1. Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)

Preface: A Sanctification Story 
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1. The disciples had followed Jesus for three years. They were already "Christians," you might say. But God had something more for them. On the Day of Pentecost, he baptized them with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). They become sanctified.

"Oh, send the old-time power, the Pentecostal power. Thy floodgates of blessing on us pour open wide." That's what the holiness hymn of my childhood said. There were others. "The Comforter has come. The Comforter has come. The Holy Ghost from heaven, the Father's promise giv'n."

This was how the experience of entire sanctification was grounded in the preaching of my childhood. It was easily understood. Once you are saved, God still has yet another spiritual experience for you. We see it throughout Acts. Cornelius the Gentile was already a God-worshipper. He was already "saved." But in Acts 10, God sanctifies him and the other Gentile God-fearers.

I actually did an Honors Project in college exploring the "psychology" of sanctification. I went through these examples in Acts. One of the strongest arguments for this understanding came in Acts 8. The Samaritans had believed and had been baptized. But something was missing. So Peter and John come up from Jerusalem, lay hands on them, and the Samaritans receive the Holy Spirit. They were saved, but now they are sanctified.

The American Holiness movement connected the experience of entire sanctification with the Day of Pentecost. This connection created a powerful narrative to preach sanctification. It was easily understood in this story form, and we preached holiness in America this way for nearly two centuries.

2. We almost never hear sanctification preached in this way today. Why? Because the book of Acts doesn't really talk about the Spirit-fillings of Acts in terms of entire sanctification. There is one verse -- Acts 15:9. It describes what the Gentiles of Acts 10 experienced as the purification of their hearts. But was this verse really talking about a second experience of God's grace or the initial one when their sins were forgiven?

I will explore the exegesis of these passages in Acts later on in this chapter. For now, I'll just say that the process of re-interpreting these events in Acts was a painful one for me, something that happened in seminary at Asbury. I would discover that there aren't really any biblical scholars -- even in the Wesleyan tradition -- who currently see these Spirit-fillings in Acts as examples of entire sanctification. Bob Lyon, a professor at Asbury, is often credited for this shift in the movement in the 1980s.

Whether he was right or wrong exegetically, there's little question that this shift had a massive impact on the preaching of holiness in the Wesleyan tradition. Melvin Dieter, a well-known Wesleyan historian of the previous generation, attributed the decline of the holiness movement to this change in understanding more than anything else. In 1995, Keith Drury would agitate with his pronouncement that "the holiness movement is dead." [1] He did not connect its death to this shift in the interpretation of Acts, but his infamous speech coincided with these developments.

3. However, in my mind, that is not the end of the story. I will dot the i's and cross the t's later in this chapter. For now, I want to reclaim Acts as a model for entire sanctification. But I want to look at a different passage than Acts 2, 8, or 10. I want to look at Acts 4.

"And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they continued speaking the word of God with boldness." Acts 4:31

This verse is about a second experience of the Holy Spirit that the disciples -- now apostles -- had. The context is that they had been hauled in before the Sanhedrin and commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus. They had been rebuked. But they chose to obey God rather than man. 

They gathered together and prayed. They determined to continue to preach Christ despite persecution. And when they finished praying, God filled them with his Spirit again, giving them the power to continue witnessing in Jesus' name.

More than anything else, the Spirit-fillings of Acts are about power. "You will receive power," Jesus told the disciples in Acts 1:8, "when the Holy Spirit has come on you." From Acts 4:31 we learn that such experiences of power are not a one-time thing. We can receive power from the Holy Spirit whenever we need it. Acts especially highlights the corporate nature of such fillings with the Spirit. But Paul as an individual can also be filled with the Spirit (Acts 9:17). 

I like to think of these Spirit-fillings as plugging in. We all know the experience of a battery running out. I myself use a laptop constantly. I might go to a coffee shop and work there for a couple hours. I go to restaurants or to meetings. More often than not, I don't take my charger with me.

But, eventually, it runs out of juice. I have to plug back in. I have to recharge. The Spirit-fillings of Acts are like that too. There is the initial charging -- powering up -- that takes place when a person first comes to Christ and is baptized. But there is a need to keep plugged into the Spirit as well. 

In Acts 4, the apostles are recharged. Preaching in the face of persecution takes a lot of spiritual juice. And the Spirit promises to keep us powered up. The word Advocate that is used of the Holy Spirit in John 14-16 is often pictured as the Holy Spirit being alongside us (para-kletos). While John probably didn't have that picture in mind, it is not an incorrect picture. [2] The Holy Spirit does indeed come alongside us to give us the spiritual power we need.

4. We need power to walk the Christian walk too. We don't need this power just one time when we come to Christ. We need this power constantly.

Christians do not believe that we can be righteous in our own power. We do not believe that we can do good without God's help. "All have sinned," Romans 3:23 tells us. We will explore Romans 7 in a later chapter, but who doesn't identify with its description of the person who can't seem to do the good he or she wants to do but rather finds themselves doing the opposite (Rom. 7:19)?

