Please take the time to follow the below very closely. It will be worth your while more than you can now imagine.
As odd as it may seem to some, the Scriptures reveal three different relationships with the Holy Spirit. I thank God for using His servant and my friend, the late Mike Richmond, to point out to me what should have been obvious. The Holy Spirit can be:
1. With you,
2. in you, and
3. on, or upon you.
Earlier, I asked you to remember the words "comes on" (or "come upon"). That is because the Bible reveals these three different relationships a person can have with the Holy Spirit. (I call them "prepositional" relationships, remembering my high school English grammar classes.)
Just before His crucifixion, Jesus was speaking to His disciples about the Holy Spirit, and said:
"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever - the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you" (John 14:16-17)
Here Jesus describes two of the three relationships with the Holy Spirit: the "with you" experience (now) and the "in you" experience (future), which He prophesied.
The Holy Spirit was "with" them (present) at that time. However, the Spirit was not yet "in" them. Jesus prophesied that it "will be" (future).
The "in" experience did not happen on the day of Pentecost when the power came, as most believe, but earlier, after Christ's resurrection but before His ascension, during one of His appearances to the disciples:
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-22).
The word "receive" here is the Greek lambano, which also means to "take." We do not passively receive it; we actively take it.
This is a most interesting and overlooked theological fact and sequence of events. Jesus had not yet even told them about the power to come from the Holy Spirit, yet we know for a certainty that here they received the Holy Spirit, by the authority of the Son of God and His own breath! Again, traditionally it is thought that they did not receive the Holy Spirit until the day of Pentecost when the power came. But Scripture shows otherwise.
Does anyone have any doubt that if the Son of God in His resurrected body came up to someone and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," and breathed on them as He said it, that they would receive the Holy Spirit, right then and there? There can be no doubt.
Therefore:
· The Holy Spirit was "with" the disciples before the crucifixion (the "with" experience).
·
The Holy Spirit came "in" to the disciples (the "in" experience)
in John chapter 20,
after the crucifixion and before the ascension. But remember,
they still had no power, a power which Jesus told them about a few days
later in Acts chapter 1, and told them to "wait" for, and which was to
occur on the day of Pentecost.
·
A few days after Jesus' ascension to heaven, they received the
"on" or "upon" (KJV) experience in Acts chapter 2, when
they received power. At that moment, this same formerly powerless Peter
received so much power that the very same day he preached to the crowd in hostile
Jerusalem, a crowd that had just assented to Christ's crucifixion, and as a
result, 3,000 people believed and received eternal life, and a lame man was
miraculously healed!
The phrase "baptism with the Holy Spirit." Much controversy surrounds the use of this phrase, and key Scriptures are often overlooked. Many believe that it is a separate empowering experience, while others insist it is what happens to all believers at the point of salvation, based on the verses, "We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13), and "(There is) one Lord, one faith, one baptism." (Ephesians 4:4).
But Scripture actually says there are different baptisms (Hebrews 6:2), even though each has a singular application. There is (1) the baptism with water (Matthew 3:13); there is (2) the baptism into the body of Christ at salvation (1 Corinthians 12:13); (3) there is the baptism with the Holy Spirit for empowerment (Acts 1:5); and there is (4) the baptism of fire (Matthew 3:11).
The Greek word for baptize literally means to "immerse into," or "dip."
In the process of any baptism, there are three components:
· a baptizer (one who performs the baptism, or the one who immerses the candidate),
· an element or medium, into which one is baptized or dipped into, such as water,
·
a candidate (the "baptizee," or the one who is "immersed").
If you carefully examine the Scriptures, you will discover the following:
Baptism into Christ. "We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). We see that here the Holy Spirit is the baptizer. The medium is Christ. The candidate is the new believer. (These first two are a beautiful picture of how two Persons of the Godhead work together.) In this baptism, the Spirit immerses the believer into the spiritual and mystical body of Christ.
Baptism with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist prophesied, "He (Christ) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matthew 3:11). Jesus is the baptizer here, not the Holy Spirit as in the previous explanation. The Holy Spirit is the medium. The candidate is the believer. This baptism is for power and service.
Baptism with water. In today's practice, the pastor or evangelist is usually the baptizer, but Scripture does not limit it to them. The medium is water. The candidate is the believer. This baptism symbolizes being buried with Christ in His death and the death of our old nature, and being raised with Him in His resurrection. It is an outward sign of an inward work.
Baptism with fire. Jesus is the baptizer. The medium is fire (figurative). The candidate is the believer. This is the lifelong purging and purification process that every believer experiences where, to prepare us for eternity with Him, Christ is continually burning out the dross in our lives.