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necessary part of the commission Christ gave Paul. "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to
preach the gospel" (I Cor. 1: 17) he asserted. Even though he did baptize a few, it should
be quite evident from the clear command of the Lord that ritual baptism was not essential
to the ministry entrusted to him and therefore it is an intruder in Eph. 4: 5 and Col. 2:
as well as being quite foreign to the context. Each member of the Body is "filled full
(complete) in Christ" (Col. 2: 10). What can "shadows" add to this glorious fullness?
And is it not lack of appreciation of this fullness that causes many to cling to these
`shadows'?
We would sum up by saying that the real Spirit baptism identifies and unites a believer
with Christ eternally. There are three great unities in Scripture:
(1)
The unity between the members of the Godhead (John 17:).
(2)
The unity between Christ and the believer (Rom. 6:).
(3)
The unity between believers themselves (Eph. 4:).
No wonder we are not exhorted to make a unity, but to carefully guard one already
made by God.
The filling of the Holy Spirit.
Eph. 5: 18 is another verse of Scripture which is often misunderstood:
"Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your
heart to the Lord."
This verse is beloved of Pentecostalists who use it to teach that it refers to some
exalted feeling in the believers experience subsequent to salvation when he receives the
`second blessing', or receives the baptism or fullness of the Spirit. The verb "be filled" is
pleroo which takes the accusative case of the thing filled, the genitive case of the matter
with which the thing is filled and the dative case of the means used to accomplish the
filling, the agent. Sometimes the preposition en is added to emphasize the agent. In
English we say "filled with". Greek says "filled of". Here are two examples out of
many:
"And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost" (Greek, filled of joy
and of holy spirit) (Acts 13: 52).
"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing" (Greek, fill you
[accusative] of all joy and peace in [en with dative] believing) (Rom. 15: 13).
Coming now to Eph. 5: 18 we find that `be filled' is the present passive plural, "be
continually filled" en pneumati, "by (the) Spirit" (dative). The Holy Spirit is the Filler,
not the substance with which the believer is filled. The Berkeley Version translates the
verse "be filled by the Spirit" and the N.E.B. "let the Holy Spirit fill you" and if anyone
asks with what does the Holy Spirit fill the believer, the answer is given in the parallel
context in Col. 3: 16: