Question:  Dear Greg,

            In Acts 8:14-17, “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.  When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.”

            How come the people of Samaria can be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus but not receive the Holy Spirit?  What about today?  How do we know we have received the Holy Spirit?

            Kahing

Answer:  Dear Kahing,

            Your question has several propositions:

1.      Is what happened in the book of Acts normative for Christians today?  Will everything that happened to the early church, its members and ministers, happen to us today?  Will Pentecost always have a rushing mighty wind?  Will we, like Paul, not be harmed by a snakebite?  Will we worship by the river, as Paul did—or go to synagogues, and there proclaim the gospel, as Paul did?  Will our pastors take a sweatband that they use while working, cut that cloth up into pieces, pray over it, and send that cloth to people so that they may be healed?

What I am pointing out is that we must decide that some things that happened in the book of Acts happened then, and then only, for they are not all happening today in any Christian church.  It would be difficult to reproduce all of the events in the book of Acts in our society and culture, and in the structure of the Christian church 2000 years later.

2.      To your specific question: how did they know these people did not have the Holy Spirit?  The Bible does not comment.  We do know that the gift of tongues accompanied the Holy Spirit at that time, to help them have a visible sign that Christ now lived his resurrected life in these new believers.  But we also know, even though there are a minority of Christians today who look to the gift of tongues in a similar way, that there are, and have been for almost 2000 years, many Christians who did not have any visible sign that would help them or anyone else to understand that they had received the Holy Spirit.

3.      How do we know we have the Holy Spirit—or that someone else has?  How do we know if we belong to God—that we are saved—or not?

The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit cannot be humanly discerned (see Romans 8).  The Bible tells us that those in whom God the Holy Spirit dwells will be able, because of God, to produce fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24).  But we also know that we cannot reason that everyone who appears to have this fruit—i.e. to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, etc.—is a Christian.  There are atheists who are loving, joyful, peaceful, etc.  It can, at times, be difficult to discern the good works that God alone produces, versus the good works that humans can produce apart from God.

We do know, and can have faith, that if we have accepted Jesus Christ, if we believe that he alone is sufficient for our salvation, if we follow him as Lord and Savior, that we are assured of our salvation and that we do have and enjoy the new life in Christ.  But we are not offered what some might define as scientific, quantifiable proof of our conversion—or of someone else’s.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht