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The Baptism and Filling Work of the Holy Spirit
Grace Community Church is not a distinctively charismatic church in that we do not believe that miraculous signs and spectacular spiritual gifts such as tongues, miracles, healings, and prophecy are necessarily a normative part of the Christian’s daily life in every generation or location of the church. However, neither are we an anti-charismatic church, for we believe in the availability of all spiritual gifts during the church age--including these miraculous sign gifts--and we recognize that God can choose to act in any way at any time consistent with His Word.
We recognize that signs, wonders, and miracles had particular significance as the signs of New Testament apostles (2 Cor 12:12), who were unique to the New Testament period of church history. However, we also recognize that God continues to perform signs, wonders, and miracles today, the most amazing miracle being the transformation of a sinner into a child of God. We will therefore be open to God’s unique working in our church and will pray for healing of the sick (James 5:14).
At Grace we reject the idea that the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit occurs at any time other than at conversion. We believe that upon conversion, every Christian is baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13) and as such is indwelt by the Holy Spirit from the point of conversion on (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14). We also believe that every Christian is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Unlike the baptism of the Holy Spirit, however, the filling of the Holy Spirit is not automatic. It is not something that happens to us nor is it a gift that we receive. Rather, the filling of the Holy Spirit is a command to be obeyed in that every Christian must strive to voluntarily yield his or her life to the Holy Spirit’s leading and empowering (Eph 5:18). To speak of this filling as a “baptism” is a misapplication of biblical terminology. Further, we affirm that the genuine sign that a person is filled with the Holy Spirit is not miraculous gifting but Christ-like character (Gal 5:22-25). Although spiritual gifts and extraordinary phenomenon may at times accompany the Spirit’s filling, the fruit of the Spirit will always accompany the Spirit’s filling.
We affirm that an important part of the Christian life is experiential. Moreover, we believe a Christian may have many supernatural experiences during his or her Christian life. However, every experience must be evaluated in light of the Bible, and no private experience ought to be viewed as the normative for every Christian.
We encourage a spirit of love and acceptance among our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters in Christ who differ from us. We must not allow this distinctive to divide us from mutual love, prayer, fellowship, and kingdom work. |