1 Corinthians 12:12

For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free... But now God has set the members, every one of them, in the body as it has pleased him... that there should be no schism in the body. But that the members should have the same care, one for another.

When Christ saves you, He baptizes you with His Spirit and sets you exactly where He wants you in His living body.

Jesus the Baptizer, the Spirit the Element

Before we press on into the remainder of 1 Corinthians 12 and into chapters 13 and 14, I want to touch again on something we looked at several weeks ago. I believe that all believers, at conversion, are baptized in or with the Holy Spirit by Jesus. Jesus is the baptizer, and the Holy Spirit is the element with which we are baptized.

John the Baptist confirms this in all four Gospels. In Matthew 3 he says, "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that comes after me is mightier than I... He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." The same is recorded in Mark 1, Luke 3, and John 1, where God told John that the one on whom the Spirit descended and remained "is he which baptizes with the Holy Spirit." And here in 1 Corinthians 12:13, "For in one Spirit we are all baptized into one body."

So I do not believe it accords with Scripture to say, "I'm a Christian, but I've not yet received the baptism of the Holy Spirit." In fact, the exact phrase "the baptism of the Holy Spirit" is not found in Scripture. Someone may say that's mere semantics—fine—but we must recognize that Jesus is the baptizer and the Spirit is the element. No one can say, "I'm a Christian, but I don't have the Spirit." Romans 8:9 settles it: "If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." A Christian has the Spirit, and with the Spirit comes gifts. As 1 Corinthians 12:7 says, "the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for the profit of all."

Two Objections: First, the Book of Acts

If you disagree, there are at least two questions you should ask. First: how does Acts witness to a post-conversion baptism of the Spirit in at least four places—Acts 2, 8, 10, and 19?

Consider the nature of the book. Acts is called the Acts of the Apostles, and it is descriptive more than prescriptive. It is a history book, not primarily a doctrinal one. The epistles are given as instruction to the church; Acts describes events without necessarily making them normative. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit and God strikes them dead—many of you should be thanking God that is not normative Christianity today. In Acts 16, Paul circumcised Timothy before taking him into ministry; that is descriptive, not a condition of service. Paul also observed Jewish purification rites and vows not placed on the church today. Acts narrates events and teachings we can learn from, but it is descriptive more than instructive.

What the Outpourings in Acts Actually Show

In Acts 1:8, Jesus told His disciples they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts. In Acts 2 the Spirit is poured out on Jewish believers in Jerusalem, evidenced by tongues—the fulfillment Peter says was spoken of by Joel.

But the gospel was never to stay in Jerusalem. In Acts 8 it reaches the Samaritans, and Peter and the apostles go and pray, and the Spirit falls on them. Why is this important? Under Judaism, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans—recall the woman at the well in John 4. Yet God establishes that there is no difference between Jewish and Samaritan Christians.

Then in Acts 10 it goes further. Peter preaches at the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, and the Spirit is poured out on these Gentile believers. At the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:8, Peter testifies, "God, which knows our hearts, bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as he did unto us, and put no difference between us and them." God deliberately revealed, through Peter as witness, that Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles all receive the same Spirit fully and freely. Most of us here are Gentiles—and we are not second-class Christians.

Acts 19: Disciples of John, Not Yet Christians

Acts 19 is the primary passage people use to argue for a baptism subsequent to salvation. Paul comes to Ephesus, finds certain disciples, and asks, "Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?" Their response is telling: "We have not so much as heard whether there were any Holy Spirit." I do not believe these twelve were Christians, because you cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit dwelling in you (Romans 8:9).

What were they disciples of? Verse 3 reveals it: they had been baptized "unto John's baptism." Paul explains that John baptized unto repentance, pointing people to Christ. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, Paul laid hands on them, and the Spirit came upon them. At conversion they received the Spirit. Their water baptism in Jesus' name matters, because in the New Testament baptism was the initial response to faith. (And if you've walked with Jesus a long time and never been baptized, nothing hinders you—we'll dunk you in that little pond out there if we have to.) Notice that Apollos, mentioned in 19:1, had likewise been a disciple of John until Aquila and Priscilla shared the full gospel with him.

The Second Objection: Why Do Some Experience the Spirit's Power Later?

