Before we move on, let’s review a little. So far we’ve seen John’s baptism, a water baptism that demonstrated a public testimony that the one being baptized had accepted John’s message of repentance. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was nothing more than a promise for the future at this point. Then we come to Pentecost and Peter’s message under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit where water baptism preceded the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And the question immediately comes to mind, why include both water baptism and Holy Spirit baptism in the early experience of these believers?
Then, in the last lesson we discussed progressive revelation or the revelation of truth over time by the Holy Spirit. And, I mentioned at the end of that lesson that the New Covenant would require new understanding, a new way of thinking and represented a radical change. It would be helpful now to define that radical change. (Stay with me here, I’m kind of jumping around from one thing to another, but will tie it all together soon.)
To understand this radical change we simply have to make a general comparison between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, then recognize the task the Holy Spirit faced in moving these men from the old to the new. The Old Covenant used graphic, visual, ritual sacrifices to teach specific facts about the coming Messiah. There were numerous commemorative days to be observed. And then on top of that, the religious elite had added numerous rules and outward forms designed to display a false, public piety (a pretense exposed by Jesus in the Gospel accounts). The apostles and early believers had all been immersed in this religious system all their lives.
But, what of the new? It was to be totally different! The baptism of the Holy Spirit represents the ministry of the Holy Spirit to every believer. It’s not a ritual. It has no visible appearance. It cannot be ceremonially observed in a group on certain days of the year. It’s invisible, individual and one has to learn to recognize it on a personal and spiritual level (I Corinthians 2:14). This brings us back to the question above – why include both water baptism and Holy Spirit baptism in Peter’s message on Pentecost?
John’s baptism was a public testimony, an outward form familiar to and readily acceptable by those who had been subject to the old, damaged fabric of Judaism. Peter’s message then connected both the outward form of the old and the inward spiritual reality of the new. This is the beginning of the movement from the old to the new – a progressive revelation over time by the Holy Spirit that would eventually bring an end to the old and fully explain the function of the new.
So, now we’ll take a look at the rest of the references to baptism in the Book of Acts, there are just seven, to see how this progression unfolds. The first is found in Acts 8:5-25. Here we see Philip going to a city in Samaria (verse 5), probably Sychem, where Jesus had gone earlier and won many converts (John 4:1-43). And when the rest of the apostles in Jerusalem heard about Philip’s success, they sent Peter and John to join him (verse 14). In verses 15 through 17 we see those believers had been baptized in water, but did not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John arrived and laid hands on them. So, here we have yet another (different) sequence of events where these Samaritans believed, were baptized in water, then received the Holy Spirit only when the apostles laid hands on them.
The second reference is found in Acts 8:26-39 and the account of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. In verse 35 Philip explains what the Ethiopian was reading (Isaiah 53:7-8), and preached Christ to him. Then, in verses 36-38 Philip baptizes the eunuch in water and in verse 39 Philip is caught away by the Spirit and the eunuch never saw him again. Here, water baptism is mentioned, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not.
The next reference is in Acts 9:17-18 and the description of the events subsequent to Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Here, the Lord directs Ananias to go to Saul and lay hands on him. The sequence of events here seems to be: Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit, then he recovered his sight as what looked like scales fell from his eyes and then he was baptized in water.
Then the fourth reference is in Acts 10 and the account of Peter and Cornelius. In verses 44-48 these Gentiles were baptized in the Holy Spirit, then they were baptized in water.
This brings us to the fifth reference in Acts 11:1-18. Here Peter is defending his actions (preaching to the Gentiles in chapter 10) to the apostles and other Jewish believers in Jerusalem. When we get to verse 15 he explains to them that the Holy Spirit fell on those Gentiles just as He had on them. Then Peter gets a clue. This is verses 16-17, “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. So, if God gave them the same gift He gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to oppose Him?”
Let me make several observations here. First, the Holy Spirit caused Peter to remember what the Lord had said in Acts 1:4-5, where He made a distinction between John’s water baptism and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And in Acts 11 Peter acknowledges that distinction. They were two separate things. In the apostle’s experience there had been no consistent pattern between the two (sometimes water baptism preceded the baptism of the Holy Spirit, at other times it was the opposite, then at yet other times there was water baptism and no baptism of the Holy Spirit at all).
Second is the fact that Peter’s statement in verse 17 above is specific: God gave the Gentiles the same gift of the Holy Spirit when they “believed”, not when they were baptized in water. This is progressive revelation through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It takes only a few minutes to read the first 11 chapters of Acts. However, it must be noted that approximately 12 years had elapsed between Pentecost and chapter 11 (from AD 29 to AD 41). Peter has, at this point, had all this time to compare his and others experiences in regards to water baptism and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And this may well be when he reached this understanding. We can’t tell for sure.
The sixth reference is in Acts 18:8, where Paul baptizes Crispus, the leader of the synagogue in Corinth. He mentions this some 6 years later in I Corinthians 1:14 when he explains the fact that he had come to the realization that Christ had sent him not to baptize in water, but to preach the Gospel.
The last reference is found in Acts 19:1-7, when Paul on his third missionary journey comes to Ephesus and finds 12 believers there who had been baptized with John’s baptism some time earlier. They are then baptized in water again in the name of the Lord Jesus and then received the Holy Spirit when Paul laid hands on them. Again, yet a different sequence that was about 23 years after Pentecost. Now, it doesn’t appear that Peter and Paul have been comparing notes. They’re definitely not on the same page – yet.
In the next lesson we’ll look at some references in the epistles on this subject, all written from between 26 and 35 years after Pentecost to see what they say about water baptism.