The Purpose of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit - PH70-01

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 3:7-10

One of the refreshing things about Job, one of the saints of the Old Testament, was that he grasped that there was nothing greater in life than the Word of God – knowing it, and positive response to it. So in Job 23:8, Job says, "Behold, I go forward, but He is not there" (speaking of God). And he has just reviewed in the preceding context how he would like to just be able to come directly to God with his problem: the physical pain which he is suffering; the mental anguish that he has gone through with the loss of his children; the loss of his possessions; and, so on. "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him. When he acts on the left, I cannot behold Him. He turns on the right, and I cannot see Him." He says, "God is out there. I can't see him. I wish I could come right up to him face-to-face, so I could deal with this problem that is such a burden to me."

But notice verse 10: "But He knows the way I take. When He has tried me. I shall come forth as gold." That probably was the high point right there of all of Job's experience – that he could say that, "After everything is done and after I've gone through this hellish experience, at the other end, when I come out, I'm going to have proven to have been pure gold." That is a great thing to be able to say. Yet, how could Job say such a thing? How could he say, "When I get through with this, I'm going to be pure gold in His sight?

The reason he could say this is in verse 11: "My foot has held fast to His path. I have kept His way and not turned aside." How could he say, "I will be pure gold because I have been obedient to God? I have followed divine viewpoint. I have not stepped aside from it." How could he say that? Verse 12: "I have not departed from the command of His lips. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food." That is a magnificent statement. "I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food."

So Job is an indicator to us of the direction that we should take toward the Word of God. Anytime we approach it, as we do in this session, I hope you will remember Job's remark at the high point of his suffering where he could say, "I'm going to come through as gold in God's sight. The reason is because I've obeyed His word, which I could not obey if I didn't know it. I know it, and I am positive to it. I'm so positive to it that what God has said (Bible doctrine) is more important to me than the food I eat."

Satan's tactic in the angelic warfare against God involves long-range plans. Satan is not just a sometime-Charlie, who is operating on something that's coming up tomorrow or next week. Concerning this particular plan that we have been analyzing, he has literally been at it for well over a century. His plan is, of course, directed against the Word of God. Satan promotes the idea that you can receive guidance in spiritual things through your reasoning capacity and through your feelings. Actually, he leads people to think that their reason and their feelings are above the Word of God itself – above doctrine.

It is God's plan, however, in the church age, to guide us through the Word of God alone. You will not hear voices from heaven; you will not see visions; you will not dream dreams; and, you will not hear the voice of a prophet giving you the mind of God. The only way we will secure the mind of God for us is through the Word of God.

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

It is necessary for us to be definitive, and we declare this without apology. If this offends you, it is because you don't understand what the Bible teaches, nor have you grown in spiritual maturity sufficiently to realize the great danger that is involved in this distortion that Satan has so magnificently pulled off.

One of the things that has already begun to come back from the field (in response from people who have been listening to our tapes on this subject) is the expression of appreciation for the fact that we have taken a definite stand. One man today was telling me about an African-American preacher that he works with, whom he has introduced to the Berean tapes. This past week, the man came back to him and expressed intense appreciation for the fact that the Word of God has been opened to him – the understanding on the subject of the charismatic movement, which apparently, in his case, he needed some information on. He was particularly excited over the Nolen series special. His expression was, "The problem today is that nobody speaks definitely on this subject." He said, "Every place I turn, I can't get any definite answers." He said, "Your tapes are the first definite expression I've had on this.

So I know that there is a lot of antagonism toward this subject. I know that we are fighting the mainstream of evangelical Christianity, which, while not agreeing with what the charismatics do, want to draw their skirts around themselves, Pharisaic-like, and pious-like, and pass around the other side. They don't want to touch this issue, which is so popular and is so widely approved. If you stand up against it, you are actually bucking the tide.

