we need to be very clear about. Some people might think that being filled with the Spirit is getting more and more of the Holy Spirit: "More, Lord! More, Lord! I need more Spirit!" No, you cannot have any more of the Holy Spirit than you got the moment you got saved.

Now, mark this well in your mind: being filled with the Spirit is not getting more of the Spirit; it's letting the Holy Spirit have more of you. Can you see the difference? Each Christian receives the Holy Spirit in his totality and in his fullness the moment they are saved.

So, being filled with the Spirit is not you having more of the Holy Spirit than me. It is simply letting the Holy Spirit have more and more of you. You say, "Well, what do you mean by that?"

Have you ever seen anybody who is full of anger? That's not a pretty sight, and we've all had times in our lives when we look back and think, "Oh dear, I lost my temper and I messed up." But what does that actually mean when we're full of anger? It means that anger takes over and controls you. You're just full of it—full of envy, full of love. These are things that you could be full of, and what we're actually saying when we say someone is full of something is that they're controlled by that thing.

So, if somebody is full of the Holy Spirit, we're literally saying they're controlled by the Holy Spirit; they are under the control of the Holy Spirit. The baptism in the Spirit is a fact to be believed; it happened the moment I got saved, and that's how I'm in the body of Christ—that's how I came to be where I am.

But the filling of the Spirit is a command to be obeyed. Yes, it's true of me the moment I'm saved, but it's not long after I'm saved that business crowds in, and family life crowds in, and the internet crowds in. It's very easy to become full of other things and have other controlling forces in my life to say, "No, Lord, I want every part of me to be controlled by the Holy Spirit."

So, the baptism in the Spirit is true positionally of all Christians. The filling of the Spirit isn't, but it can be true conditionally of all saints. The baptism relates to my standing in Christ; the filling relates to my state daily in the Lord. The baptism of the Spirit is spoken of as something that happened in the past. The first time it ever happened was on the day of Pentecost. In my experience, it happened the moment I was saved. It's in the past, but this filling is something that's in the present passive imperative: keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

The baptism is once for all. You can't be baptized in the Spirit again and again and again. It's a past, once-for-all, unrepeatable act. The filling of the Spirit must be constantly maintained throughout my life.

Dr. David Gooding, on a cassette tape many years ago (the very fact that it was a cassette tape tells you how many years ago it was), said that a fish needs to be in the water, and the water needs to be in the fish for fish life to exist. So, fish life depends on two things: the fish needs to be in the water, and the water needs to be in the fish.

Bird life depends on the fact that the bird is in the air and the air is in the bird. Both things are necessary for bird life. What's necessary for the Christian life, for spiritual life? That I'm in the Spirit and that the Spirit is in me.

Now, do you see the point? The fish needs to be in water, and the water needs to be in the fish. The moment you got saved, your spiritual life began. How did it begin? The Lord Jesus baptized you in the Holy Spirit. You came into union with His Spirit; you were born of His Spirit. But He also put His Holy Spirit in you, and that is the blessing of spiritual life.

Now, in the last five minutes, I want to address the charismatic Pentecostal issue. You might be sitting there saying, "Well, look, if what you're saying is true—if you're saying that you get baptized in the Spirit when you get saved and you just need to be daily filled with the Spirit—where's all this charismatic thing come from? Where do you get this stuff? I've got people at university, and they say to me, 'Oh, they went to this meeting and this big conference, and this guy was speaking, and they just fell over backwards, and they were baptized in the Spirit, and they spoke.' Where does that all come from?"

What it comes from is a wrong way of reading the book of Acts. Come over to Acts chapter one, and you'll find there that the baptism in the Spirit took place for the first time ever. It happened in chapter two. The Lord Jesus mentioned it in chapter one, verse five: "John truly baptized in water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." It was ten days' time, to be precise.

When you get to chapter two, the Holy Spirit comes. There's a sound; there wasn't a wind, there was a sound of a wind. There wasn't fire; there were tongues as of fire. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost there in verse four of chapter two.

So, charismatic folk would say these people were already saved. Peter was saved before this; John was saved before this. They'd already been saved. This is the second experience. They've now been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that's what needs to happen to you.

Now, hang on a minute. We're dealing with a unique, once-for-all, unrepeatable event. Yes, of course, these people were already saved, but they're in that initial transitional period where the Holy Spirit is being given for the first time. The church began on that day, the body of Christ; the Holy Spirit came. This is an answer to the Lord's prayer to the Father to send the Holy Spirit. So, this gap between Peter getting saved and receiving the Holy Spirit is not something you should be looking to have. This is an extraordinary, different, unique, once-for-all experience.

When you got saved, did you hear a sound of the rushing mighty wind? Did you see tongues of fire on your head? I hope you didn't, because you must have been hallucinating. These are unique, once-and-for-all events, and you'll find two or three other unique, once-for-all events as you go through the book of Acts.

You come to chapter eight. There's a group of Samaritans. There's a gap in their life; they get saved, and they don't get the Holy Spirit until the apostles lay hands on them. "Oh," you say, "there you go! I've got to get the hands of the apostles laid on me." Well, you'll have a job doing that because they've all gone to heaven a long time ago. No, Acts chapter eight is another one-off, unrepeatable event where the Lord Jesus deliberately held back giving the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans until the Jewish apostles had associated with them.

Just take a normal circumstance. When you shake hands with someone, you're saying, "I'm happy to shake hands with you; I'm happy to meet you." When you lay hands on someone, it's not because electricity is going to flow down and zap them and they're going to fall over backwards. That's not it at all. You're actually saying, "I associate myself with you," and you accept that association.

So, when the Jewish Jerusalem-based apostles went up to that arch-enemy town of Samaria and laid hands on the Samaritans, normally the Samaritans would say, "Don't touch me." But when they allowed them to lay hands on and say, "We are now brothers in Christ," it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of animosity melting away. At that point, when it was publicly seen that the Samaritan-Jewish issue was not going to be perpetuated in the church, the Holy Spirit came on those people.

Chapter 19 is another gap. People that only understood the baptism of John hadn't been baptized properly. So, once you've got these odd transitional, one-off, unique events out of the way, you then discover that in between them all, Paul goes to Philippi. They get saved, they receive the Spirit, and they're baptized. Paul goes to Corinth, and they get saved, they receive the Spirit, and they get baptized. The Philippian jailer, Lydia, Timothy—just go through all the chapters of the book of Acts: no gap, no waiting, no difficulty. Cornelius, the moment he received the gospel, he received the Holy Spirit. There it was.

So, we take those individual difficult passages—those transitional, unique passages—we keep them in their context, we understand them as once for all, never to be repeated. But for ourselves, this day and generation, we're very clear in our minds: all believers are baptized in the Holy Spirit the moment they are saved. They are filled with the Holy Spirit, and that must be maintained through a life of obedience and submission to the Lord Jesus.

Don't be worried by what you see going on in university or whatever you see coming down your internet pipeline. Just leave that all alone; it's all a load of nonsense. Stick to the script.

Original audio at https://gospelhallaudio.org/sermons/baptism-in-the-spirit-vs-filling-of-the-spirit-26-min/