Frustrating the Grace of God, No. 3

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit - CSP003

I heard the sailor say, "You have to accept Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the way you get saved. The pool manager was agreeing with him. At that point. I interjected myself and commented about how often it is amazing to me that God's Bible plan of grace salvation as a gift, on the basis of the fact that Christ has paid the penalty of death in our behalf, is perverted by people who interject human works as part of the plan of salvation. The sailor said, "Yes, you have to repent first, and then to believe." Whereupon, I pointed out that one cannot repent, which in the Greek language means "to change your mind," until you have believed the gospel. I said, "It is two sides of one coin. You cannot repent unless you believe, because repent means you change your mind about depending on yourself for salvation. The Scripture says that you turn from sin to God, and you do that by believing the gospel of the grace of God."

Well, I could see on the manager's face that that struck a responsive chord. He said, "Yeah." So, naturally, I pointed out Ephesians 2:8-9 at this point, because I didn't know really where either one of these men stood. I pointed out that Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that (referring to the salvation) not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not as a result of works, that no man should boast." I pointed out that salvation always has to be without any human works. Then I said, "That's the reason that Roman Catholics do not go to heaven, because they do believe that Christ died for their original sin inherited from Adam, but that they must also pay for their moral guilt with temporal punishment (with penance that is assigned to them by their priests for them to perform in order that they may qualify for the merit of Christ)." I pointed out that what this shows us is that, in all the mass of humanity which is very religious, not many are actually going to make it into heaven.

I said, "Please remember that Jesus said in the book of Matthew, that you enter by the narrow gate: 'For the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction. Many are those who enter by it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life. Few are those who find it.'" And I said, "When I realize that most of the world's religious systems reject Jesus Christ as the way: the gate into salvation; and, the way into heaven, I could understand Jesus's rather startling remark that only a few people in the human race are ever saved. And only a few ever go to heaven." I didn't get into the fact that unless God gives you understanding and takes the blinders off your eyes, you won't go to heaven, because you won't even be worried about believing the gospel.

But God's way is a gift way. And I said, "If you don't take it as a gift, God cannot save you." Whereupon, the sailor, tattoos and all, said, "Oh, God can do anything."

I said, "Well, he is omnipotent, but he cannot violate His own absolute righteousness or His justice, or he would sin." Then this 90-year-old man squinted his eyes and realized that there are some things that God can't do. He cannot be untrue to His own character. Salvation is a gift from the grace of God – a God whose justice has been satisfied by Christ on the cross. It is given as a gift, or you don't get it at all.

So at that point, I started heading for the ladder to get out of the pool. And the 90-year-old man turned and hopped up to the edge of the pool, out of the water. I looked at him, and I thought to myself, "That's the way, a few years back, they required us to do in the scuba class." I know they don't like it at the pool. They don't like you jumping in, and they want you to come out at the ladder. If nobody is looking this week, I'm going to see if I can pop out of that pool the way that old guy did. He zipped out of there like a cork.

Then he came over to me, and I asked him where he went to church. He said, "Oh, I go to the Church of Christ. I knew there was trouble right then and there. Then he poignantly said, "My wife died just last January."

So here's a Church of Christ person who has died. Here's one standing in front of me that's tiptoeing through the tulips at 90 years of age. So I said, "Well, there you go with what we've been talking about. The Church of Christ believes that you do have to believe in Christ the Savior, but you must also have the ritual of water baptism for you to be saved."

This sailor said, "No, water baptism is the entrance into faith in Christ."

So I pointed out that water baptism is a work, and that grace means "gift" – no works. You don't get the grace of God in salvation by a work, a ritual that you have performed. That's the same mistake that the Jews made in the Old Testament, thinking that circumcision was a ritual that gave them an entry into the salvation of God.

So here's a human ritual – to deserve the grace of God. At that point I reminded the sailor of Romans 11:6 that makes it very clear that it's God all the way as a gift, or it's no way at all. In Romans 11:6, Paul says, speaking of salvation, "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace." Did you get that?

Oh, this man knew Ephesians 2:8-9. He said, "Yes, it's the grace of God."

I said, "Here are you. We've just been talking about that. But now you said that God's grace is secured by a work, so it's not free." So I said to him, "What this verse is telling you is that if you trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and add your water baptism, you will not be saved. In a way, I hated to say that, because what's he going to think if he's logical? And he was pretty bright. "Well, then, where does my wife stand? She was dependent upon her water baptism as well as her faith in Christ when she entered His presence."

