Heart purification happens before you receive Baptism in the Holy Spirit

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Heart-Purification. While viewed from one side, the Pentecostal doctrine of active obedience requests a life without known sin, viewed from another side, it requires “heart-purification by faith,” a statement derived from the language of Acts 15:8–9: 

“And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith.” 

Here, Pentecostals find God bearing witness to the obedience he sees in the hearts of the Gentile household, rewarding them by cleansing their hearts with faith. This is the positive and resultant side of the doctrine of the separation from sin, which is negative and causal. Both doctrines are conditions, but they follow this succession: removing all known sin leads to the experience or fact of heart-purification, which leads to the Pentecostal baptism with the Spirit (cf. Acts 15:8–9 with Acts 10:44–46).

There is an emphasis on the purification of the heart as a condition for baptism in the Holy Spirit, which elevates this condition to a doctrinal status in some Pentecostal groups. 58 

As might be expected, it receives its fullest expression in the holiness wing of the Pentecostal movement. It finds its most detailed literary development in the writings of the two prominent Scandinavian Pentecostal leaders, T. B. Barratt of Norway and Lewi Pethrus of Sweden.

The instantaneous sanctification or holiness groups teach three definite “works of grace” instead of two: 

(1) Regeneration, 

(2) Sanctification (“heart-purification by faith”), and 

(3) The baptism in the Holy Spirit is evidenced by speaking in tongues. 59 

Pentecostals of the progressive sanctification persuasion tend to consider the “purifying of the heart” not so much a crisis experience as a preparatory condition for the crisis experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit.

From whatever side it is viewed, however, active obedience understands nothing less than the riddance by the Christian of all (known) sin to provide a clean heart for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who is given as a witness to this obedience in the fullness of the spiritual baptism.



58 See the declaration of faith of the significant Church of God in all Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America: “We believe in the sanctification which is subsequent to the new birth through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, … [and] in the baptism with the Spirit which is subsequent to the purification of the heart.” Hollenweger II, 1080. Note also the interesting list of doctrinal distinctives in the Chilean Iglesia de Dios: “(5) Faith in the blood of Jesus Christ as the medium of justification; (6) Sanctification subsequent to the new birth; (7) Holiness of life; (8) Baptism of the Holy Spirit; (9) Speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit,” in Vergara, El Protestantismo en Chile, p. 181. For a Brazilian parallel see Hollenweger II, 882. For the United States see R. H. Gause, Church of God Polity (Cleveland, Tenn.: Pathway Press, 1958), p. 159; Campbell, Pentecostal Holiness Church, p. 195; Hughes, Church of God Distinctives, pp. 30, 34–35, 120; for personal testimonies to the three experiences, Wood, Culture and Personality Aspects of Pentecostal Holiness Religion, p. 24.


59 See Barratt, Rain, p. 221.


Bruner, F. D. (1997). A Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness (pp. 97–98). Wipf and Stock Publishers.

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