One Spirit Expressing Itself Through Different Manifestations

Often, there are Christians who, despite living a godly life and loving the Lord, and having repented of their sins, and having received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and having the Presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, have not received that Pentecostal experience of saturation and baptism in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

And these disciples in Ephesus whom Paul finds in Acts chapter 19, exemplify that segment of Christian life that has not had that experience, even though they recognize Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and are therefore saved, and have the Holy Spirit within them but not in that abundant, overwhelming, and dynamic way that God desires Him to be in them.

Incidentally, another very illustrative passage of this is where the Lord Jesus Christ says: "He who believes in Me, rivers of living water will flow from his innermost being" and the Word says that the Lord spoke this concerning the Spirit who was to dwell in believers. And that idea of: rivers of living water, flowing from the innermost being of God's children refers to that manifest, powerful, dynamic, effervescent Presence of the Spirit of God in our lives.

God wants the Presence of His Spirit to be something dynamic, explosive, vibrant that destroys the spirits of depression, passivity, and stagnation present in the lives of believers, and that the life of the Christian filled with the Holy Spirit is a life of flowing like rivers that run and leap for blessing, and for the benefit of the Kingdom of God and their own lives as well. The Christian life is such a life; it is a dynamic life of new experiences, new revelations, perpetual growth, and that we only obtain when we have that fullness of the Holy Spirit.

One can have the Presence of the Holy Spirit as a quiet, peaceful lake, like a smooth surface, but also through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Power of God infused in a believer, that placid lake can also become something that leaps, like a rushing river, and that manifests that dynamic activity of the Power of God in the life of the believer, and that is what we seek in our lives.

I believe that because so many people ignore the importance of living a life in intense and intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit, that is why Paul writes his chapters 12, 13, and 14 of First Corinthians, because I believe that here we have the most complete doctrine laid out concerning the relationship of the Holy Spirit with each believer and with the Church in general.

The Spirit of God guided the Apostle Paul to lay out for us there a series of teachings about life in relation to the Holy Spirit that is absolutely essential, and I want to invest a few meditations before concluding this series on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, in these passages of First Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. That is why I have taken so much time to expound this doctrine and I hope that you appreciate the importance of what I am expounding here; it is very essential doctrine and teaching that I am presenting here.

So in chapter 12 of First Corinthians Paul says: "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware." Look at what it says here. The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, says: my believing brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant of matters concerning spiritual gifts.

In the original Greek, the word used is: pneumatikon, from which comes the word: pneumatic, air, spirit. In reality, Paul is saying: I do not want you to be ignorant of the things, the matters of the Spirit. God does not want any believer to live their life in ignorance of the deep things concerning the matters of the Spirit, including spiritual gifts. God wants us to be understanding, to be instructed, to know how to move in that wonderful dimension of the Power and anointing, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And that is why Paul writes these passages here.

And then he begins by saying: "You know that when you were Gentiles, you were led astray to mute idols. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Paul is speaking here to a populace that knew about spiritual matters. However, unfortunately in Corinth and throughout the Greco-Roman world, what was considered spiritual was actually demonic. People worshipped idols that were actually disguised demons.

So that populace had much experience in matters of the spirit, but not the Holy Spirit; not a divine spirit, but a demonic spirit. And so what Paul wants them to understand is that there are different spirits, and that the Holy Spirit, in whom the children of God, believers in Jesus Christ, move, is a Spirit very different from the other spirits among which they are accustomed to moving, in witchcraft, idolatry, occultism, and all those demonic doctrines that circulated and trafficked in the Greco-Roman world, in India, in Europe, the tribes of Europe, and all these things; so Paul wanted them to have teaching on how the Holy Spirit moves.

And that is why here he begins by saying: the first thing is, how can you identify something that is truly a spirit of God or the Holy Spirit? It is because that spirit confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and as the Son of God. "No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Any other spirit out there, any other religion that does not exclusively recognize Jesus as Lord, Son of God, intermediary between God and man, is not the Holy Spirit, and therefore is an accursed spirit; you should have no relationship with it. It must be that spirit which recognizes that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And so Paul begins, in verse 4 of First Corinthians chapter 12, by speaking of there being one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, but that Spirit manifests in different ways. It says: there is a diversity of gifts, charismaton, or charismata; there are different gifts and endowments that the Lord gives to His people, but the Spirit is the same, He is one. God is one.

So Paul says: yes, there are different manifestations of the Spirit but it is always one, one Spirit expressing itself through different manifestations. And there is a diversity of ministries, diakonia, from which comes the word: deacon, of services and ways of serving and moving in the Christian life, but the Lord is the same.

So there are different gifts and power of God manifesting and there are different people who move in different aspects of the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit is one, they are not different spirits.

So, I want to leave you here because we have extended ourselves quite a bit; God does not want us to be ignorant about His Spirit, and God wants the Spirit by which we move to be a spirit that recognizes, the Spirit that recognizes that Jesus is Lord, and also, that Spirit is one, not different spirits. God bless you and we will continue with our message later, blessings.