The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire - Matthew 3:11

John the Baptist often spoke about the baptism of the Spirit. He continually emphasized that once the Messiah arrived, He would baptize His followers with the Holy Spirit. In all probability, the people of that day had no idea what it meant to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. They may have had ideas, but nobody knew exactly what John meant.

Jesus did not speak about the baptism of the Holy Spirit until He prepared to ascend into heaven: “And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘which,’ He said, ‘you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’ ” (Acts 1:4—5).

In these verses, Jesus equates the baptism of the Holy Spirit with “the Promise of the Father” and, more important, with “[that] which … you have heard from Me.” Think for a moment. What is He referring to? What had the Father promised? What had they heard from Jesus about the Holy Spirit?

Jesus is referring to a series of conversations with His disciples just before His arrest. He promised to send the Holy Spirit after He departed: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16—17).

Notice that He said He would ask the Father to send the Spirit and the Father would do it. Jesus made a promise on behalf of His Father. That is the same as the Father promising the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was describing the baptism of the Spirit. He didn’t use the exact phrase. But His comments in Acts 1:5 link these two discussions. He was not talking about two different events—the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14) and the baptism of the Spirit (Acts 1:5). They are identical.

A person who has not been born again by the Spirit of God will tell you that the teachings of Jesus are simple. But when he is baptized by the Holy Spirit, he finds that “clouds and darkness surround him.”—Oswald Chambers

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was given to the church. There is no mention of the baptism of the Spirit! The Bible says they were all filled with the Spirit: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). What’s going on here?

Why doesn’t it say, “And they were all baptized with the Holy Spirit”? Isn’t that what Jesus promised would happen? Isn’t that what John the Baptist predicted? Isn’t that what the Father promised?

Absolutely. And that is exactly what happened. They were baptized, filled, indwelt, filled with rivers of living water (John 7:38—39) and empowered. There is no distinction. It’s all the same. Jesus, Matthew, John, Mark, Luke—they all used these terms interchangeably to describe the initial coming of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers.

Long after the actual day of Pentecost, Luke and Peter added two more figures of speech to the list. Peter was in the middle of preaching to a group of Gentiles when all of a sudden, in Luke’s words, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out” (Acts 10:44—45, emphasis added). Now we have the Holy Spirit “falling” and “being poured out.” Is this a new ministry of the Spirit? Of course not. It’s just another way of describing the initial entry of the Holy Spirit into the heart of a believer.

We know this from Peter’s interpretation of what happened. Notice what he compared the incident to:

It is not the baptism of the Holy Ghost which changes men, but the power of the ascended Christ coming into men’s lives by the Holy Ghost that changes them.—Oswald Chambers

And as I [Peter] began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, “John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? (Acts 11:15—17; see Acts 15:8).

A group came to faith, and immediately—with no begging, praying, pleading, or prompting—the Holy Spirit came. According to Peter, it was the same event that occurred in the Upper Room. And it was the same experience John the Baptist predicted in the beginning.

Take a look at how the leaders in Jerusalem interpreted what happened to those Gentiles: “When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, ‘Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life’ ” (Acts 11:18).

The baptism of the Spirit signifies that men and women have put their faith in Christ. That is why years later the apostle Paul could write, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). Every believer has been baptized by the Holy Spirit. Baptism symbolizes our identification with the body of Christ. To be baptized into the body of Christ is to be placed in Christ. This happens at the moment of salvation.

Stanley, C. F. (1996). The glorious journey. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson Publishers.