Acts 19

Acts 19 And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples: 2and he said unto them, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed? And they said unto him, Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was given. 3And he said, Into what then were ye baptized? And they said, Into John’s baptism. 4And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus. 5And when they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied. 7And they were in all about twelve men.

Throughout the Book of Acts, Luke carefully records the early church’s rising struggle to understand the precise relationship it has to the law of Moses. As the church increasingly grasped the atoning significance of Jesus’ death and the eschatological significance of Jesus’ resurrection, it could no longer view the law and its institutions in exactly the same way. Many things were in transition, many things from the Old Testament had been fulfilled in Jesus death and Resurrection. Some old things were passed away and some had taken a new form, if it was one of the things that even continued.

For example; Stephen casts doubt on the finality of the temple.

Peter learns not only that the food laws no longer apply but also that whatever God declares clean is to be treated as clean, irrespective of an antecedent law.

Part of this debate from old to new developed into the question of how Gentiles are to be related to the Messiah. Those who want to uphold the finality of the Mosaic legislation as a covenant insist that Gentiles must first become Jewish proselytes, pledging themselves by circumcision to obey Moses—and only then are they eligible to accept Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. The alternative view prevails at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15); and one of the decisive arguments turns on Peter’s experiences with Cornelius and his kin (Acts 15:8; see Acts 10–11, about which I will say more in a moment). Now all of this constitutes a major theme in Acts; and it is relatively easy to integrate the four dramatic displays of the Spirit’s outpouring with that and related salvation-historical themes. It is not easy to relate them to anything else.

Acts 19

This rather strange account has in the past sometimes been used to justify a post conversion experience of the Spirit, on the basis of the King James Version’s rendering of verse 2: “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?” Today, almost all sides accept the rendering : “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” Contemporary debate focuses much more on the meaning of “disciples” in verse 1, whether or not there is a delay between the water baptism of verse 5 and the descent of the Spirit in verse 6.

Usually too little attention is placed on the unique anomaly the group represents.

It is very difficult to know exactly where Apollos, or the Ephesians of Acts 19, stood. It appears they had apparently become followers of John the Baptist, had received his baptism,(whether personally or conceivably from one of John’s converts, and had followed the Baptist’s ministry long enough to know that he had pointed beyond himself to Jesus, the one whose sandals he was not worthy to loosen.

Apparently they knew nothing of Pentecost and what it signified of eschatological transformation. Many throughout the book of Acts had left Jerusalem after the Passover and were not there to witness the Resurrection of Jesus or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We see this many times and the church goes out into the world. Many the apostles encounter new nothing of the Holy Spirit coming. This ignorance could have developed because they (or the people who taught them) left Jerusalem (like tens of thousands of other diaspora Jews) shortly after the Passover feast—that is, they learned of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but not of the coming of the Spirit. This placed them in exactly the same situation as the believers in Acts 1, except that Pentecost had already taken place.

Paul asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No, we have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit” (which may simply mean “that there is a Holy Spirit to be received,” not necessarily that they had not even heard the words Holy Spirit before).
“But you were baptized as believers?”
“Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism, of course.”

Paul understands what has happened, and the rest of the narrative follows easily enough.
It is important to recognize that if this is anything like what happened, there are two things we must keep in front to try to understand what is going on.

Paul presupposes by this line of questioning that reception of the Spirit at conversion is normal and expected; the distinctive abnormality of the Ephesians’ experience could not be repeated today, since it is inconceivable that someone could be found who was a baptized follower of the Baptist, an enthusiastic supporter of the Baptist’s witness to Jesus, apparently also a believer in Jesus’ death and resurrection, but ignorant of Pentecost. Carson

The disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus, fall into a kind of salvation-historical warp. In each case Luke is introducing a new group, until as the gospel expands throughout the empire there are no new groups left. And in each case the manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in tongues is part of a corporate experience. Never in Acts is this the experience of an individual convert, even though Luke has many opportunities for reducing the scale from the group to the individual (e.g., Lydia [Acts 16:11–15]; the Philippian jailer [16:16–40]; and about twenty others). Carson

The Tongue Mandate by the Charismatics is seen here again in Acts 19

One of the most widely used books in contemporary charismatic renewal is The Holy Spirit and You by Dennis and Rita Bennet, “What if I don’t speak in tongues? Can I receive the Holy Spirit without speaking in tongues?”

Their Answer: “It comes with the package!” Speaking in tongues is not the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but it is what happens when and as you are baptized in the Spirit and it becomes an important resource to help you continue, as Paul says, to … “keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). You don’t have to speak in tongues in order to be saved. You don’t have to speak in tongues in order to have the Holy Spirit in you. You don’t have to speak in tongues to have times of feeling filled with the Holy Spirit, but if you want the free and full outpouring that is the baptism in the Holy Spirit, you must expect it to happen as in Scripture … If you want to understand the New Testament you need the same experience that all its writers had.

