About this series:

The Holy Spirit is fully God, eternally existing with the Father and the Son. Throughout the Old Testament, we see glimpses of the Spirit’s presence and work, but it is through the teaching of Jesus and the events of the New Testament that the church’s understanding of the Holy Spirit is revealed more fully.

About this talk:

Having become a child of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, the privilege is then to continue with God’s very own life at work in us. Those he makes his children, he empowers to live as his children. This reality - promised in Old Testament passages such as Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:25-27 and Joel 2:28-29 - is demonstrated regularly in the book of Acts and then encouraged in Ephesians 5:18: “be (continually) filled with the Spirit.” By comparing other statements about filling in Ephesians (3:21; 4:10), there is an argument to say that it is actually the Spirit who fills us with the fulness of God - NET Bible notes conclude, ‘Believers are to be filled by Christ by means of the Spirit with the content of the fullness of God.’ 1 Either way, the Christian life is not only begun by the power of the Spirit, but is sustained / lived by the power of the Spirit.

Acts 2:1-4 clearly records a unique event in that it was the first time the Holy Spirit was “poured out” (see v 33) such that the believers were “filled with the Holy Spirit.” The “sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (v 2) and “what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” (v 3) are unique to this account. It is noteworthy that Luke is struggling to describe exactly the sights and sounds of that event - “a sound like...” and “what seemed to be...” The effect on the believers was considerable - both what they said and how they appeared left the crowd amazed.

Peter’s explanation of these events, presumably from hearing the teaching of Jesus, was that “this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel,” specifically that God would pour out his Spirit on all people, men and women, young and old. All of which was a part of Jewish expectation - that God’s specially anointed servant would come to defeat the enemies of God’s people, bring in the kingdom and, anointed by the Spirit of God, bring a new day for Israel.

In Acts 10:44-47 and Acts 11:15-16 (NIV) four different terms are used to describe the same event: “came on,” “poured out,” “received” and “baptised with.” It appears from the other references in Acts (listed after the title, above) that the dominant term Luke uses for the believers' experience of the Spirit was “filled with” (2:1-4; 4:8; 4:31; 9:17; 13:9; 13:52). It is worth considering what that term means:

All New Testament uses are given by Luke (those in Acts, above, plus Luke 1:15,41&67).
It is used elsewhere, for example, of a person being filled with rage (Luke 4:28) or astonishment (Acts 3:10), of a boat being so full of fish that it began to sink (Luke 5:7) and of a time period having reached its fulfilment (Luke 2:6).
This word ‘weaves through the New Testament as a golden thread of divine plenitude - filling wombs with prophets, hearts with the Spirit, boats with fish, and history with ordained moments. Whether blessing or judgment, empowerment or opposition, the verb announces that nothing spiritual, emotional, or temporal remains half-measure under God’s sovereign hand.’

It has often been said this reality is best likened to the sail of a yacht being filled with wind. It is a dynamic filling, not a static one (as, for example, a glass filled with water). It is a filling that acts upon and changes the movement of the yacht. And the filling of the sail is not a one-time action, but continual as the sail is ‘offered up to’ to the wind.

And so, while the follower of Jesus is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, it is their ongoing privilege to be filled with, led by, empowered by the very life of God himself. And we should settle for nothing less. Perhaps Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it best: ‘The Christian life after all is a life, it is a power, it is an activity...It is not just a philosophy, it is not just a point of view, it is not just a teaching that we take up and try to put into practice. It is all that, but it is something infinitely more. The very essence of the Christian life, according to the New Testament teaching everywhere, is that it is a mighty power that enters into us; it is a life, if you like, that is pulsating in us.’