Baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus
Acts 19:1-6 You know you are filled with the Holy Spirit when you feel continual amazement that your Creator loves you, has saved you, and has forgiven you.
'While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” '
Acts 19:1-6
Today’s verses are lengthy, but I felt it was necessary to list them all in order to really dig into them. Acts (formally, The Acts of the Apostles) is one of my favorite books of the New Testament, as it really defines the history of Christianity after Christ’s ascension.
Acts is also a written history of the Apostle Paul, and by the time we get to chapter 19, he has gone to Ephesus. He runs into a group of early Christians and asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they believed, answered with “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
This is the only time in Paul’s ministry that we hear him asking disciples if they had received the Holy Spirit, so there must have been something that was said or done that led him to ask them. The reply of the disciples shows that they really didn’t know too much about God’s triune nature as revealed in Jesus.
Since they were called disciples, they obviously knew enough to be saved and to follow the teachings of Jesus. However, the promise of Jesus to send the Holy Spirit when He ascended to heaven was something they hadn’t learned. This indicates that these disciples probably weren’t in the group that Paul originally talked with in Ephesus described in Acts 18:19-21. He had left Aquila and Priscilla behind to teach that group and from his letters to them found in 1 and 2 Corinthians, we know that he taught the couple about the Holy Spirit.
For further clarification of why the Ephesian disciples hadn’t heard of the Holy Spirit, Paul asks them “what baptism did you receive?” and gets the answer that it was “John’s baptism”. That told John that they may have been Christian exiles who had actually been baptized by John the Baptist or some of his followers who continued his ministry after his beheading.
By Matthias Grünewald (1470-1528* - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain
It appears that through John’s message and baptism, these disciples had heard about the coming of the Messiah and their need to repent in order to receive Him. But they don’t seem to understand that the Messiah had actually come, nor that they needed faith in Jesus and His work.
Paul then goes on to teach them that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, not of faith in Jesus leading to salvation. A second baptism, this time in the name of Jesus, occurred with some miraculous results — “they spoke in tongues and prophesied”. Having not heard of the Holy Spirit before, they were suddenly immersed in Him!
In our age, baptism in the name of Jesus usually doesn’t result in miracles. That begs the question, “How do I know if the Holy Spirit is in me?” Baptist theologian John Piper did a podcast in which he addressed this very question, and his answer includes the following:
Having the Holy Spirit marks one off as a Christian. You can’t be a Christian if you don’t have the Spirit. There are no Christians who don’t have the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is what all believers should seek to experience for the sake of the wonderful, Christ-exalting freedom and boldness and power that it brings.
“So, how do you know if you have the Holy Spirit?” he asks. And I’m responding, “You know you have the Spirit if you are, in fact, a Christian — if you have been born again.”1
The disciples at Ephesus were — as Piper emphasizes in the excerpt above — filled with the Holy Spirit. Piper goes on in his podcast to answer the second question, “How do I know if I am filled with the Holy Spirit?”, with this:
Ask yourself this: Are you amazed at the sovereign grace of God that you wake up every morning as a believer in Christ? Are you amazed? True saving faith is the number-one evidence that you are born again.
You know you are filled with the Holy Spirit when you feel continual amazement that your Creator loves you, has saved you, and has forgiven you.
Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:
Heavenly Father, I love to study about how Your Church grew in the early days of Christianity. It is an honor to receive the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ, and to know I’ve received everlasting life and forgiveness of my sins by that faith. Thank You for the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who has promised to guide us into all truth. In Jesus’ name I pray, AMEN.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org.
By John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For more than thirty years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He is author of more than fifty books, and his sermons, articles, books, and more are available free of charge at desiringGod.org.