But, it is always necessary to understand the text!
Black on white might be pretty to you, but it's useless
if one doesn't understand what is actually being said!
It's all about intellectual vs. spiritual understanding.
2:38 ... The gift (and the promise also) both
always refer to the baptism with the Holy Spirit,
which has nothing at all to do with the Holy Spirit
coming INSIDE when one first receives the Spirit,
i.e. the born-again experience.
(However, the 120 did experience both
on the Day of Pentecost, Act 2:1-4.)
8 different NT verses describe this special baptism
as one where the Holy Spirit comes UPON.
Simply making things up isn't understanding the text. Understanding the text is reading it and what it is saying.
In Acts chapter 1 Jesus alludes back to when St. John the Baptist had said, "the One who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire". Jesus tells His disciples that this will happen "not many days from now", and so they are to remain in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit--the promise from His Father, as He said, "I will not leave you as orphans" and "I will ask the Father and He will send you another Comforter". They would receive power from the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, then into Judea and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth.
After Jesus ascended, His followers remained in Jerusalem until the Jewish Feast of Shavu'ot, aka Pentecost. When, as Jesus said, the Holy Spirit fell en masse upon all gathered in the upper room. This was in fulfillment that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Peter, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, thus spoke up and preached to the gathered Jewish pilgrims, explaining to them all God had accomplished through Jesus Christ, and that they were His witnesses to these things. He then instructs them, "Repent and be baptized, all of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" That is, they would receive the Holy Spirit, the gift and promise of the Father. And we read that about three thousand were baptized into the Church that day.
This baptism with the Holy Spirit is what we see transpiring on Pentecost for those gathered in the upper room. Indeed, at no point in all of Scripture is "baptism with the Holy Spirit" ever treated as some kind of interior, private, and personal experience and individual receives. Scripture designates only two instances with "the baptism with the Holy Spirit" the most obvious one being, of course, what took place on Pentecost, which inaugurated the Church into her sacred mission in the world. The second instance does not happen until Acts chapter 10, where St. Peter having received a vision, is then asked to go and visit with a Roman centurion named Cornelius at his house. While Peter was speaking with them, an amazing thing happened: what had transpired on Pentecost happened a second time, this time for the Gentiles here in Cornelius' household. Peter instantly understood the significance of this, and had the entire household baptized and they were added to the Church. Peter explains all these things in Acts chapter 11, explaining that as God had done for the Gentiles what He had done with the disciples in the beginning, it was obvious that this was God's sign for them that Gentiles were to be included in the Christian mission.
And that's it. There is nothing else, in all of Scripture, which identifies "baptism with the Holy Spirit" with anything other than these two very important historical instances.
3:27 ... This is referring to when a person first
receives the Holy Spirit, as first described here:
"For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)
The new BAC hereby is baptized into the church body.
No water anywhere in sight, sorry.
And your assumption that "For by one Spirit were were all baptized into one body" is anything other than regular baptism is just that, an assumption. A bias based upon the traditions of men, and not on the word of God and the historic teaching of the Christian Church.
I'm not impressed by people making things up instead of just taking the Scriptures for what they are saying. So you'll have to try harder than that if you want to me throw away two thousand years of apostolic, biblical, and orthodox Christian teaching.
-CryptoLutheran
