Cornelius & The Spirit (2)
“Yes, yes, but if Cornelius got the Spirit before he was baptized then he was in the body of Christ and saved in Christ before and without baptism.”
We come up with these quick analyses by picking verses from here and there and piecing them together, but this is hardly the way to work with scripture.
The world cannot receive the Spirit
Cornelius received the Spirit
Therefore Cornelius was not of the world
It looks plain and simple but it isn’t!
If Cornelius was not of the world then what was he?
Was he already in Jesus Christ when the Spirit came?
Did Jesus have a Cornelius in mind in John 14:17?
Did that rascal Caiaphas receive the Spirit in John 11:51?
It simply isn’t good enough to quote a passage out of Romans that is addressed to one who has been baptized into Jesus Christ (Romans 6:1-6), tack it on to a discussion about people in general and then draw conclusions that we say are normative about people in general.
The Holy Spirit's a person (a difficult word, I acknowledge, but when he calls himself “I” or refers to himself as “me” as in Acts 10:20 and Acts 13:2, we’ll live with the difficulty) and the central issue is, “How does this Person relate to us when he is acting on us or in us? What does he mean to convey by what he is now doing?”
If we’re not in Jesus Christ he relates to us and works with us in this way or that and if we are in Jesus Christ he relates to and works with us in ways he doesn’t relate to us when we’re not in Jesus Christ. There’s overlapping, of course!
Christian prophets prophesied by the Holy Spirit but so did the high priest Caiaphas (John 11:49-51). Christians in Acts 8:14-19 had received Jesus Christ by faith but as yet the Spirit had not “fallen” on them. The obvious notion in that context is that though they were now part of the New Covenant community, the body of Jesus Christ which is indwelt by the Spirit, they hadn’t yet shared in the various miraculous gifts the Spirit bestowed on the church. Two Jewish apostles laid hands on them and they “received the Holy Spirit.” These people didn’t become Christians when the apostles laid their hands on them—they were already Christians and were sharers in the Spirit that indwelled the body of Christ (Acts 2:38, “and you will receive the Holy Spirit”). What they received via apostles was a share in gifts that the Spirit gave to some and not to all (see 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 28-31). But Luke doesn’t say, “They received gifts from the Holy Spirit.” He says they received the Holy Spirit. [We should at least take that into account when reading Acts 10 and 11.]
This should warn us against simply collecting verses about the Spirit and homogenising them in a theological blender. It won’t do to work like this:
They received the Holy Spirit by apostolic hands
Therefore they didn’t have the Holy Spirit before
Therefore they weren’t Christians before the apostles
laid hands on them.
That would be nonsense. Getting back to Cornelius, it won’t do to claim this:
Only those in Jesus Christ receive the Holy Spirit
Cornelius received the Holy Spirit
Therefore Cornelius was in Jesus Christ
It’s manifestly clear that whatever Cornelius was when the Spirit fell on him, he had not committed himself to Jesus Christ in faith. We need to make up our minds about this! He had not yet come to Jesus Christ in faith so the opening line in the above syllogism—even if true, which it’s not—does not apply to Cornelius. If we say Cornelius was already in Jesus Christ by faith before the Spirit fell then the entire incident unravels and comes apart. If he was already a Christian before the Holy Spirit fell it means he would already have had the Holy Spirit (since he would have been a part of the body of Christ, a temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwelled--1 Corinthians 6).
We can’t have it both ways. We can’t say that only those (already) in Jesus Christ receive the Holy Spirit without having Cornelius in Jesus Christ before that moment when the Spirit fell on him.
Some of us in our anxiety to dispense with baptism as part of the conversion experience have Cornelius out of Christ before the Spirit fell, in Christ at the moment the Spirit fell and thus in Christ before baptism. But if only those in Christ receive the Holy Spirit then Cornelius had to be in Christ before the Spirit fell.
“Ah, yes, but maybe the falling of the Spirit saved him in that instant.”
Apart from faith in Jesus Christ?
“Maybe the falling of the Spirit created faith in Jesus in that instant.”
You mean faith was miraculously created in him apart from the gospel? Wonder why the Spirit doesn’t save everyone that way? If he did that with Cornelius the least we'd have to admit is that it is exceptional since the entire NT witness runs against it. And if it is an exceptional case we shouldn't pretend it's normative. I would suppose that anyone who thought Cornelius' saving faith in Jesus Christ was miraculously generated is too tied to a theory obout the significance of the Spirit's falling on the man.
The question isn’t, did the Holy Spirit work on Cornelius?—he did—it's, what are we to make of it? Can one have the Holy Spirit in him apart from being in covenant relationship with Jesus Christ? David did (Psalm 51:11). Can the Holy Spirit work on and in one apart from their being in covenant relationship with Jesus Christ? He did it all through the OT (see below). Can a non-Christian be kind and gentle and caring? Certainly! But can she be that without the Holy Spirit nurturing such things in her (Galatians 5:22-23)?
What the Spirit does in or through or on a person is to be interpreted not merely by the fact that he acted. The significance of that act is to be interpreted in the light of the context and we don’t create that context by importing texts from their own settings into that one.
Samaritans received the Spirit—what was the significance of that?
Ephesians received the Spirit in Acts 19:5-6—what was the significance of that?
People in Acts 2:38; 5:32 received the Spirit—what was the significance of that?
OT people received the Holy Spirit—what was the significance of that?
Caiaphas received the Spirit—what was the significance of that?
Cornelius received the Spirit—what was the significance of that?
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.