We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do.

"There are no Holy Spirit-less Christians" -Matt Baker

“Second class citizens in the Kingdom of God…please come forward and get your heart (and head) right and receive the Holy Spirit.”

Christians, you may have been to the conference, the camp, or the church gathering where a teaching on the Holy Spirit climaxed with an opportunity to come forward and receive said Spirit. Assumption being, you’ve accepted Christ but have been following Jesus sans Spirit. We’re gonna examine that claim but first take a brief theological scenic-route with me.

For noobs, the Holy Spirit is God. You heard that right. We, Christians, the classic kind, believe in the God of the Bible. His name is Yahweh and he reveled himself as one God in three persons. You’ll find the Bible God revealed himself as what we call ‘God the Father’, not to be confused with the Godfather, though you can call Him that, it’s far more preferable to me to call Him that than the ever-so-often heard ‘Daddy God’. Yikes, but that’s another story for another day. So, God the father is the first person of what is known as the Trinity.

Secondly, God revealed himself in the person and work of Jesus. Jesus said, ‘if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father’, so if we believe in Jesus, we believe that he’s the ‘incarnate’ of God. He’s God made flesh. He’s the God man. What is God like? Look at Jesus.

Thirdly (and finally), we also see that God reveled himself through his Spirit, or as Jesus calls Him; The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was present at creation, present at Jesus baptism, present in Jesus ministry, and present in Acts and is undoubtedly present today filling the lives of true believers in Jesus at salvation. Then, Holy Spirit is onto empowering them in their efforts to evangelize the world. So, that’s the Trinity. God in three persons, blessed…or blessed-ed trinity.

Back to the point, there is a legion of Jesus loving dudes and dolls out there preaching a confused theology stating that there are Christians who are in-fact Christians, but have yet to receive the Holy Spirit. They get to such a conclusion because in Acts 2 you had the church waiting for the Holy Spirit to be poured out, they’d received Jesus but not yet the spirit. Therefore, they assume that’s true for the life of every believer. That there’s a gap between salvation and and Holy Spirit indwelling thus leaving us with Christians who’ve got Spirit and your second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God who do not. Let me be clear:

There are no ‘Holy Spirit-less’ Christians actually.

When discipling the first ‘Pentecostal’ church in Corinth, Paul makes it plain as heck “no one says, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by The Holy Spirit.” (1.Cor.12:3) If no one, which means the number of people being zero, can say Jesus is Lord unless it’s by the Holy Spirit then the Spirit of God is indwelling and moving in the life of a Christ-follower at salvation. Incontrovertably so.

The idea that there are some Christians with the Holy Spirit and some yet to get the Spirit is a misunderstanding. It’s not a foolish mistake, but a mistake even the early-church made and Paul, under the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, authored scripture addressing a variety of pneumatological errors. That’s a big word that means ‘Study of the Spirit’ that I included to sound simultaneously more intelligent and more persuasive which I undid with this remark.

God’s spirit is with the saved. God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit is working in your lives in majorly mysterious other ways too. There is much to be said about an empowerment by the Holy Spirit with gifts for ministry, but more on that later.

Take this with you: A true confession of the Lordship of Jesus Christ = a true indwelling of the Holy Spirit at salvation.

By: Matthew baker 

About: I love God and my family and enjoy processing how our faith in Jesus is lived out in our present culture. Currently, I serve as associate pastor at the Island Church in Orange Beach, AL. When I'm not riding my Trek or chasing the pump, I'm playing dinosaurs with my son Sam or drinking coffee with my wife Paige.