Why didn’t the disciples in Acts 19 receive the Holy Spirit as soon as they believed? And why didn’t Paul just ask them, ‘Are you disciples of Jesus?’ instead of ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit?’

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Conduct and Activity of the Church’ (1969).

Those are important questions: can I answer the second question first? I think that Paul asked that question in order to expose to them that they were missing something without which they weren't Christians at all.

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

Therefore, Paul saying, 'Did you receive the Holy Spirit?' is equivalent to saying, 'Are you real Christians?' I would submit to you, putting it in that way will expose the fact to them that, in spite of all their terminology, they are not believers.

You ask, why didn't they receive the Holy Spirit in that split second when they believed? You will find in this section of Acts that Paul is constantly stressing the difference between Christianity and other things. This is the fifth section of Acts. It begins in chapter 16, and the first issue there in Philippi is the difference between Christianity and spiritism. 'These men,' said the girl with the demon, 'show us the way of salvation. They are the servants of the living God. We're all on the same side, batting for the same team.' 'Oh, no we're not,' says Paul. So long as Paul was prepared to let them say that they were on the same team, all went well. You should have seen the uproar when he said, 'No we're not.' But Paul would insist on the difference between Christianity and spiritism, and here insists on the difference between Christianity and even that good and godly system of thought and practice which was 'John the Baptistism'.

I think it is not ungracious and un-Christian for us to do the same in Christendom. Many folks call themselves Christians who just repent. They've never learned to believe: like Nicodemus, they haven't been born again. Repented, yes, thousands of times. Never believed. We ought to insist on that difference. I think, therefore, in early Acts, the withholding of the Holy Spirit until they'd been baptized and they had been identified with a Christian missionary, as distinct from a John the Baptist thing, was all part of God insisting on this difference.

With the Samaritans

Let me quote you one other occurrence of the same thing—the incident in Samaria. We read this in Acts 8:

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:14–17)

The text doesn't actually tell us explicitly why this happened, as far as I can see, but I suggest to you that it's probably along this line. Samaria was no ordinary place. For centuries the Samaritans had been living in defiance of God's word about Jerusalem, and there had been an unholy schism, full of rank bitterness between Jews and Samaritans. As the Samaritan woman put it to Christ, 'You say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Well, we don't. We worship here. Ours is as good as yours.' But our Lord even in his gospel sermons was quite faithful. He said, 'Woman, I want you to know that salvation is of the Jews. You worship what you do not know' (see John 4:19–22). This is a true mark of Christianity: if you've got hold of real Christianity, the thing you've got hold of began very early on with Abraham, down the centuries through Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and on to our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the seed of David—a great historic process centred on Jerusalem. If what you've got hold of didn't come that way, then it isn't Christianity, I'm afraid. It's some existential philosophy or something.

And before God will give Samaritans his Holy Spirit, he will insist that they repent of their deliberate defiance of his word over the centuries, and acknowledge that the gospel comes through Jerusalem, through Jerusalem's Messiah. They must submit to the laying on of the hands of men from Jerusalem. If Peter and John had attempted to do it before the Samaritans got converted, the Samaritans would have spat in their face. That's a reason I would suggest. I say I've got no Scripture to prove it, but that is a fact; not until those two apostles from Jerusalem laid on their hands would they get the Holy Spirit. I submit those possible reasons anyway, why in the book of Acts you get these five occasions.

Saul of Tarsus

The fifth one is Saul of Tarsus, and the delayed action there. I suggest, and here's to the present point, it does not alter the fact that our receiving of the Holy Spirit is by grace, through faith, on the same terms as justification itself, for Paul insists on that in Galatians. Though, in his own case, the coming of the Holy Spirit was delayed for another very good reason. I believe that this receiving of the Holy Spirit—in Jerusalem, in Samaria, with Saul of Tarsus and with the Ephesians—is the receiving of the Holy Spirit in the same sense that every believer everywhere receives the Holy Spirit as an initial experience when you trust the Saviour.