But again, I remind you that God does His best work through little groups. God has always done His best work, not through the mainstream, but through those who have been willing to step out of the mainstream and say, "Now, God, I don't want to be saying the same things that everybody else has been saying. I don't want to be moving with what everyone else has been moving with. I want You to guide me to Your mind and to Your will at this particular point in time." And the men who have done that, and the women who have done that, have been the ones that God has used to move the body of Christ toward its victory that is inherently its privilege and its right in the Lord. Those who have stood in the mainstream have simply bogged us down in all kinds of satanic inanities, not the least of which is this one that we're studying now, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

It is obvious, as we've tried to point out to you, that all during the years that Satan has been unraveling this long-range plan to distort the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, God has been shouting His warnings from heaven. Through the years, from John Wesley; to Charles Finney; to the Holiness Movement; to Agnes Ozman; to W. J. Seymour; and, to the Pentecostal movement, God, in His grace, has been shouting warnings that Satan is perverting something of critical importance. He has shouted these warnings in two ways. He did it through doctrine. He has declared very clearly that the Word of God has the answers, and He has stressed upon us that we must look to the Word to find the answers to these questions – not to experience; not to what people think; and, not to what people feel about the subject.

He has also warned through the fact that He has not permitted the experience of the charismatics in any way to match up with the experience of miracles in the New Testament. Therefore, God, in His grace, has been warning on two fronts: through doctrine; and, through restraining the experience that Satan has been giving the charismatics from matching up to the New Testament experiences.

Christians, however, obviously have been covering their ears to these merciful warnings, and they have madly pursued the Pied Piper of hell on into the distortion of this doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit. Satan's long-range plan against this doctrine includes, of course, creating a cohesive force by which he is going to bind denominations and religions together, which is going to go out into the tribulation period itself. He is not only perverting this doctrine in order to incapacitate; to neutralize; and, to undermine Christians in their service. He is also doing it because this is the force that he is going to use to combine groups that would not relate themselves before into the one-world church of the tribulation period. So the emotionally-dominated, female-liberated, miracle-oriented, doctrinally-confused charismatic movement, is the force that Satan is going to use. It goes right out into the tribulation period with him. So let's bring this great hoax up-to-date.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Pentecostal movement had the last link of Satan's chain forged into it. That was that, in the middle of the century, Pentecostalism moved from the poor lower Americans to the middle class and the upper middle class Americans, and entered the mainline denominations. The date was April 3rd, 1960. The scene was (Wouldn't you know it?) Van Nuys, California again. Here's the next link being forged in California. The location in the city of Van Nuys was St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The occasion was a morning church service. The man who is the pastor, which in the Episcopalian church is called the "rector," on this particular Sunday of April 3rd, 1960, entered the pulpit to preach the morning sermon. He had a very spectacular announcement to make to his congregation.

That morning, he told them that he had received the gift of tongues, and that he himself had spoken in what he called "tongues." Now, of course, it was the same gibberish that the charismatics had been speaking in. But he, as the result, again, of seeking something more with God, rather than turning to doctrine and positive volition to doctrine, turned to something that Satan could manipulate in his emotions. So Satan took hold of his vocal cords; spewed forth the gibberish; and, Rector Dennis Bennett is the man who forged the last link of this chain that has so ensnared millions of people in the Pentecostal charismatic movement today.

Obviously, this stunned the congregation. The result was that he was asked to resign his pulpit from that church. But once he came out into the open as a babbler of gibberish, he opened the floodgates of others who followed him in denomination after denomination after denomination. Some of them perhaps had even spoken in tongues before Bennett had, but they'd never come out into the open. Now, all over the country, men in prominence were declaring that they had spoken in tongues. Prominent women, many of them whose names you would know, had declared that they were speaking in tongues. And a new phase of the great satanic delusion began. This expression was called neo-Pentecostalism, or the charismatic movement, as it is generally referred to today. This comes from the Greek word for spiritual gifts.

This modern popular expression is a little different from old-line Pentecostalism in the fact that it avoids the frenzied emotional outbursts which characterized the Pentecostal movement from the days of W. J. Seymour. It maintains a public image of dignity, which in itself is very deceptive, because it throws off Christians who are untaught into thinking that this movement is really, after all, not so bad. They appear to be just a nice bunch of Christian people who are looking to God for something real, and doing it in their own way.

