Raised with Him

Here is the other half. In the water you were buried with Christ. When you received the Holy Spirit, God did in you what He did for Jesus on the third day: He brought the dead to life. "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:4-5). "You who were dead in your sins, God made you alive together with Him" (Colossians 2:13). That is regeneration. The word means a new birth, a second beginning. Paul calls it "the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5), and it is done by the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and who now lives in you (Romans 8:11). What that Spirit will one day do for your body, we come to in chapter five.

Who is the Holy Spirit? Not a force, and not somebody else. He is the Spirit of Christ, the same Jesus you read about in the gospels, no longer limited to one body in Galilee, coming to live in His people. "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him." So receiving the Holy Spirit is not a bonus for keen Christians. It is how you become His.

How do you know it has happened? Every time Acts describes it, it answers the same way. At Pentecost they "began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability". At the house of Cornelius, Peter's companions knew the Gentiles had received the Spirit because "they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God" (Acts 10:46). At Ephesus, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues. Tongues is the initial sign that you have been filled: it is how the church knew, on the day, that the Spirit had come. It is not the proof that you are living in the Spirit. The enduring evidence is the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, worked out in a changed character and changed conduct. We come to that in chapter three.

How do you know it has happened?

In plain words, they spoke in a language they had never learned, as the Spirit gave them the words.

What did it do to you? It made your dead spirit alive to God. It gave you a new heart that loves to do His will, where before you could not even want to. It gave you the mind of Christ. And it put a seal on you that says you belong to Him, with the promise of a new body when He comes; we will come back to that seal in chapter five. You are not the same person. You are back from the dead. If you are still waiting on the Holy Spirit, do not be anxious and do not try to manufacture it. The promise is yours: "For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Him" (Acts 2:39). Jesus said your Father gives the Spirit to those who ask Him (Luke 11:13). So ask, worship, yield, and get with believers who will pray with you. He is not withholding it.