Baptized in the Holy Ghost/Spirit
Just before Jesus ascended back into heaven, He told His disciples that they were going to be “baptized with the Holy Ghost” in a few days:
Acts 1:4-5
- And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me;
- for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
This is the last time that Jesus associated “baptized” to an act of the Holy Ghost.
Peter’s use of “baptized with the Holy Ghost” was when he testified about Cornelius and compared that event to what Jesus promised would come on the Day of Pentecost:
Acts 11:15-17
- And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning.
- Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
- If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?”
Peter was not giving instructions neither prophesying. He was giving a testimony. Therefore, Jesus is the last person to use the word, “baptized” in conjunction with a work of the Holy Ghost.
Remember, Jesus said that the disciples would be “baptized with the Holy Ghost”. However, “filled with the Holy Ghost” is what Luke said to describe what the 120 in the upper room experienced:
Acts 2:4,
- And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
(It is very important to remember that Luke’s use of “filled with the Holy Ghost” was not the first time he used the phrase. He used it twice in his Gospel (the book of Luke) in reference to the Elizabeth and Zacharias, the parents of John the Baptist. (We will refer to that later.)
Today people frequently use the phrases, “Baptized with the Holy Ghost” and “Filled with the Holy Ghost”, interchangeably. But, the fact is that they have very different meanings. “Baptized” is the operation the Holy Spirit performs in the human spirit. “Filled” is when He assumes controls of a yielded person to speak or to perform the miraculous.
First, examine the word, “baptized”. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, recorded John the Baptist as saying that he baptized with water but Jesus baptized with the Holy Ghost. Everywhere throughout the New Testament that any tense of the verb “baptize” is used in reference to water, the Holy Ghost, and into Jesus Christ, it is translated from the Greek word, “baptizo” (bap-tid’-zo).
The best example to illustrate the meaning of “baptizo” can be found in “Thayer’s Lexicon”. It references a text from the Greek poet and physician, Nicander, who lived about 200 B.C. The clarity is in his Greek written recipe for making pickles because it uses two words that mean baptize: baptizo (baptized) and bapto (dipped).
Nicander says that in order to make a pickle, the vegetable should first be dipped into boiling water [bapto] and then baptized [baptizo] in the vinegar solution. Both verbs concern the immersing of vegetables. But, the first immersion is temporary, that water is soon poured out. The second immersion stays, it produces a permanent change: a cucumber becomes a pickle. See The Fellowship Relationship: Evidence Of Born-Again.
