The New Birth: A Spiritual Process.

This is the first part of the study that started this Blogging off - it was suggested that I posted it on the internet where more people could read it. So, here you are!

Part 1: What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?

The new birth is the phrase that describes the series of events that lead up to a person receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in a permanent, indwelling way. There are three main parts to this process, which are justification, Sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Before I continue, I would like to share a few thoughts on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Every time that God comes into action in a person’s life, He comes onto that person in the form of the Holy Spirit. We can find examples of this in the Old Testament, where the spirit came on Saul the King and he prophesied. We also find Balaam being anointed of the Lord for prophecy, as well as Moses, David, and many other Old Testament prophets. We even know that John the Baptist was anointed with the Holy Spirit from his Mothers womb. But none of these anointings, or Baptisms, was the New Birth.

This is because by its very nature, a Baptism of the Holy Spirit is just another way of saying “an Immersion in the Holy Spirit”. So an immersion, an anointing, or a baptism are all ways of describing the Holy Spirit descending on a person for a particular work. That work may be an anointing for praise, for healing, for service or for prayer. There are many baptisms in the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian, and there are even baptisms in the Holy Spirit in the life of people who claim to be Christians, but are in truth anti Christ. Jesus showed this when he spoke of the people who would come to him in the judgement day and claim that they had done many mighty works in his name. Those mighty works are done thought the action of the Holy Spirit. But they are works of iniquity as they never knew Jesus in a personal way.

So, how does the Holy Spirit New Birth differ from the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? This is a very important question. To answer it, we should consider this. A baptism of the Holy Spirit is God coming down and anointing a person for a particular reason. The New Birth is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that comes for the reason of dwelling inside a believer. It is Jesus and the Father coming to make their abode in a believer. It is not a baptism for the purpose of speaking in tongues, healing, praise or prayer, although all of these things may follow a New Birth experience. It is the most important baptism of the Holy Spirit that any Christian can ever have, and indeed, it is the New Birth Baptism that proves God has truly accepted a person as a Christian.

As we understand this, we can see how a person could be baptised with the Holy Spirit every day of their life, and go to hell. We can understand how it is that John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, is less than the least of those in the Kingdom of God. For it is the New Birth that gains us entry into that Kingdom, and John never was born again. And we can also realise that when people talk about “the baptism of the Holy Spirit”, we must be careful to understand what context they mean it in. This is because sometimes that phrase applies to the New Birth, and sometimes to baptisms in the Holy Spirit for other purposes. And we should examine our lives in the light of this knowledge. We may have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for speaking in tongues, mighty works of faith or great anointing of prayer or praise. But all of this will be of no use if we have not received the New Birth Baptism.