Well, the picture is not very good for her. I told him, as I did to the pool manager that I have an evangelism brochure titled, Hell or Heaven, Which Will it be for you. And I told them that I would bring it to them next time, and that it goes into these matters in detail. When I said that, the old man said, "Oh, I don't want to go to hell."

I said, "Well, that's what the booklet is all about. But you have to do it God's way, or that's exactly where you will go."

So I have my job cut out for me at the next swimming session. Here was a classic example of a sincerely religious person with a perverted gospel which cannot save him. He didn't want to go to hell. Certainly, he wanted heaven, as any normal, rational person would. However, everything that had been his experience religiously was moving him toward the lake of fire, in all of his sincerity. But that's the work of Satan. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 says, "Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of grace. It is not the gospel of God's grace plus human ritual; human doing; or, human good works.

In Matthew 9:36-38, Matthew, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, says, "And seeing the multitudes, He (that is, Jesus) felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to His disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest." You folks are the workers in the harvest field of God. Start getting those brochures out to people. It is nearly impossible in the religious world today (in the world of churches) to find somebody who can tell you the gospel.

I had pointed that out earlier to these two men. Again, I saw I struck a responsive note in the pool manager's thinking when I said, "Instead of telling people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Bible says (that is, to trust Him, on the basis of what He has done to get them saved), they're using pop Christianity phrases like" "invite Jesus into your heart;" "take Him into your life;" "give Him your life;" and ,all these other phrases which are meaningless and unbiblical, and will not give you the understanding. What you need to do is to take your cotton-picking hands off the salvation that God's grace has already created for you. You take it as a gift, or else you don't get it."

Last Friday at 6 P.M. Sunday, on September 10th, began the Jewish civil and economic new year. This began with the festival, which is called Rosh Hashana. It is a high holy day in Judaism. Rosh Hashana is viewed as a day of divine judgment for one's sins of the previous year. Ten days from the beginning of Rosh Hashana comes Monday, September 20th. That will be the Jewish Festival of Yom Kippur, which means the Day of Atonement. So they go from the day of judgment, to ten days of meditating, to the Day of Atonement, where there was a very specific ritual under the Old Testament system at the temple to cover the sins of the people symbolically with animal blood for another year.

Under Judaism, the covering of the animals that were sacrificed were for the sins of the priesthood; for the sins of the people; and, even for the contamination that their sin had brought to the very temple itself, because of their sinful characters that surrounded the temple. The ritual in the Old Testament of the Day of Atonement included the selection of two perfect, unblemished goats. These were to be used in the symbol of the sacrifice for the covering of sins of the past year. One goat was killed, and then the high priest sprinkled the blood in designated places in the sanctuary and on the Ark of the Covenant within the holy of holies. The other goat had the sins of the nation pronounced upon him by the laying on of the hands of the high priest.

Then, with the sins of the nation placed upon the goat (the scapegoat), he was then turned loose into the desert wilderness, and wandered out of sight, never to be seen again. This was God's way for ritually sick people, that when He had forgiven their sins, which He was doing on credit until the death of Christ actually paid the price, that they would never see those sins again. They would never be guilty. They would never be brought into question for that guilt of that sin again. It was a symbol of the perfect work of the grace of God through the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross in the future.

The Southern Baptist Convention has currently called upon its members to be praying for the Jews during this ten-day period, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, to consider that the Messiah has already come, and to come to saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, in these days, when they are focusing upon their sins and their destiny.

A prominent radio master of ceremonies that I heard this past week, as I drove along in the car, expressed indignation at the Southern Baptist proposal because he said it implied that the Jews and their religion are not acceptable for getting them into heaven. And he was quite indignant that the Jews, reciting their prayers; their rituals; all their beliefs; their pride; and, their historic association with God, would not take them to heaven.

However, John 14:6 says, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.'" The truth of the matter is that all Jews reject the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah as Savior. They consider Him a fraud. They consider him a simple but serious rabbi who went astray thinking of Himself as the Messiah, and, therefore, they do not trust in Him to take them into heaven.

The master of ceremonies on the radio felt it was insulting other religions that the Christian way was the only way of salvation. At that point, he took a call. The man who came on the line was a Jewish rabbi. He said, "I want to tell you a story." He said, "These Jewish kids in school get so tired of hearing Christians talking about Jesus Christ. He is treated as God, and prayers are going up in His name."

