Page 15 - Bible Doctrine Survey I - Student Textbook (3)

Study Section 3: Doctrine of the Holy Spirit - continued

2.1 Connect.

Today in the Church there is a tremendous confusion about the work of the Holy Spirit.
Some will tell you that once you believe, you need to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit and
then you will be able to speak in tongues. Is this Scriptural? Others will emphasize in their
worship songs and glorification of the Holy Spirit? Again, is this the role of the Holy Spirit?
There are others who do not believe that the Holy Spirit is God, but rather the “force” of
God. They call Him an IT. According to them, IT is kind of like and electric charge emanating
from God. It’s really important to study what the Bible clearly says about the Holy Spirit and get our
understanding correct. Let’s start.

2.2 Objectives:

1. The student should be able to clarify what the baptism of the Spirit and filling of the Spirit is
according to the Word.

2. The student should be able to define the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit brings to every
believer at salvation.

2.3 Doctrine of Holy Spirit

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
There is a lot of confusion about what this term means. The Scriptures
make it clear, that at the moment a person places his faith in Christ for
salvation, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell that person. That indwelling is
called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit’s work of uniting us
with Christ – spiritually identifying us with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-5).
It is the Spirit’s work of incorporating us into the universal church (=the “body of Christ” – all church age
believers – 1 Cor. 12:13).

The baptism of the Holy Spirit was predicted by John the Baptist (Mark 1:8) and by Jesus before He
ascended to heaven: “For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit” (Acts 1:5). This promise was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4); for the first time,
people were permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the church had begun.

First Corinthians is the central passage in the Bible regarding the baptism of the Holy Spirit:
I Corinthians 12:12–13 “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks,
slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”.
Notice that we “all” have been baptized by the Spirit—all believers have received the baptism,
synonymous with salvation, and it is not a special experience for only a few. While Romans 6:1–4 does
not mention specifically the Spirit of God, it does describe the believer’s position before God in language
similar to the 1 Corinthians passage:

Romans 6:1–4 “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no
means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were

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