They sum up the classical two-stage Pentecostal teaching:

The first experience of the Christian life, salvation, is the incoming of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to give us new life, God’s life, eternal life. The second experience, is the receiving, or making welcome of the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus can cause Him to pour out this new life from our spirits, to baptize our souls and bodies and then our world around, with his refreshing and renewing power. (See p. 275.)

Pentecostals argue that since baptism in the Spirit happened these four times with speaking in tongues, we should regard this as normative. First, the word of the gospel is received by faith. Christ comes into your life by the Spirit. Then, you are baptized in water. And, generally, following water-baptism at some later point, you pray for the baptism in the Spirit and are overwhelmed with a new fullness and freedom and power accompanied by speaking in tongues.

Tongues Not Necessary to Being Baptized in the Spirit

Five reasons why many do not agree with the Pentecostals or Charismatics that speaking in tongues is a necessary part of being baptized in the Spirit.

1. It is not taught anywhere in the New Testament. It seems risky to me to say, since it happened this way four times it must happen this way all the time.

2. What Jesus does teach in Acts 1:5 and 8 is that the experience of baptism in the Spirit will bring power to witness into the Christian life.

3. Acts records at least nine other conversion stories, but never again mentions a two-step sequence with tongues (8:36; 9:17–19; 13:12, 48; 14:1; 16:14; 17:4, 34). This shows how difficult it is to establish a norm from the way things happened back then.

4. It could be that there were special circumstances in Jerusalem, Samaria, Cornelius’ house, and Ephesus that made speaking in tongues especially helpful in communicating the truth that the Holy Spirit was creating a new unified body of Jew and Samaritan and Gentile.

5. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:30 that “not all speak in tongues” and the words he uses are for general tongues speaking, not merely for a special “gift of tongues” used in church. He seems to have in view the person who feels ostracized without tongues and says (v. 16), “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.” Paul responds, “Not everybody speaks in tongues!”

For these five reasons many cannot say with the Pentecostals that no Christian has been baptized in the Holy Spirit unless he has spoken in tongues.

It seems that Luke leaves wide open the possibility that the Holy Spirit might fall upon a person with revolutionizing power over sin and power for witnessing and power in worship and yet not move them to speak with tongues. To say this person is not the beneficiary of Jesus’ promise to baptize us in the Holy Spirit goes beyond Scripture. “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit … and you shall receive power” (Acts 1:5, 8). That is the biblical sign. (Whether or not a Christian should seek to speak in tongues is another issue 1 Corinthians 14:5, 18, 39.) Piper

Luke repeatedly records instances where individuals are said to be filled with or full of the Holy Spirit, with no reference to speaking in tongues (e.g., Acts 4:8, 31; 6:3, 5; 7:55; 9:17; 11:24; 13:9, 52). If being Spirit-filled without speaking in tongues was God’s path for some of them, it is hard to see why tongues-speaking should be made the criterion for proper obedience to God today.

Paul allows no second-blessing theology; but some say Luke does.

If the two disagree here, a person can no longer speak of canonical theology in any wholistic sense. Worse, mutually contradictory theologies cannot both be true, and one cannot even speak of the canon establishing the allowable range of theologies, since one or more must be false. Carson

Charismatics have erred in trying to read an individualizing paradigm into material not concerned to provide one. But non-charismatics have often been content to delineate the function of tongues where they appear in Acts, without adequate reflection on the fact that for Luke the Spirit does not simply inaugurate the new age and then disappear; rather, he characterizes the new age. Carson

For Luke the coming of the Spirit is not associated merely with the dawning of the new age but with its presence, not merely with Pentecost but with the entire period from Pentecost to the return of Jesus the Messiah.

Debates on the Holy Spirit and Second Blessing

Most of the debates between charismatic Protestants and non-charismatic Protestants revolve around a two-stage way of salvation, the first essential to eternal life, the second to Christian victory and effective service. This second-blessing theology, has a long history in the so-called holiness traditions. The distinctive contribution of much of the charismatic movement to that tradition, however, is the insistence on tongues as the criterion that one has received this second blessing,

First, it is not clear from the biblical texts that “baptism in the Holy Spirit” is a technical term referring to a post-conversion enduement of the Spirit to be pursued by each believer. Luke’s evidence can be made to fit that grid only if it is misapplied, and Paul stands positively against it.

