God the Holy Spirit, Mentor's Guide, MG14

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G O D T H E H O L Y S P I R I T

3. At salvation, (when we are united with Christ), we receive the same access to the Holy Spirit that Jesus has. In terms of baptism in the Holy Spirit, this means that since Jesus possesses the Spirit “without limit”(John 3.34-35), that same resource is bestowed on us in Christ. This view would argue that you cannot have more of the Holy Spirit than you receive at salvation because at salvation you are given access to everything that belongs to Christ.

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4. Christian maturity involves learning how to live moment by moment in dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit that God gives us at the moment of salvation.

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a. This view emphasizes that new believers often do not realize what they have been given or know how to live out their new life in the Spirit. At salvation, we are given the Holy Spirit who fully and completely indwells (1 Cor. 6.19) and empowers us, but we must learn to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5.16-26) on a daily basis. For the Reformed position, every believer has been “baptized in the Holy Spirit” but not every believer has matured so that they are walking in the power and holiness that would make that evident. This growth in the Spirit filled life is an on-going process that never stops. Even the most mature believer will not experience complete freedom from sin and complete reliance on the Spirit’s power, until they die and are glorified.

It would certainly be a mistake to try to base a doctrine of theological necessity upon passages in Luke’s writings [Acts]

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which were designed to describe the various stages

which seemed to him significant in the spread of a work for God. ~ Michael Green. I Believe in the Holy Spirit . p. 162.

b. Exegetical distinctive: The Reformed view draws the majority of it’s theology about baptism in the Holy Spirit from the Pauline Epistles. The Stories of the Book of Acts must be harmonized with the plain propositional statements of Paul.