Baptism of the Holy Spirit
“For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
Definition
Baptism of the Holy Spirit (or “with,” or “in,” the Spirit) is Paul’s own term for the Spirit’s act of joining a believer to Christ and to his body at the moment of conversion, not a separate, subsequent experience some believers have and others lack.1 Every believer, by definition, has already been baptized with the Spirit in this sense; what varies from believer to believer is not whether they possess the Spirit but how fully they are yielded to him.
Biblical Basis
Paul states plainly that this baptism is what makes one part of the church at all: “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13) — a past, completed act true of every believer addressed in the letter, not a further experience some of them still lack. He grounds believers’ access to God in the same reality: “through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18). This is the same Spirit whose indwelling marks out a Christian in the first place: “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom. 8:9).
Opposing Views
Pentecostal and charismatic theology teaches that Spirit baptism is a definite experience distinct from and subsequent to conversion, witnessed by an initial sign. The Assemblies of God’s Statement of Fundamental Truths states this directly: “the baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance (Acts 2:4).”2 On this view, all believers are indwelt by the Spirit from conversion, but the baptism in the Spirit is a further filling, often later and separately sought, that equips a believer for empowered service and ministry. The Reformed position above treats this as a mislabeling of what Scripture calls Spirit-filling — a real, repeatable experience (Eph. 5:18) — with what Scripture calls Spirit-baptism, the one-time act, true of every believer without exception, that joins them to Christ and to each other.