The New Birth and the Promise

This post is a follow-up to my personal story of receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. If you haven’t read that already, be sure to read that post.

In the Baptist tradition I grew up in, I was taught that the new birth, or being born-again was the same thing as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. That, unfortunately, is an incorrect doctrine. Sadly, many believers today are missing out on a profound and powerful experience with God because they’ve never had this experience. 

The good news is that just like salvation, the baptism of the Spirit is a gift that is received through the prayer of faith! 

Today, I want to show you in scripture that the new birth and Holy Spirit baptism are two separate milestones in the life of Christ followers.

To begin, let’s have a look at the Father’s promise in the Old Testament.

Ezekiel 36:25-27

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

If you know anything about Israel’s history then you know they had a tumultuous, cyclical relationship with God. Despite being God’s chosen people, set apart from all other nations, Israel continuously failed to keep His laws and statutes. Time and again, God sent leaders to turn the hearts of the people back to Himself, but their faithfulness only lasted for a season. 

Their hearts were easily drawn away from the True and Living God, and turned in favor of worshiping idols. As a result, the nation of Israel fell into captivity and bondage to hostile nations generation after generation.

Aptly referred to as “the ministry of death” in 2 Corinthians 3:7 by the Apostle Paul, the law written on stone tablets could not make the nation of Israel obedient to follow God’s commandments. 

Only a radical act of God on behalf of His people could do that.  

And it would require a two-step solution!

First, God would have to give his people a new spirit (see verse 26). Then He would put HIS spirit within them (see verse 27). 

It was the second step, putting His spirit inside His people, that would CAUSE them to uphold His laws in their lives. 

If you look at the original Hebrew, you’ll see that two different versions of the word spirit are used in this text! The question we should ask ourselves is why God made a distinction in how these two words for spirit were written in Ezekiel?

There are so many hidden jewels in God’s Word that will never be uncovered by the casual reader. To find the treasure, it requires intention and careful study! But, if you make the commitment to seek understanding with the Spirit as your teacher, you will discover all sorts of wonderful mysteries buried in Scripture!

Receiving the new spirit occurs at the point of being born again…being born of the Spirit. 

But, God putting His own Spirit into His people occurs when one is baptized by Jesus Christ into the Holy Spirit. (see Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33-34, Acts 1:5, Acts 11:16).

This same promise is mentioned in Jeremiah 31:33-34, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Here, God explicitly mentioned the New Covenant (Testament) that He will enter into with Israel.

This New Covenant paved the way for God to put His laws within His people, writing them directly on their hearts.

Now, let’s fast forward to the fulfillment of this two-step solution.

Jesus stated in John 3:5-6, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

This He said in reference to the New Birth. 

Jesus himself was born of the flesh and the Spirit (Luke 1:35), and anyone who would follow after Him must also be born twice as He explained to Nicodemus. 

Jesus, sinless and perfect, had to be offered as a sacrificial lamb in order to pay for the sins of mankind. This was the express reason for which He was born: to save the world, and to make reconciliation with the Father possible through His death. 

The New Birth is triggered by a profession of faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ as described in Romans 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved”.

We see this clearly in the disciples’ experience. 

On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, he appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room. This would be the very first time the disciples met the criteria for salvation! They already professed Him as Lord (Mark 8:29, Matthew 16:16,Luke 9:20), but they couldn’t believe He had been raised from the dead until they were witnesses of His resurrection.

As a result, in John 20:22, Jesus “...breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

This is the moment the disciples were born again.

But that was not the fulfillment of the promise!

During Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the Upper Room, Luke recorded Jesus saying in Luke 24:49, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus was clearly referring to an important event that would take place later... 

…and that event was the fulfillment of the promise that God made under the New Covenant in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. 

The promise that God made was that He would place His Spirit into His people and CAUSE them to walk in holiness and righteousness.

That promise IS fulfilled in the Baptism of the Spirit!

It’s spelled out explicitly in Acts 1:4-5,  “And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

The promise of the Father is the infilling of the Spirit which first took place on the Day of Pentecost as described in Acts 2.

It is the Baptism of the Spirit, receiving the maximum fullness of the Spirit of God, that causes us to walk in God’s ways. Paul explains in Titus 3:5 that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit functions to regenerate and renew followers of Christ.

Again, in the same way Jesus was the prototype of being born by the Spirit, He himself was also filled with or baptized by the Spirit as well. This infilling took place at the same time He was baptized in water (Matthew 3:13–17, Mark 1:9–11, and Luke 3:21–23).

Paul also wrote about the fulfillment of the promise in Galatians, adding that the promise was not only for Abraham’s physical descendants through Jacob but also his spiritual descendants through faith! 

Galatians 3:14 “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

In order to experience the full Christian life that God intended for His children to have, believers should seek not only to be born again, but also to be filled with the Holy Spirit! 

This was God’s promise!  

In a follow up post, I’ll talk more about what the purpose of the Holy Spirit baptism is, and why every believer should ask for it.