He said, "Let me tell you a story." So he told of a high school. I think it was in the Metroplex area. This school's choir was preparing a graduation concert which was to include a religious selection which honored Jesus Christ. When that was discovered, there were complaints about including this clearly Christian song in the program of the graduation exercises of this public school. The choir director said, "We're going to sing it." He refused to pull it off the program. These complaints came from maybe six Jewish students who were in that graduating class – probably some non-Christian ones. They were determined that they were not going to be listening to this talk about Jesus Christ being exalted as the God and Savior of mankind, hearing these prayers in His name.

So the rabbi said that the program proceeded at the graduation exercises. But interestingly enough, suddenly when it came time for the choir to sing the Christian number, they didn't sing it. It wasn't performed. They skipped over it without comment, and went on. At the close of the graduation exercises, the class salutatorian, who was a Jewish student, stood up to pronounce the closing word of benediction. The rabbi said that he raised his hand, and what he what he said in Hebrew was Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Now he was making a statement. He was saying, "Jehovah our Elohim, God (Jehovah) is one God." This is a basic confession of faith in Judaism. It was a subtle way of saying that Jesus Christ is not God. God is one.

Well, there was some indignation as the program ended. This was a challenge to the saviorhood of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, Elohim is the name of God as creator: "In the beginning, God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth." One of the things that is very interesting about this word is that it is a plural word. The name of God is a plurality, and that is a problem for the Jews – anytime you point this out to them, that "Elohim" is a plural word. What is this Jewish expression of faith saying? At the very end of it is the word "one." He is one God.

In Genesis 1:26, this word is used: "Then God (Elohim) said, 'Let Us make man in Our image.'" Do you see why it says, "Let Us make man in our image? Because this is a plural word. "According to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, over the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." There it is.

This student gets up, and he thought that he was making a big impact. The first thing he does is he quotes a verse that tells us one of the names of God. It's the plural name, which tells us there is a multiplicity within the unity of the Godhead. That's not all. The word "one" is a word which indicates a unity of persons. Oh boy, this was getting really bad now for the poor Jewish people who are up against reading the Bible that they believe. This is a fundamental statement of faith which a faithful Jew will say in the morning and say in the evening. And, in it, the very word for "one" indicates more than one individual in that unity.

Please notice Genesis 2:24 where that very same word is used: "For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." How many elements are there in this oneness here? Obviously, there are two people. At the very end of the statement of Deuteronomy 6:4, this poor student didn't realize that he was giving us a word that indicated that Jesus Christ was part of the Godhead – that the Godhead is a plurality. It is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one." And two words in the Hebrew make it clear that that is a plurality in that oneness. So there's diversity within the unity of the Godhead – a Trinitarian monotheism which includes the God man Jesus Christ. This Jewish student's attempt at a clever way of rebuking the deity of Jesus Christ by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4 only confirmed it.

And the rabbi also said, as he was describing this, that after the student had raised his hand and said this in Hebrew that way, an Episcopalian priest was standing behind the rabbi in the audience, and he tapped the rabbi on the shoulder, and he said, "He's right, you know, we are one." One what? One idiot? The Episcopalian priest thought he was really sophisticated because he understood the Hebrew verse that was being quoted and the emphasis on the oneness. However, he should have remembered the meaning of the word "one" here – that it is not a singularity, but a plurality of individuals that are involved here.

Well, it's very appalling to me how many Christians do not understand the grace of God that is involved in salvation and in holy living. The most sincere Christian, like my 90-year-old friend at the pool, can never become Christlike if he does not understand the grace of God. If you insist on frustrating the grace of God, you go nowhere. If you want to kid yourself, that's OK. But you will not get away with it someday.

I cannot emphasize enough that all questions and all differences and all reservations that we have concerning what the Word of God says (and the exposition of the Word of God that you hear – of a true exposition), all of these differences are going to be resolved at the Judgment Seat of Christ. They will not be left hanging out there so that nobody will remember that that's what I thought. Nobody will remember that that's how I acted with my things and my stuff and my place and my person and all that. Oh, yes, they're going to remember it. It's all well-remembered and well-recorded. Christians who have been saved by grace alone degenerate into trying to live the Christian life by the standards of the law of Judaism on the basis of the strength of their old sin nature's human good. So where are they? They're out of temporal fellowship and they're losing rewards by the carload every day, because they're walking by means of their human wisdom spirit rather than the Spirit of God.

