By Bob Wilkin
I came to faith and was discipled through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. We had a booklet about how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Four Spiritual Laws booklet was our essential evangelistic resource. The Holy Spirit booklet was our key discipleship resource.
I served as a staff member with Cru for four years. While I shared the Four Spiritual Laws booklet with hundreds of students each year, I shared the Holy Spirit booklet with only a handful of students yearly, and then only because I was strongly encouraged to use it (and report its use).
While on staff, I felt that Cru’s concept of the filling of the Spirit was confusing and even misleading. Yet Cru’s explanation is the dominant understanding among non-charismatic Evangelicals.
WHAT IS IT AND HOW DO WE GET IT?
There are two questions regarding the filling of the Holy Spirit: 1) What is it? and 2) How do I get it?
The popular view is that He takes control of your life. The Holy Spirit controls your life by empowering your thoughts, words, and actions.
Cru.Org says, “To be filled with His presence means that you allow Him to fill every part of you…[so] that you experience the presence of His transforming grace.”
GotQuestions.Org says that the filling of the Spirit is “allowing Him to guide, influence, and govern our behavior.”
DesiringGod.Org (Dr. John Piper) says, “Nobody stays full of the Spirit all the time — no one is always totally joyful and…empowered for service.”
BillyGraham.Org says, “To be Spirit-filled according to Scripture is to be controlled or dominated by the Spirit of God’s presence and power (see Ephesians 5:18)” (emphasis added).
The popular view on how you get the filling is that you ask Him to take control of your life. This is sometimes expressed as submitting all areas of our lives to Him and being submissive to Him.
Cru.Org says, “So you submit yourself to him when you ask to be filled with the Spirit by faith, confident that He will answer according to His will.”
GotQuestions.Org says, “We are filled with the Holy Spirit when we cautiously consider our actions and yield ourselves to the Spirit’s power… Only as we submit to Him and are filled with the Holy Spirit can we experience a harmonious relationship with God and one another.”
DesiringGod.Org (Dr. John Piper) says that to gain the filling of the Spirit requires us to be “submissive to God.”
BillyGraham.Org says that we are filled with the Spirit if we “constantly draw on the direction and energy of the Spirit.”
THE POPULAR VIEW IS IMPRACTICAL AND UNBIBLICAL
The popular view of the filling of the Holy Spirit and how one gets it is impractical and unbiblical.
First, if the Holy Spirit ever took control of our lives, we would never sin again. How could we sin with the Holy Spirit in control? It doesn’t make any sense.
Second, where in Scripture are we told to invite the Holy Spirit to take control of our lives?
Third, why don’t the examples of the filling of the Holy Spirit in Acts correspond with the popular view? To hold to the popular view, you must avoid searching the Scriptures. You must listen to what people tell you and ask no questions.
TWO TYPES OF THE FILLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN ACTS
What I will call Type One filling is being spiritual (or Spiritual). We find this in Acts 6:3, 5; 11:24; 13:52. The first deacons were full of the Spirit and wisdom. That is, they were spiritual and wise.
This first type of filling means that the person was what Paul calls a spiritual man (1 Cor 2:15-16). Spirit-filled is another name for being spiritually mature. It does not refer to His controlling or empowering you. He empowers all believers. But He does not control believers. We are not puppets.
We get Type One filling by growing in faith as we absorb God’s Word (John 17:17; Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18; Heb 4:12). We maintain this type of filling by continuing to welcome solid Bible teaching.
Hodges wrote, “But as we have already seen, God’s Word is also the instrument by which the Holy Spirit transforms us more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 3:18)” (Six Secrets of the Christian Life, p. 42). He added, “The work of the Holy Spirit in us produces a spiritual way of looking at things” (Six Secrets, p. 85).
Interestingly, though Hodges mentions the Holy Spirit twenty-six times in his short book on sanctification (Six Secrets), he doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit’s filling.i That is because he understood the filling as I describe it here.
Type Two filling is gaining special enablement for tasks. We find this in Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 7:55; 13:9. In none of these cases did anyone ask for it, pray for it, submit to get it, or anything else. God did it. He sovereignly did it.
These were times when people received extraordinary power for special circumstances.
