The Holy Spirit And The Believer's Body

The baptism with the Holy Spirit is a distinct, powerful experience separate from salvation that empowers believers for service and testimony. It highlights biblical examples showing this baptism is definite and recognizable, often accompanied by signs like speaking in tongues. Although all Christians have access to this gift, each must personally receive it to fully experience its power.

The Holy Spirit does a work for our bodies as well as our minds and hearts. We read in R omans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” The Holy Spirit quickens the mortal body of the believer. It is very evident from the context that this refers to the future resurrection of the body (verses 21-23). The resurrection of the body is the Holy Spirit's work. The glorified body is from Him; it is “a spiritual body.” At present, we have only the first fruits of the Spirit and are waiting for the full harvest, the redemption of our body (verse 23).

There is, however, a sense in which the Holy Spirit even now quickens our bodies. Jesus tells us in Matthew 12:28 that He cast out demons by the Spirit o f God. And we read in Acts 10:38, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” In James 5:14, the Apostle writes, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the church's elders, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” The oil in this passage is the type of the Holy Spirit, and the truth is that healing is the Holy Spirit's work. God, by His Holy Spirit, imparts new health and power to these mortal bodies in the present life.

To go to the extremes that many do and take the ground that the believer who is walking in fellowship with Christ needs never be ill is to go farther than the Bible warrants us in going. The redemption of our bodies is indeed secured by the atoning work of Christ but until the Lord comes, we only enjoy the first fruits of that redemption. We are waiting and sometimes groaning for our full place as sons manifested in the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23). But while this is true, it is the clear teaching of Scripture and a matter of personal experience on the part of thousands that the life of the Holy Spirit does sweep through these bodies of ours in moments of weakness and of pain and sickness, imparting new health to them, delivering from pain and filling them with abounding life.

It is our privilege to know the quickening touch of the Holy Spirit in these bodies as well as in our minds and affections, and will. It would be a great day for the Church and the glory of Jesus Christ, if Christians would renounce forever all the devil's fakes of the Holy Spirit's work, Christian Science, Mental Healing, Devine presence, Hypnotism and the various other forms of occultism and depend upon God by the power of His Holy Spirit to work that in these bodies of ours which He in His perfect wisdom sees that we most need.