These Christians are frustrating the grace of God in their lives. That grace could raise them to a life in Christ filled with unimaginable power; prayer; blessings for time; and, rewards for eternity beyond their fondest dreams. What kind of a mentality says, "I'll settle for now?" You have to be crazy spiritually to do that. What kind of mentality says, "I want to live by the rules of the Old Testament," which are always a loser's program. You have to be spiritually crazy to do that. The power of God available through prayer, at His throne of grace, is always there for the Christian who is in temporal fellowship.

We have pointed out that grace is a whole new way of life from Judaism. It's a great victory over the sin nature. It is capacity to serve God our Father with divine good works by the power of the Holy Spirit. And how nice it is to know that. But most Christians say, "Yeah, God the Holy Spirit draws me, and I have great power and the Word of God to guide me. How nice." Then they go back to living like a Jew without any divine guidance on the rules that they have made for themselves.

However, grace has a whole new way of life from Judaism. The principles of the grace transformation, we have pointed out, are declared to us in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come." We have pointed out that the Christian has been placed in Christ by God the Father at the point of his salvation. He is in a position of permanent union with Jesus Christ. John 14:20 says, "You in Me, and I in you." The Christian is, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, placed in a whole new spiritual power grid. He has become a new species. He's not a Jew. He's not a gentile. He's a Christian who is in Christ. He's a new species of humanity. He's not living anymore by the self-effort of the Mosaic Law.

This word "new" in the Greek in 2 Corinthians 5:17 means "new in kind." It isn't just that I got a new car, but it is that I got a new kind of car. That's what this word means. It is a new creation completely different from the saints of the Old Testament. So we are a new kind of saint in the church age entirely by the work of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. When it says, "Things have become new, it does not mean our conduct.

Positional Sanctification

We now have a new relationship through God the Holy Spirit. What is this? This is "passed away." The Greek word there is "parerchomai." This is a word that emphasizes how definitively it is passed away. "Parerchomai" (passed away) is in a tense which means that it abruptly happened. It isn't something you gradually work up to, where you're behaving yourself and you're acting like a nice Christian person. Something happened. It is in the aorist tense – at some point in time – abruptly, the sin nature was neutralized; you became spiritually alive; and, it's impossible for you to die spiritually again.

The thing that concerns me for the old sailor is that he also believes that you can lose your salvation if you don't behave yourself. The minute you say that, and that is at the heart of Church of Christ doctrine, that means you're never going to heaven. That means you are depending upon your own efforts. But this verse says that, "We're a new creation, and old things have abruptly been terminated." Those old things are the sin in death in the position of Adam. What has happened? "Behold, all things have become new.

Eternal Security

"Behold, new things have come." This means "new" in the past, and it will always continue so that we are a new breed of human being – new compared to what's in the past. Grace permanently secured us in the eternal life.

There is no way that you can make yourself a new creation. So don't fall into the typical way of interpreting this verse; that is, on the basis of all the good life that you decide to lead, and be obedient to God. It has nothing to do with that. Grace finds a way to save us. And when God marks you out for salvation, you come in. And grace finds a way to carry you through what you need in life. He will never fail you. How many Christians believe that? How many of us believe that? How many of us say, "Oh, I can't do this. Man, I've got to take care of myself." I thought God was taking care of you. "Yeah, but He might fail me." But you don't want to say that.

Remember that grace has to do with who and what God is, and the fact that, because of what Christ has done to satisfy His justice, He's free to do anything for us. He's just sitting up there in heaven waiting to help you find the things you need; to provide the things you need; to give you guidance for your service; and, to help you through the moments of hurt when people have drifted off from the Lord that affect your life. They're out there under His judgment, under His divine disapproval and discipline, and you have become more glorious in His estimation because you have stood firm and tall in the grace of God. Do not frustrate the grace of God by depending on yourself.

All of this wonderful relationship in grace has come about with a doctrine that the devil has perverted to the hilt. So I'm going to take the trouble to go through this so that you understand the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Pat Robertson has his many good things that he does, and true things that he proclaims. But because he is a charismatic Pentecostalist, he believes that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is something that you try to seek and achieve sometime after you've been saved. Someplace down the line, you get the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He does not connect this with being placed in Christ so that you are a new species of human being surrounded by the grace of God, living on the basis of God's grace, not on the basis of your old sin nature keeping rules.