The second objection: why do believers sometimes experience the Spirit's power at a later time, and why don't all Christians experience it? My answer is this: while all Christians have all the Holy Spirit, many believers have not allowed the Holy Spirit to have all of them.

We must decide to walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:16 says, "Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." We already have the Spirit; we must choose to walk by His power. And we must be continually filled—Ephesians 5:18, "be being filled with the Holy Spirit." D.L. Moody, asked why he constantly spoke of the filling of the Spirit, replied, "Because I continually leak." You know the reality: some mornings we wake up on the fleshly side of the bed, grouchy and snippy, totally carnal. What do we do? We repent and ask God to fill us again. This is the same Corinthian church Paul repeatedly called carnal.

So what about the "second blessing" some experience years after conversion? When someone goes forward at a retreat and experiences a transformation in their walk, I believe they are yielding to the Spirit already in their life and witnessing the manifestation of His power—not receiving something new. When we become Christians we receive the Spirit of Christ, and in Christ "all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" dwells. You don't get ten percent of Jesus now and the rest later. We can quench the Spirit, pinching off the hose so He cannot flow through us. To experience His fullness we must daily submit, for we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19).

Why This Matters: Let Scripture, Not Experience, Govern

You are capable students of Scripture, called to rightly divide the word of truth. If you conclude the baptism of the Spirit happens after salvation, I have no heartache—I consider it a secondary issue. But reason it out from the Scriptures. It is imperative that we never let our experiences inform Scripture; we must examine and explain our experiences by the Scriptures. If we remove Scripture as our measuring rod, everything becomes purely experiential, and anything goes. People claim to be "slain in the Spirit"—the only place we see that phrase fit is Ananias and Sapphira, who were carried out and buried. Once you say experiences outside Scripture are valid, who is to say they are not of God? It's dangerous.

Second, I am always suspect of doctrines that establish division within the body of Christ. Aside from lacking biblical support, the "second blessing" teaching creates a class or caste system among Christians—as though some have the Spirit and the anointing while others are inferior and deficient. Since I first shared this, several people have privately told me how freeing it has been, because for years they felt like second-rate believers who didn't have what the next person had. Within the body, people often carry spiritual inferiority complexes—and Paul addresses exactly this.

The Body: Unity and Diversity

Look at verse 15: "If the foot shall say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body. Is it therefore not of the body?" The body is one (verse 12), yet has many members. Paul chooses an illustration, and illustrations are powerful because they bring deep truths down to where we can grasp them. Jesus taught Nicodemus that the Spirit is like the wind, and the woman at the well about living water.

When Jesus walked the earth He had a body of flesh and blood to accomplish His work. After His ascension, He still has a body—flesh-and-blood believers here to fulfill His purpose. We are His body. We tend to think of the church as an organization: a building, a board, bylaws, a 501(c)(3), bank accounts. But Scripture always pictures the church as an organism—a flock, a vine, a bride, a body. The difference between an organization and an organism is like the difference between your car and you: the car is a structured system, but it isn't alive. The church is alive. Even when called a building, 1 Peter 2:5 says it is built of living stones.

Every part of this living organism is important and is importantly placed by God's sovereign action. No one can say, "I'm just a foot, stuck in a hot, sweaty shoe—I'm not important." That's absurd, yet it's how we sometimes think. We have unity because Christ brought us together (1 Peter 2:10): once we were not a people, but now we are the people of God. We came into communion with God through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and from that communion comes community with one another. The one thing we hold in common is Christ. There are people in this room you'd never have spoken to—some you'd have crossed to another aisle to avoid—but because of Him we are one. I like to think of community as common-unity: we have Him in common, so we are in unity.

The Body: Sovereignty

We have unity, but we are many members, so we have diversity—and that diversity is a good thing. You cannot have such great unity without it. Even my sixteen-month-old daughter Addison grasps this: ask where her nose is, she points to it; her head, she pats it; her belly button, she lifts her shirt to find it—and then she goes looking for yours. She is one body, yet made of many diverse parts.

Verse 17: "If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?" God has sovereignly ordained every piece. A whole race of just eyes would be a Twilight Zone monstrosity. If every member of a football team decided to play quarterback, you'd have forty-two quarterbacks and no game. You need the tackle to open the hole so the back can run through and score. Every part is important. And this diversity comes from God—1 Corinthians 4: "Who made you to differ?" God did.