The charismatic movement, however, I must point out to you, still holds the basic fallacy that Satan interjected in the doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit; that is, that the baptism of the Holy Spirit comes after salvation. It is secondary after salvation. And the evidence of having received it is speaking in tongues in the form of gibberish. This is exactly what old-line Pentecostalism held. The charismatic movement holds exactly the same view. Along with that, they hold that this now gives you power for renewed Christianity. The principle is that if your Christianity is dull, then get into speaking in tongues.

The charismatic movement today is also just as heavily dominated by female leadership as the old-line Pentecostalists ever thought of being. The charismatic Christianity is the current expression, in other words, of John Wesley's second blessing concept, and of Finney's emotional oriented Christian lifestyle. It is the expression of "the more" that these people have been seeking in one way or another over the centuries – "the more" with God.

The charismatic movement views itself in the terms of being a latter rain of spiritual refreshment of God the Holy Spirit upon our generation. They base this upon the fact that Hosea 6:3 speaks about the fact that God is going to bless the Jewish people someday when they return to Him, as He does bless the land with a geographic feature of the land of Palestine – that there is an early season of rain, and then there is a latter (later) rainy season. They claim that these refreshing rains are used by Hosea as a symbol of how God is going to pour His blessing upon the people of Israel in their later days, as He once did in their former days. Joel 2:23 also refers to these early and later rains in the land of Palestine.

However, to associate these with the so-called coming of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a latter-day reign of God is pure humbug. It is mere assumption. It is simply trying to take from Scripture a colorful metaphor, and apply it to the charismatic movement. This movement is the last link of Satan's chain of the distortion of the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was begun way back there in the 18th century with John Wesley's concept that, after salvation, you could come to sinless perfection.

The baptism is associated by the charismatics with receiving supernatural powers. These supernatural powers are expressed in miracles of tongues, healing, and prophecy. This subtle satanic deception is being dignified by evangelical leaders, as you know. That makes it all the harder to deal with the movement. These evangelical leaders imply that the movement is from God. They do not agree with what the charismatics are teaching. They outrightly disagree with their doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but they recoil from identifying this movement as satanic. Thus, in effect, they cannot declare that its doctrine is to be rejected. They simply act neutral. That's why people are observing that nobody is taking much of a definite stand on this. They are simply avoiding it.

Well, after all is said and done, never forget that the charismatic movement today has hovering over it the specter of Matthew 7:21-23. Those people in that passage are described in the future as standing before Jesus Christ and calling Him their lord, and He's going to say to them, "Don't call me Lord, I am not your lord. You are not my people." They are going to claim that their experiences of casting out demons and performing miracles and giving prophecies prove that they are His people. And He's going to say, "No, you're not." That ghost hovers over the charismatic movement today. I am afraid that thousands of charismatics are going to someday discover that they are not in Christ, but they are in Adam. They are not in the place of eternal life, but they are in the place of eternal death. This will be simply because they fell for the distortion of Satan concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

So don't you tell me that this is an insignificant, unimportant misconception on the part of these sincere people. It has destroyed their security of salvation; their confidence; and, their peace with God. It has destroyed everything that is theirs as believers in the church age. It has sent them chasing rabbits, and it has caused them to miss out on being effective workers of the Lord Jesus Christ when we need them more than ever in the closing days of this age.

Well, let's look at this doctrine from a biblical point of view. Up to now, we've given you the isagogics of the moment up-to-date – where this thing has led; where it came from; how it was systematically forged by Satan; and, what its expression is today. Now, let's back off. With that in mind, let's clinch it by saying, "OK, just exactly what does the Bible teach about this?" A man spoke to us recently of his dealings with the charismatics, having once been one of them himself. You remember that this is what he said. How do you deal with them? Well, you go back to the basic Scripture that teaches about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And you say, what does this mean? As he pointed out, you will find out that charismatics cannot explain to you what, for example, 1 Corinthians 12:13 means. They come up against a blank wall, and they immediately begin evading the critical issue.