Does this second type of filling occur today? I’d say yes, but I can’t be sure because the Epistles do not tell us one way or the other. Nothing tells us that it no longer occurs today.
Ephesians 5:18 calls for this type of filling.
I can tell you that I’ve had many experiences of looking back on an article I wrote or a sermon I gave and feeling that something extraordinary had happened. Maybe I was just “in the zone.” Or maybe being in the zone is being especially enabled by the Holy Spirit at that time.
If this Type Two filling occurs today, it is a sovereign act of God that might be brought on by our being prayerful, humble, and dependent on God’s strength.
WHAT ARE GRIEVING AND QUENCHING THE SPIRIT?
Most people think these are the same thing. They are not.
Grieving the Holy Spirit is what we do when we rebel against God (Eph 4:29-31). It shows that the Holy Spirit has emotions. He can experience grief. And He does when we rebel.
Quenching the Spirit is what we do when we forbid other believers from serving God (1 Thess 5:19-21). We are quenching His work in the church body by not allowing others to use their spiritual gifts.
THE PROPER FOCUS SHOULD BE ON WALKING ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT
We err by presenting the Holy Spirit’s filling as a key to sanctification. In the Type One sense, the filling of the Spirit is sanctification. It is another name for spiritual maturity.
We should instead focus on walking in the Spirit and walking according to the Spirit. The former expression occurs in Galatians 5:16, 25. The latter expression is found in Rom 8:1, 4.
In Galatians, walking in the Spirit is the opposite of walking in the flesh. Walking in the flesh is legalism, not licentiousness. To walk in the Spirit is to walk in liberty, as Gal 5:1 makes clear.
Zane Hodges explains walking according to the Spirit in this way: “A paraphrase might be: ‘those who walk Spirit-wise,’ that is… with a spiritual orientation” (Romans, p. 209). He continues, “Simply put, if one lives with a fleshly orientation—even if it is the result of a vigorous effort to keep the law—they are going to fail because it is the wrong mindset” (p. 214). The right mindset, he suggests, is found in Rom 8:6, “to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Hodges writes,
The trap into which a Christian falls when he is principally concerned with the law itself is that he cannot escape a preoccupation with the spiritual deadness within and around him. The mindset of the Spirit, however, lifts his preoccupations to the level of supernatural life and peace (Romans, p. 209, italics his).
Most professing Christians who are interested in spiritual matters live with a fleshly orientation toward spiritual victory. They think that victory comes from focusing on God’s commands and from dedication, commitment, surrender, and various spiritual disciplines.
We are changed by welcoming solid Bible teaching and having the Holy Spirit renew our minds (Rom 12:2). That is walking in the Spirit and walking according to the Spirit.
CONCLUSION
The popular understanding of the Holy Spirit’s filling is confusing and misleading because it is unbiblical and impractical.
The Holy Spirit does not take control of our lives. If He did, we’d never sin again. He’d never let go.
To be filled with the Spirit is to be spiritually mature. It is to be spiritually minded (Rom 8:6). It is to walk according to the Spirit or in the Spirit.
You are not a cup; the Holy Spirit is not some liquid filling your cup. What the Holy Spirit is seeking to do is brainwash us. He is seeking to give us “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). He renews our minds, resulting in transformed lives.
Most people concerned about being filled with the Spirit get it backwards. They think they will be holy if they focus on transforming their lives by legalistic methods. But they cannot be holy if their minds are set on legalism. Life transformation comes when the Holy Spirit renews our minds (Rom 12:2).
Only by focusing on grace can we be filled with the Holy Spirit (in the Type One sense).
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Bob Wilkin is Executive Director of Grace Evangelical Society. He and Sharon live in Highland Village, TX. He has racewalked eleven marathons.
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i He also doesn’t mention the filling of the Holy Spirit in his Roman’s commentary, The Gospel Under Siege, Grace in Eclipse, Harmony with God, or The Hungry Inherit. The only places I could find his discussing it were one reference in Absolutely Free to what I call Type One filling (p. 217) and several references in his unpublished class notes on Acts. He considered Acts 2 to be referring to what I call Type Two filling: “Though supernatural and sovereignly bestowed, it nevertheless comes to prepared vessels.” His view of the filling of the Spirit seems to be consistent with what I’ve described.