Verse 18 nails it: "But now has God set the members, every one of them, in the body as it has pleased him." We could spend weeks on that verse. God is the master artist standing before His canvas with a palette of colors, taking a little here and a little there to make Eric, to make Pastor Mark, placing each of us exactly where He wants for His pleasure and glory. Not one member is misplaced. The God who named and set the stars (Isaiah 40) placed you where you are. Ever wonder why you were born in Southern California and not Indonesia? It pleased God to put you there.

Functioning in Harmony

You have your position and gifting because it pleased God, and you are most pleasing to Him when you function within that gifting. I've met people richly gifted in music to lead worship who then decide they want to teach—and teaching becomes a weekly labor, while the music flowed effortlessly. If I tried to lead worship, it would be a struggle; teaching flows because God set me here and gifted me. It's not hard to discover your gifts: what flows out of you that glorifies God? Do it. And do it joyfully—it doesn't glorify God to serve while saying, "I hate this, but I'm sacrificing." We're most pleasing to Him when we recognize we've been placed where we are for Him, not for us. That hurts, because we like us.

But there's a second danger. Verse 21: "And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of you." Some carry inferiority complexes; others carry superiority complexes, thinking they can do it alone. Both are rooted in pride, and both are dealt with when we recognize that God sovereignly brought our diversity into unity. When inferiority and superiority are surrendered, the body functions in harmony. Unity, diversity, sovereignty—producing harmony.

The Cultural Shift and the True Community Organizer

Let me bring this full circle. A few years ago we Americans were introduced to a term—the community organizer. It's new to most of us because we're in the midst of a cultural shift. Culture is organic and always changing; that's not necessarily bad. There was a time our nation idolized the rugged individual—the Marlboro Man, the lone scientist, the solitary inventor. Christianity over the last sixty years has been intensely individual-focused: have your best life now, get everything you can from God for yourself. I think that's far from God's intention.

We are moving from an individualistic culture toward one that is more group- and community-oriented, and that makes some people nervous because it reminds them of Marxism and Cold War communism—Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler. Communism and socialism become destructive when a group is brought under a depraved, charismatic individual leader. But I'm not speaking of communism or socialism. I'm speaking of the body of Christ, brought together under one head—Christ. When the group is under a depraved leader it is destructive; when it is under Christ, God does awesome things through His church.

The Church Is an Organism, Not an Organization

Five years ago, when we began our school of discipleship, our aim was to equip the body, because Ephesians 4:11 says leaders are to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. But as soon as we started, I caught myself thinking we now had to organize everyone to do the work. For five years I struggled with that. Then the Lord spoke to me through this passage: "I said equip the saints for the work of the ministry, not organize them to do something."

Then I read this from John MacArthur: "Unfortunately, Christianity has become very organized. As one writer put it, when Christians get organized, they get very unchristian." The church was never designed along the world's organizational principles, never meant to be a business turning a profit, never meant to be run by paid professionals doing all the work while everyone watches. We are a society of watchers—we watch games, watch people sing, with no involvement or commitment. The church has fallen into that too. MacArthur asks, what is the church? "The church is an organism, not an organization." A body is one whole because all its parts function. If you don't do what you do, you jam up the works. Can you imagine a body in rebellion, the hand refusing to move? It happens in the church. So we train the foot to do the hand's job because there aren't enough hands—we get organized to bypass carnal people. But what really ought to be done is to deal with the carnality instead of organizing around it.

That hit me. There are countless pastors trying to be community organizers, but God hasn't called me to that. He is the community organizer. He sovereignly gifted us and organized us as a community. As leaders, we want to equip you fully so that He can organize you to do the work of the ministry. So don't wait for us to hand you a ministry—call upon Him. Say, "God, show me what You want me to do." The problem is we often answer, "But I want to do that other thing." He says, "I haven't called you to that. Be faithful in this, and I'll do greater things."

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You for Your word. Help us to think on these things and to reason them out as we read and pray, Lord. Transform us by the renewing of our minds, because we are so culturally driven that we sometimes fail to recognize what You desire to do. Lord, help us to lay aside our will, our focus, our desires in favor of Yours, because Yours is always infinitely better. God, work in us to will and to do Your good pleasure, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.