So let's back off now, and let's see what the Bible says about this subject then. I think when you know what doctrine says, you will hear God's warning in your ear the next time somebody comes along and tries to convey to you the impression that it's not all that bad.

First of all, the baptism of the Holy Spirit did not begin before the church age. Before the day of Pentecost, there was no such thing as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We have no evidence in the Old Testament Scriptures whatsoever that any believer in the Old Testament, or other dispensations before that, ever received what is known as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When John the Baptist came on the scene, announcing the imminent arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the things that he pointed out concerning the work of Christ is that He would baptize believers with the Holy Spirit. That was a totally new concept. When John declared this, he had to explain it to people because people didn't know what he meant by this concept. For all I know, John the Baptist himself may not have fully understood all the implications (and probably didn't) of what was involved in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the way this was related to the new age, the age of the church.

But in Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, and John 1:32-33, we have predicted this coming baptism of the Holy Spirit, and it's all future. That's during the ministry of John the Baptist. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was not operating during the ministry of Jesus Christ on this earth either. After the resurrection of the Lord, and just prior to His ascension, He said that the disciples in the immediate future would experience this baptism of the Holy Spirit which John had predicted. Actually, it was 10 days in the future at the time that Jesus made this declaration.

We find this in Acts 1:4-5: "And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father: "Which," He said, "you have heard from Me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." So here is Jesus Christ about to leave the Mount of Olives and rise to heaven, still saying that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is in the future. It had never yet occurred as of that point in time. In truth, it did not until 10 days later. The baptism of the Holy Spirit therefore, we say, is unique to the church age. It was not in operation until the church age began.

The second point is to consider for a moment the nature of the church in the New Testament. Because there is such ignorance concerning what the church is all about, there is ignorance concerning the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Anybody who understands the doctrine of the church of the New Testament, and anybody who understands the dispensation of the church, will very readily immediately understand the errors of the charismatics, particularly concerning this doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit.

The Church

We have certain features concerning the church that are called "mysteries." You find these in Ephesians 3:3-9 and Colossians 1:26. Certain features concerning the church are declared to have been a mystery in the past. That is, these Scriptures tell us that the prophets of the Old Testament did not know about the church. They didn't understand it. They had no concept of what the church was. Why? Because it didn't exist in the Old Testament. The church of the New Testament is actually a living body. It's an organism. It's called the Body of Christ.

For example, in Ephesians 1:22-23, we read, "And have put all things under His feet (that is, Christ), and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that fills all-in-all." So point number one to observe is that the church in the Bible is declared to be the body of Christ. It is something entirely unique to this age that was never found in the Old Testament. There's no such thing as the body of Christ in the Old Testament.

Notice what Colossians 1:24 says: "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the church." The Scripture could not be more clear than that. The church is viewed by God as being the body of His Son. Jesus Christ, therefore, is declared to be the head of this body.

Colossians 2:19 says, "And not holding the head (that is, Jesus Christ), from whom all the body (the church) by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increases with the increase of God." The church is something that God is building. The church is building the body of His Son. Christ is the head of that body.

Jews and Gentiles

This was no small thing even for the Christian believers. All you have to do is read Acts 15 to see how this question became a major issue in the church. Finally, they had to get together with the apostles and all the believers in Jerusalem and say, "Now we've got to settle this question. Are gentiles part of the body of Christ (the church), or are they not? And of course, the decision was that they were. So a whole new thing had been revealed.

The other apostles, outside of Paul, did not understand this the way Paul understood this. You see, Paul went to a certain special seminary. He went to a seminary out in the Arabian Desert where he was the only pupil, and God was the only teacher. That's the best possible setup in the world. Consequently, there was revealed to Paul the full gamut of truth concerning the church age and the church, which had not been revealed to the other disciples (to the other apostles). They had to learn it from Paul. Paul comes along, in these passages that we have been reading, and he is pointing out to us the fantastic characteristics of this body of Christ, the church. And all of this points up to us the fact that it never existed in the Old Testament.

