Why is the baptism in the Holy Spirit so important?

Jesus considered the baptism in the Holy Spirit so important that He expressly forbade His disciples to begin their ministry until they had received it. He knew it was essential for them to have the power which baptism in the Holy Spirit provides.

And while staying with them, He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptised with water, but before many days you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit.”(Acts 1:4–5)

There are many reasons why the baptism in the Holy Spirit is important. Rufus Moseley listed the following reasons in a little pamphlet entitled The Gift of the Holy Spirit.

1.It is only through this heavenly gift empowering us, guiding us, and transforming us that we have immediate union with the glorified Jesus and are given power to do His work and His will and to grow up into His likeness. 

As blessed as was the ministry of Jesus in the flesh, and as glorious as was His redemptive work in Gethsemane and Calvary, and His ministry during the resurrection appearances, all this was preparatory to what was given to Jesus with power to impart when He ascended into the presence of the Father, and took His place upon the throne of the universe.

2. If Jesus had remained on earth until now, with all His power to heal everyone He touched and everyone who touched Him, and had continued to perform all His mighty miracles, He still could have been only at one place at a time. People in their selfishness would have run over each other to get to Him. 

But since He went into glory and received the gift of the Father with power to share it with those who believe and obey, He has become omnipresent. 

Moreover, He has power not only to be with His disciples always, giving them what to say and what to do concerning everything they need to do unto the end of the world, but also power to come within and reproduce Himself in terms of all the capabilities of each one of us. Now He can give Himself totally to each one of us without neglecting any of the rest of us.

3. Through ineffable union now, open to every believing and obedient disciple of Jesus, every one of us finds himself on the opposite kind of a cross from His. He was put upon a cross of shame; we, through happily yielding and responding to Him, are put upon a cross of highest honour. He was put upon a cross of agony.

He puts us upon a cross of bliss. He was put upon a cross of death; He puts us upon a cross of life. When Jesus hung upon the cross of shame and agony and desertion, He gave up the Holy breath or Holy Ghost; when we are put upon the cross by the Holy Spirit, we receive the Holy breath and are filled with the Holy Ghost.

4. The Holy Spirit is the only consciousness that knows Jesus and is capable of revealing Him as He is. All human philosophies and theologies tend to whittle Him down to fit their own moulds. The Holy Spirit changes us to fit the heavenly mould.

5. The Holy Spirit, by revealing Jesus as He is, at the same time reveals us as we are. We are convicted of sin and incompleteness by seeing His sinlessness and perfection. As we see ourselves as we are, and see Him as He is, and make the acknowledgment, the miracle of forgiveness and cleansing and transformation occurs. 

He does not leave us in our nakedness; He furnishes the covering. He does not condemn us; He comes to our rescue. As we only know the mistakes in mathematics by knowing mathematics, it is only by knowing the truth that we can correct the mistakes. So the knowing of Jesus reveals the sin and the lack, and at the same time cleanses us and makes us whole.

6. It is through the Holy Spirit that we are guided into all truth and shown things to come (see John 16:13) and given power to overcome.

7. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the body becomes consciously the Lord’s. Here it is realised that the Lord is for the body, and the body is for the Lord. We become not only spirit of His spirit, mind of His mind, and soul of His soul, but we also become bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, hands of His hands, feet of His feet, eyes of His eyes, ears of His ears, tongue of His tongue, and everything of His perfect everything. 

The body will never feel as it should as long as it feels itself. As the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body, the body only feels as it ought to feel when it is feeling the Lord, and the Lord is never happy about the body except in having charge of it and imparting to it the health and the blessing of His presence.