Second, even if that grid is adopted, it is hard to see on what basis the gift of tongues is made a criterion of the Spirit’s baptism. Even if the charismatic exegesis of, Acts 8 were right, and I, believe it is not, one would still have to integrate that exegesis with other texts. Therefore, it would be necessary to distinguish, a view that makes tongues-speaking evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the only evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the conclusive evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, and so forth. Carson

Advice from a charismatic manual:

A person should claim this gift [tongues] in confidence when he is prayed with to be baptized in the Spirit.…Yielding to tongues is an important first step, and it is worth putting effort into encouraging a person to yield to tongues, even to run the risk of being labelled “imbalanced”.…Often people can be helped to yield to tongues rather easily.…After praying with a person to be baptized in the Spirit, the team member should lean over or kneel down and ask the person if he would like to pray in tongues. When he says yes, he should encourage him to speak out, making sounds that are not English.…He should then pray with him again. When the person begins to speak in tongues, he should encourage him. … After you ask to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and ask for the gift of tongues, then yield to it. Begin by speaking out, if necessary beginning by just making meaningless sounds. The Holy Spirit will form them.66 The Life in the Spirit Seminars Team Manual (Notre Dame, Ind.: Charismatic Renewal Services, 1973), 146–51.

We abuse Luke’s interest in the salvation-historical inception or inauguration of the messianic age, if we force it into corner to make it tell us that a particular manifestation of the Spirit attests the Spirit’s presence or filling or baptism in every believer this side of Pentecost:

Luke simply does not set out such guidelines. On the other hand, there is no exegetical warrant for thinking certain classes of the Spirit’s manifestations cease once the crucial points of redemptive history have passed. Throughout this age, the Christian personally knows the Lord by the Spirit; the believer senses him, enjoys his presence, communes with him. The Spirit in a Christocentric fashion manifests himself in and to the believer; the believer in turn shows the Spirit. Carson

The resurrected and exalted Christ, no longer appears to human beings as the personal, resurrected Lord. Until his return, he manifests himself to us only by his Spirit; and therefore the peculiar commission and authority of the first apostles, which turned on personal contact with the resurrected Jesus, cannot be duplicated today.

We observe that tongues in Acts occur only in groups, are not said to recur, are public, and may serve various purposes of attestation; while tongues in 1 Corinthians fall to the individual, may be used in private, must be translated if in public, and serve no purpose of attestation.

Reflections on Second-Blessing Theology

Paul can exhort believers to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18); and after non-charismatics have said all they wish about the present imperative meaning “be being filled with the Spirit” or the like, in order to avoid any hint of a climactic second filling, the fact remains that the command is empty if Paul does not think it dangerously possible for Christians to be too “empty” of the Spirit. Carson

I see biblical support for the thesis that although all true believers have received the Holy Spirit and have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, nevertheless the Holy Spirit is not necessarily poured out on each individual Christian in precisely equivalent quantities. This is especially affect by sin in our lives. The Spirit can not empower one to the same extent when there is continuous sin in their life, as He can when a person deals with sin and removes it from their life.

Although there is no biblical support for a second-blessing theology, there seems to be support for a second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth-blessing theology.
There are degrees of unction, blessing, service, and holy joy, along with some more currently celebrated gifts, associated with those whose hearts have been specially touched by the sovereign God. Although I think it extremely dangerous to pursue a second blessing attested by tongues, I think it just as dangerous to fail to pant after God at all, and to be satisfied with a merely creedal Christianity that is right but complacent, orthodox but stiff, and, sound but soundly asleep. Carson

Assuming the authenticity of some tongues-speaking today, all Christians should insist “the same emphasis should be given it that the Bible does. We should not neglect what the Bible teaches, nor should we exalt what the Bible does not.

That means we must agree that tongues do not constitute essential evidence of Spirit baptism; they are not intended for every believer; in public they must edify the church, and follow the two or three rules Paul laid down to achieve this end; and in private they are of little concern to the church, provided the individual Christian who is thus exercising his or her gift of tongues is not blowing it out of proportion, using it as a substitute for other forms of piety, or proselytizing fellow believers with it. Carson

When I hear a popular charismatic leader on television (who is revered by millions) telling an emotionally and spiritually troubled woman that her problems would have been solved if only she had prayed more frequently in tongues, I am listening to spiritual humbug without a scrap of biblical warrant or a shred of pastoral responsibility.

And when a publication offers to give me, free (not counting the “contribution” of $12.00 that I am expected to make), the audio tapes of the testimony of a returned medical missionary who alleges he was caught up into heaven for five and a half days, conversed with Jesus, Paul, Abraham, Elijah, and others, saw “his” mansion seven hundred miles up from the city’s foundation, toured the buildings NOW still under construction, and heard Jesus talk about the rapture, Armageddon, and related matters, the kindest interpretation I can offer is that the sponsors of such stuff combine exegetical ignorance and immense gullibility. Have any of them wondered what μονή (monē) in John 14—the word the King James Version renders “mansion”—really means? Or whether apocalyptic literature might require a little more subtlety in the expositor who attempts to interpret it? Carson

Tongues cannot possibly serve as a criterion of anything; but you can not find any unequivocal criterion for ruling out all contemporary tongues-speaking, even though everything I have personally seen in regard to people speaking in tongues, was suspect or was manifested outside the stipulations Paul had laid down.