What we're driving toward is what makes this body. Why could this not have been formed in the Old Testament? What is the distinctive thing that creates the body of Christ? You as believers this night belong to the body of Christ. How did you get into the body of Christ? If you're not in the body of Christ, you're on your way to hell. I'll tell you that. So it is very critical that you be placed into the body of Christ, and that you be joined to the living son of God.

This combination of Jew and gentile is what Paul refers to in Ephesians 3:6, when he says, "That the gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." That is a mystery. It was something totally unknown before.

Ephesians 2:15: "Having abolished in His flesh even the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, to make in Himself of two (Jew and gentile) one new man, so making peace" between these two who had been at odds with one another.

So the believers in this dispensation who are in the body of Christ have to be placed in there in some way. They are united to Jesus Christ. This is what John 14:20 means when the Lord Jesus Christ makes the declaration, "At that day, you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in me, and I in you." Those very dramatic words, "You in Me, and I in you," were spoken by Jesus in reference to what was coming in this distinctively new thing, the church – the body of Christ. It was never known before, and never seen in the Old Testament.

How to get into the Body of Christ

In John 16:7, Jesus says, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I don't go away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send Him unto you." The Comforter here is God the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "After I leave, I'm going to send the comforter." He said, "But, until I leave (until I go to heaven), I can't send him." So he left. He ascended from the Mount of Olives. And just before he left, He said" In the next few days, something very wonderful is going to happen to all of you believers. You are finally going to receive what John the Baptist talked about and what I've been telling you about. You are going to be baptized with God the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity."

Why? What for? What's this going to do? Ten days later, what Jesus promised was fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit came to reside upon this earth. Acts 11:15-17 tell us what happened on that day. This has to do with the situation where Peter is presenting the gospel in the home of the gentile, Cornelius, and the other gentiles assembled there. Peter says, "And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them as on us at the beginning," referring to the day of Pentecost, seven years before this point. "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.'" This is why we know that what happened on the day of Pentecost was the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised. If you read back in Acts 2:4, it does not specifically say that they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. We know that from this passage. Peter says, "I saw happening to these gentiles here before me exactly what happened to us seven years earlier on the day of Pentecost, namely, the baptism of the Holy Spirit." He identifies what took place on that day.

Verse 17 says, "For as much then as God gave them the same gift as He did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that I could withstand God?" Peter is saying, "What could I do? How could I say, 'No, you gentiles cannot be part of the thing that a Jew is a part of?'" Peter said, "I saw it. I saw the evidences. The baptism of the Holy Spirit had come upon the gentiles. They had been placed in the same body that we Jews were in." It could not be denied.

So this first occurrence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost fused all the Jewish believers together to form the body of Christ. They were joined to the living Savior. Then seven years later, here in the home of Cornelius, the same thing happened to gentiles. Now they were brought into the body of Christ. They were entered into the church. They were now fused together as part of the living Savior. Thus, the Jew and gentiles have been formed into this one body. Let's read it again. Ephesians 2:15: "Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, to make in Himself of two, Jew and gentile, one new man, the church, so making peace."

The Filling of the Holy Spirit vs. the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

The filling of the Holy Spirit, as you research this in Scripture, has to do with giving you power in your Christian service. This is what enables you to operate under the control of God the Holy Spirit. You become filled with the Spirit when all known sin is confessed as per 1 John 1:9. Then God the Holy Spirit can control you and minister through your spiritual gifts. Here on the day of Pentecost, some of these people were given the supernatural ability of speaking foreign languages that they did not know. That ability was exercised through them by God the Holy Spirit, while they were filled with the Spirit; that is, they were controlled by Him.

At the moment you are born again, you not only enter that outer circle of eternal fellowship, but you also enter the inner circle of temporal fellowship. That means that at the point of salvation, you are filled with the Spirit. Everybody begins the Christian life, just like they did on the day of Pentecost. They are not only joined to Christ eternally so that they never leave the outer eternal circle of fellowship. But they were also, at that moment, placed in the inner circle of temporal fellowship, so that they were filled with the spirit. To be in the inner circle means to be filled with the Spirit. To be in the inner circle means to be spiritual. To be in the outer circle means to be saved, but to be carnal. Confession brings you back into the inner circle. The inner circle is the only place that God uses you and your gifts effectively. So don't confuse the filling of the Spirit and the baptizing work.