So it's important that you understand this terrible perversion of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You and I, because we're constantly in the Word, and we're open to it, are not in touch with the ignorance that's out there. If you sit down and start talking to people (and sometimes your relatives), you will shake your head at how appalled you are at what they are. The worst people that appall me are those who used to sit in this auditorium; who are now enjoying a really good life; who have lost their way; and, who are going to stand there weeping at the Judgment Seat of Christ because they're nothing when it comes to the service of God.

It is with a great deal of emotion and humility that I announce that Berean Youth Clubs are beginning. While most of us are at home in our beds of roses and ease, these youth club leaders are driving distances in all kinds of weather and under all kinds of conditions. Whatever they've had for their day (and there all kinds of physical situations for themselves), they're out here ministering to these kids. They're investing their lives for eternity. I guarantee you, as Scripture says, "The Lord is not unmindful of your service of love." Why do they do that? They do that because they are grace people whom God has transformed, and it was done by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When that baptism placed us into Christ, we came into the grace life, and we had it all.

You can sit there and stand there like a dunderhead and never capitalize on it, or you can go for the brass ring.

The Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

1. Point number one in the summary of the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit did not occur in the Old Testament or in any previous dispensation – only in the dispensation of the church (Colossians 1:25-27). Paul says, "Of this church, I was made a minister." He's talking about this new age (the church age, in contrast to Judaism). "Of this church age, I was made a minister according to the stewardship (or the dispensation) from God bestowed on me for your benefit, that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God." The apostle Paul was the apostle to whom the full details about the church age were given. It was not given to the other disciples. They learned from Paul.

   Verse 26: "That is the mystery." This had been a secret." The church had not been known in the Old Testament. "Which had been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints." When? Since the day of Pentecost. "To whom God will to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." The baptism of the Holy Spirit places Christ in us – we in Him, and He and us. Now, that's riches! Why? Because it has opened up the whole power of grace – the whole power system of living by the means of the Holy Spirit. It's so hard for Christians to learn to do that. They want to be just like everybody else in their circle of acquaintance. They take their cues from them.

2. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was predicted before it happened by the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 14:20, Jesus said, "In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." He has just told them that He's going to have to leave. But after he leaves, a new age (a new beginning) will take place. A new species of human beings will come on the face of the earth, and in will come the grace of God and the Christian era.

   He also pointed this out to His disciples, just before He went back to Heaven, in Acts 1:5. There was no such thing as a baptism of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, because there was no such thing as a church to which people were to be baptized. In Acts 1:5, Jesus says, "For John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." How many days? In ten more days, after He arose and He ascended to heaven, then came the day of Pentecost. Then all the believers of that time were baptized into a new body, the body of Christ, and the new church age began.

3. The technique of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit takes a believer at the moment of salvation, and enters him into a union with Jesus Christ permanently. 1 Corinthians 12:13: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit." "Made to drink of one spirit" means we were all indwelt. What happens when you take a drink of water? That water indwells you. "We were all made to drink of one Spirit." So at the point of being baptized into Christ, we were all indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The power system is inside of us.
   
   
4. Unity is establish among believers on the basis of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's the only unity that we can have as Christians. Ephesians 4:5: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." This is not water baptism. This is one Holy Spirit baptism.
5. The baptism of the Holy Spirit implies that all social distinctions are destroyed. The only place where human beings experience true equality, which the world is always trying to create, is here under the baptism of the Holy Spirit, where they are joined together in Christ. Galatians 3:26-28: "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." There we have equality with one another because we are in Christ.
   
   
6. The baptism of the Holy Spirit identifies a believer retroactively with Christ on the cross. It is through the baptism of the Holy Spirit that we, in effect have died with Christ on that cross. Romans 6:3-4: "Or do you not know that all of you who have been baptized into Christ Jesus (the Holy Spirit baptism – not water, baptism) have been baptized into His death. Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism, into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

   Water, baptism reflects this, and the practice of immersion signifies our dying and going into the grave with Christ, and rising up in newness of life. Colossians 2:12 says, "Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead."

   Now, if you want to apply that to water baptism, you're in big trouble. That's exactly what the baptismal regeneration gang does. But this is Holy Spirit baptism.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1999

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