Against this backdrop, the picture of the disciples being filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 4:31 provides a great picture of our longing to be able to live the life of righteousness that God desires us to live. Do you find yourself unable to "do the good you want to do"? Pray to the Father, and he will send the Holy Spirit to empower you for righteousness.

Are you living less than the life God has called you to live? Pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a thoroughly biblical prayer, asking God for the power to be who God wants you to be. And it is a prayer that God wants to answer. It is a prayer modeled by the apostles in the book of Acts.

5. What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? In the book of Acts, being filled with the Holy Spirit means two things: purity and power. By far, the book of Acts highlights power as the consequence of being filled with the Spirit. More than anything else in Acts, it is a power for witness. It gives the apostles boldness to preach despite opposition.

Yes, tongues are often involved in Acts. In Acts 2, we get the impression that these tongues are human languages and that their primary function was for witness. It is also important to note that tongues does not always accompany being filled with the Spirit in Acts. The apostles don't speak in tongues in Acts 4:31, for example. Paul doesn't speak in tongues in Acts 9:17-18. The Samaritans do not speak in tongues in Acts 8:17. To connect tongues too closely with being filled with the Spirit is a distraction.

It is also a power to perform miracles. It is no coincidence that, in the chapter after they receive the Holy Spirit for the first time, Peter and John heal a lame man. This is a fulfillment of Acts 1:8 too. In John 14:12, Jesus tells his disciples that they will do greater things than he has done. In the context, the Holy Spirit is the basis for this promise. 

We see the promise fulfilled throughout the book of Acts. The book of Acts powerfully teaches that the things that Jesus did on earth can be done by Jesus' followers as well. What Jesus does by the power of the Holy Spirit in Luke, Peter does by the power of the Spirit in Acts. Then later, Paul will do the same things in Acts as well. They are drawing a line by the Holy Spirit to us today.

Jesus healed a lame man and raised the dead. Peter healed a lame man and raised the dead. Paul healed a lame man and raised the dead. So also we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can heal and raise the dead.

A close look at the way Acts uses the expressions "being filled with," "being baptized in," and "receiving" the Holy Spirit suggests that these are often synonymous. However, "being baptized with" and "receiving" always refer to an initial experience. By contrast, the apostles could be "filled with" the Holy Spirit as many times as they needed to be.

6. Acts 15:9 hints of something else going on here. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is purifying as well. The sins of the disciples were cleansed by the newly shed blood of Jesus Christ on the Day of Pentecost. The sins of the Gentiles with Cornelius were cleansed in Acts 10 when they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts does not highlight this aspect of Spirit-filling, but it shows that cleansing was part of receiving the Spirit. It was an assumption hiding in the text even if it was not the focus.

What happens to us spiritually when we are filled with the Holy Spirit? Galatians 5:22-25 seems like an entirely appropriate passage for us to turn to. What are the fruit of the Spirit? Why a person filled with the Spirit should demonstrate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Indeed, if a person claims to be filled with the Holy Spirit yet does not demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit, it calls into question their claim. This was one of the puzzling aspects of the holiness movement of my childhood. Few in my generation think of joy or love when we think of our holiness past. We tend to think more of harshness, legalism, and divisiveness. No doubt this flavor was a contributing factor to the demise of holiness preaching.

7. Doesn't it stand to reason that, if there is still sin in your life, there is still room for more of the Holy Spirit in your life? Doesn't it stand to reason that, if there are parts of your life that you have not given to God, it is a barrier to the Holy Spirit in your life? 

The American Holiness movement did have an expression, "the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It is not entirely a biblical expression, although some passages come close (e.g., Eph. 3:19). I have always liked it. Yes, you can be filled with the Spirit because you need strength. But wouldn't it be nice to have the fullness of the Spirit?

What would the fullness of the Spirit look like? For a cup to be full of something, the cup has to be empty of everything else. But if we are holding something back from God, then our cup is not empty. We cannot have the fullness of God if there are things contrary to God still in our cup.

While this is not exactly a biblical image, it is a picture built out of biblical truths. God wants all of us. He is Lord. "If Jesus isn't Lord of all, he isn't Lord at all," the saying goes. God is God. He owns it all and wants us to give him our all.

What if we could reach a point in our spiritual walk where we finally surrender everything we know to surrender to God? Wouldn't that prepare us to receive the fullness of God that we can receive? Unfortunately, our lives are not static. There are always new things to give to God. There are often things we do not know we haven't given to God.

But there is always a first time. There should be a point in everyone's walk with God where we give everything to him for the first time. In response, God fills us to the brim with his Spirit. This is a storyline that Acts 4:31 supports. We get to the point of need, and God meets us at our need. He fills us with his Holy Spirit.

We want to explore this picture of entire sanctification in the pages that follow. In the final chapter especially, we will explore how we can preach and teach with biblical integrity this goal of full living in the Spirit in our Christian walk...

[1] https://www.drurywriting.com/keith/dead.htm

[2] This is called the "etymological fallacy," when you interpret a word by looking at its history or breaking it apart (para + kaleo). This just isn't how we use words. For example, the word understand doesn't mean to stand under something. The word parakletos in Greek meant an advocate or helper. It didn't mean someone who is "called alongside" you.