Not only were they baptized, but they were also sealed. They had God's stamp upon them. That stamp was God the Holy Spirit Himself. This is another doctrine. We won't pursue it here. I'll just refer to it in passing. But this seal of God the Holy Spirit upon your life is the reason you can't ever be lost again. It is God's stamping you. That's the sealing ministry of the Holy Spirit. It means that He has sealed you for a destiny – eternal life. There is no way you can reverse that destiny. You cannot break the seal of God the Holy Spirit.

If you understand the sealing ministry, you'll never worry about losing your salvation. It is only ignorance of the Scripture that causes a person to suggest that you can ever be lost again. It is monumental arrogance – I'll tell you that. That is because it implies that there was some sin that you can come up with that God hasn't covered. And when the Bible says that Christ died for the sins of the world, you come up and say, "Hey, here's one of those sins. I came up with one He didn't think of. I'm not covered." There are a lot of people who are proud of the fact that they can lose their salvation. It would be ironic justice if they did. Unfortunately, they won't.

The Purpose of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

We have an analogy in verse 12. The analogy here is between the human body and the church as the body of Christ as we have just explained it to you. This verse deals with believers of the church age only. Verse 12 does not have anything to say about believers of other dispensations. The point of the analogy is simply this. As the human body is made up of many different individual parts, all of these parts function together as a whole. So the church is made up of a group of individual believers with individual purposes (capacities), just as the organs of your body all have a different purpose, but all of those organs unite together into one functioning human body. So all the different Christians who are joined to the body of Christ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, with specialized spiritual gifts, are so united that they all function together as one body, accomplishing the Lord's work here on this earth. That's the analogy. Verse 12 explains that.

The word "for" is the Greek word "gar." "Gar" introduces the explanation of the verses which have preceded – verses 4-11. As you run your eye over verses 4-11, you will see that they deal with the subject of the fact that there are different spiritual gifts, all of which are governed by God the Holy Spirit today in the church. Now he's going to explain how this can be. It says, "For as," and the word "as" is "kathaper," and we would translate that "just as." "For just as the body." You see the analogy here – the comparison. "For just as the body is one." The word body is "soma," a word that you're familiar with. "Soma" means here the "human body." "For just as the human body is." The Greek word for "is" is "eimi." It is present tense, which means it constantly is true of the body. It is active – it is a characteristic of the body. It is indicative – a statement of fact.

"For just as the body has many." The word here for "many" is the Greek word "polus," which has to do with numbers. It's a numerical factor that is being pointed out. They are different parts of the body – different organs, and different pieces. He calls these "members." The Greek word is "melos." "Melos" refers to the different parts that make up your individual human body. So we would translate these opening words in this way: "For just as the human body is one unit, and has many parts."

Then he goes on and says, "And all members (referring again to the parts of the body) of the body being one. The word "being" again is our Greek word "eimi" that we had just a moment ago. This time it's a present active participle. He is saying that the body is constantly this. It is active – the body state. It is participle – a principle. "Being many." Again, this is the word "polus." He's repeating the words: "Many are one body." Again, he refers to the word "body" as "soma." But he uses the word "heis," meaning "one." It is one single unit. So we translate this way: "For just as the human body is one unit and has many parts, and all the parts of the body, being many, are one body."

Then here is the word indicating the comparison: "So also." The Greek word is "houtos," and "houtos" causes us to look back to what has just been said; that is, how the human body is made up of many parts, but functions in one way. So we would translate: "In this way, also." (There is no "is" in the Greek). "In this way also, Christ." This is "christos." Here it is the Christ. That means it is referring to Jesus Christ in union with the church age believer – positional truth. If it had just Christ without the definite article, then it would be referring to Jesus as the God-man – undiminished deity and true humanity in one person forever. He is here, having this one body, as a human body is one with many parts: "So in this way also is Christ."

We have run out of time. We shall explain verse 13 next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

Back to the Advanced Bible Doctrine (Philippians) index