United Church of God

Question: “How do I receive the Holy Spirit at baptism?”

You are here

Question

“How do I receive the Holy Spirit at baptism?”

Login or Create an Account

With a UCG.org account you will be able to save items to read and study later!

Sign In | Sign Up

×

The apostle Peter summed it up in Acts 2:38: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

So there’s a process here. First he says to “repent.” Repenting is a process in which God leads a person to a deep desire to turn over their entire life to God. It means a change of not only your mind but your heart as well. It is realizing that you have sin in your life, that you are deeply sorrowful about those sins, and then deciding to turn your life over to God for the rest of your life. Sin comes when we break God’s laws (1 John 3:4). True godly repentance can come only from God as a gift to the person. We cannot “work” up repentance ourselves. Repentance is not a temporary regret over something we did or a thought that bothers us. Repentance is not a one-time event—it’s actually a way of life. Being baptized means you are inviting God to live in you so He can help you make this life-long change.

After you take that first step of repentance, then comes baptism. Being fully submersed in water makes for a powerful metaphor: You’re burying the old you in a watery grave; the new you, who comes up out of the water, is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). After you come up out of the water, an ordained minister of Jesus Christ lays hands on you and prays for God to give you His Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). God gives it to you then—and no, it doesn’t come down like a dove or with tongues of fire. You probably won’t feel dramatically different after you come out of the water. You can know you have received it because, first, God promises to give it to you when you repent. If you believe in the promise of God and then follow-up by doing what God says, that is the simple definition of faith. It is in faith that you follow the steps outlined and repent of your sins. Secondly, you can know you have received the Holy Spirit because you will see spiritual growth in yourself as time goes on.

Once you have the Holy Spirit, you have access to something incredible: the very power and essence of God. It is a spirit of “power, of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The power of God is what you can draw on to make bold and dramatic decisions in your life. The love of God is what you can draw on to let go of the hurts caused you by others, and to love them back. And the sound mind of God is what you can draw on to be calm, disciplined and unafraid in the face of the greatest, most challenging trials of life. With God’s Spirit, you can lean on God to help you beat back the negativity of the world, to shoulder the worst disappointments, to continue on in the face of withering sorrow, and to destroy the hatred of Satan.

Notice that I said that with God’s Spirit, you can do all those things. Receiving it does not make you perfect. It does not pave the road of life with gold. If you think about all the people you know in God’s Church who have been baptized, there are no doubt people who come to mind who have done things wrong; or who have hurt you; or who are mean. Everybody is fighting a hard battle. Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes. But leading a life of repentance means we can and should depend on the power of the transforming Spirit of God every single day to acknowledge those mistakes and then to help us fix them.

If you are thinking about baptism, talk to your parents, grandparents, the adults in the congregation you attend, the elders there and the pastor about it. One of the ministers can give you good counsel on it and guide you through the process of deciding when the time is right for you to accept God’s gift of salvation by becoming baptized. The United Church of God also has a helpful booklet on the subject called Transforming Your Life: The Process of Conversion, which you can find online at www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/transforming-your-life-the-process-of-conversion.