Question:  Dear Greg,

            My son recently went to church on a day when the rest of us stayed home sick.  He says he was baptized in the Holy Spirit and received the gift of tongues.  I had never heard of this before and was worried.

            Can you please tell me what your views on this are?  If this is indeed true, does he still need to be baptized with water?

            Also, is it not true that you receive the Holy Spirit when you are baptized by water?  This is what I always believed, but I have been looking for scriptures to support this.  Also, the church we are attending seems to have everyone speaking in tongues as their goal.  What is your view on this?

            Yvette

Answer:  Dear Yvette,

            The baptism of the Holy Spirit is taught by some charismatic churches as a baptism that usually follows water baptism, as a more intense experience, and often occurs to someone who is more deeply converted.  Some churches believe that such a baptism is “proven” by the gift of tongues.  A few churches go so far as to say, or at least imply, that those who do not have the girt of tongues are not as deeply converted as others.

            The teaching of historic Christianity, for the last 2000 years, is that only one baptism is necessary.  For many years that baptism was infant baptism—but there were those, especially after the Protestant Reformation, who taught that infant baptism did not fulfill the example of Scripture (Jesus was baptized as a mature adult and it appears that he went into the water and came up out of the water.  Certainly the language of Paul in Romans, chapter 6 implies water baptism, not sprinkling.  Those who favored baptism by immersion taught that those who had been baptized as infants needed to be baptized again.  The Baptist movement is so named because of its strict teaching that baptism must be by immersion.  Baptism by immersion is also called believer’s baptism—the idea being that baptism is a decision made by a mature adult, not by a family on behalf of an infant.  Biblical examples for both practices can and are cited.

            Baptism of the Holy Spirit has basically come along after this controversy, and is yet another kind of baptism that some imply is necessary for conversion.  The Bible does not say that baptism saves anyone, rather that baptism is a sign of the commitment of the believer (or in the case of the infant, the belief of their parent and family).

            You seem to have questions and concerns regarding the charismatic tone of the church you are attending.  While there are many fine charismatic Christians, some do imply that those who are not charismatic are not as Christian, not as authentic, not as “true”—etc.  This is not the case at all.  You may be just as Christian and attend a church where no speaking in tongues occur, where there is no baptism of the Holy Spirit.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht