Here we have another fact of deep interest as illustrating the state of souls, not as yet favored with the apostolic or even more ordinary gospel testimony. The grace of Christ displays its elasticity in meeting them with the truth which they, needed, in order to bring them into the fall enjoyment of the Christian condition.
“And it came to pass, while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul, having gone through the upper parts, came [? down] unto Ephesus, and finding certain disciples, said unto them, Received ye [the] Holy Spirit since ye believed? And they [said] unto him, Not even if [the] Holy Spirit was did we hear. And be said, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him that was coming after him, that is, on Jesus" (ver. 1-4).
It is important to recognize what is here clearly made known in the inspired narrative that these imperfectly instructed souls, whom Paul found at Ephesus, after Apollos had gone to Corinth, are owned as disciples. The apostle does not question the reality of their faith. He observed probably a certain legalism in them, which raised the question, not whether they were born of the Spirit, but whether they were sealed by Him. “Received ye the Holy Spirit, since ye believed?” Their answer makes the distinction as plain as it is momentous. They had not so much as heard of the Holy Spirit as the apostle asked. They were doubtless not unacquainted with the O.T., nor of course with John's testimony, as appears from what followed. They were therefore familiar with the Holy Spirit as spoken of in the scripture, and must have heard directly or indirectly that John declared the Messiah was to baptize with the Spirit. Whether this was a fact yet, they knew not. The existence of the Holy Spirit was never in question. What they had not even heard was of any answer to the promise; still less had they been made partakers. This raised the farther question, To what then were ye baptized? with the answer, To John's baptism. They were not therefore even on the ground of Christian profession; for, as the apostle wound up, John's was “a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him that was coming after him, that is, on Jesus.” Christian baptism supposes Him to be dead and risen the work of redemption accomplished with eternal life and remission of sins proclaimed in His name. They were believers, the Holy Spirit had wrought in their souls so that the word of God had entered, but they were wholly short even of those immediately conferred privileges which faith in the gospel enjoys.
Now the case before, us is not without its bearing on souls around. How many saints there are who know nothing beyond, the new birth, imagining this the common blessing of Christianity if they be not also betrayed thereby into the delusion of what they call higher life, holiness, sanctification or perfection. These three last are scriptural terms; but treated as a goal of attainment, and especially in the sense of the amelioration of nature or the practical extinction of sin within, they veil very grave deflections from the truth.
It is therefore to be noted how careful scripture is to distinguish between, the early vital work of the Holy Spirit in awakening seals by the application of the word, and the subsequent reception of the Spirit when the gospel is believed. In the men at Ephesus before us there was as yet no such reception; yet were they born of God, which never is apart from subjection to His word. But it may be far from the gospel of His grace. Any part of the divine word, one might say generally, is applicable to quickening a soul, hardly as in this case going beyond what an Old Testament saint experienced. How many in Christendom rest on promise and have no notion of accomplishment! They of course allow that the Savior is come; but of salvation come, and of God's righteousness revealed, they are wholly ignorant. They are still in quest of what they have not got as the present gift of God; they are therefore, if earnest, anxious, tried, groaning after they know not what, if not over their own proved unworthiness and the treacherous evil of their hearts. They quite overlook the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ; still less do they rest on His work of redemption as valid for their own Souls. Am I His, or am I not? is the question that harasses them habitually. Attracted by His love they listen to His words and are momentarily bright; then the thought of self rises in their conscience, and they are in the depths, wholly unable to reconcile the love of a Holy God with their actual state which they cannot but feel. Hence they are driven, from ignorance of the gospel, to search after as many signs of a renewed condition as they can discover within them; and thus they toil in a life of hopes balanced against fear, having as little sense of total ruin as they have of God's love toward them. And no wonder; for they are occupied not with Christ but with themselves. How then escape that sense of internal misery inevitable to the spirit, and the more so if born of God, till they know, by faith, the mighty work of Christ, where all evil is judged, all sins forgiven, perfect righteousness established without us and yet for us immutably, and ourselves brought nigh to God as His saints and children without a question unsettled?
Of all this the Ephesian disciples could know nothing. They were avowedly waiting where John's doctrine and baptism left them, believing on Him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus. But they were wholly unacquainted with the blessing as come, the glad tidings taking the place of promises, because all that God requires, as well as every need of the poorest of sinners, is already accomplished in the atoning work of our Lord Jesus. And so it is practically with many a believer now, not speaking merely of schools of doubt where on principle the right state is laid down to be the most painful shrinking from rest in the saving grace of God, but in view of the thousands who, without a doubt of Jesus as the only Savior, have no idea that God is proclaiming peace to them through the blood of His cross. They too, are under law in effect; and hence in a state of habitual bondage through fear of death, feelings as to themselves constantly clouding the simple truth (on which the gospel insists) that we are lost, and that all is grace on God's part, Who has been already glorified perfectly as to sin in the cross, so that He can righteously afford to bless the believer fully. Ignorant of this wondrous grace which excludes all thought of self save as evil and lost, what can one do but look for good as a ground of hope with God, while vaguely withal conscious that nothing but mercy will do! In truth all is comparatively vague in such a state, alas! far too common in Christendom, where not the wicked only need the gospel, but many a righteous soul, quickened by the Spirit to feel in a measure for God, but as yet never realizing that it is for the lost the Son of man came and died; that they, resting by faith on His blood, might know their sins blotted out, and their old man crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that they henceforth should not serve sin, but, freed from it and become servants of God, have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
Now, in the state described, it is too much to assume that souls, wretched in the present, and drawing a precarious and oft vanishing comfort from the future, albeit prayerful and pious, have received the Holy Spirit; the incomparable privilege of the gospel; and this, because they have not really moved on from the promise to which an O. T. saint clung rightly as to his sheet anchor in a storm when the light had not yet dawned. It is sad for a disciple now to be in a similar state, instead of submitting to the righteousness of God and thus having peace with Him, as justified by faith, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are none of us apostles; but it is no mean part of our work and testimony to meet the true wants of such souls. In vain do you look else for an unworldly walk, for worship in Spirit and in truth; in vain, or worse than vain, do you force on these weakly plants into the high region of the church's privileges as Christ's body, or even of its responsibilities as of God's house. They really need the gospel as well as the Spirit in power for their souls. It is after hearing the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation, that saints, it may be as in the case before us born of God, are, on believing, sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Then, and not till then, can they thrive, flourish, and bear the fruit of righteousness, which is by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. The blessing turns on “the hearing of faith,” not on works of law, which works wrath and a curse. “They which be of faith are blessed” —they only.