Some early Evangelical adopters of the Pentecostal “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” justified their experience by Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, for example, received the teaching from Duncan Campbell, the Hebrides revivalist from the Holiness Movement, but apparently conducted an in-depth study of Ephesians to confirm it. Similarly Michael Harper, who was directly influenced by Lloyd-Jones, said that when studying Ephesians it all became suddenly clear.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones remained an Evangelical icon as a preacher, despite the rift with John Stott over both denominational loyalty and the Charismatic issue. Harper, although championing the abandonment of denominational boundaries as advocated first by Latter Rain teachers in America, was “led by the Spirit” to leave Anglicanism and became an Orthodox priest over the issue of women’s ordination. Ironically, some of fellow Anglican Charismatic David Watson’s troubles came from his Spirit-led support for women’s ministry, and Charismatic members of the Synod like my Cambridge friend Peter Broadbent (later Bishop of Willesden and Director of Spring Harvest) helped push the measure through. Christians may have different opinions, but can the same Holy Spirit lead in opposite directions?
The following is an overview of Ephesians not to draw out its main teaching, which includes issues like the relationship of Jew and Gentile believers, but to address whether it does, in fact, presuppose or support “second blessing” teaching.
Ephesians was written to a church or churches Paul had personally and intensively taught for three years (Acts 20:31). Furthermore, the first event Acts records of his ministry there is the “Pentecost-type” experience of some disciples of John the Baptist. If such a spectacular experience was normative for conversion (as taught by David Pawson in The Normal Christian Birth and the Alpha Course), or a vital second blessing (as taught by Lloyd-Jones and classic Pentecostalism), there is no doubt that all or most of Paul’s converts would have already received it. That does not, however, prove that it was normative, as John’s disciples are described in Acts in order to demonstrate their inclusion in the Church as a class, like Cornelius and the Samaritans earlier.
Ephesians 1:1-15 is intended to show the plenitude and certainty of what all believers in the gospel possess in Christ, to the point that they are said to have already received their inheritance (v11), though in actuality its fullness is stored up for us in heaven (v3). The universality of all this is based on God’s predestination, in Christ, of all believers.
These blessings include the Holy Spirit, who moreover is the seal of all the addressees’ salvation and the pledge, or guarantee, of all the other blessings. The KJV (used by Lloyd-Jones, for example) says in 1:13 that they received the Spirit “after that ye believed,” and other translations similarly say “having believed,” which might indicate a separation in time, despite Paul’s assertion in Romans 8 that anyone without the Spirit does not belong to Christ.
But the Greek actually says, “believing in Christ, you were sealed…” and similar constructions in Act2 14:19, Matt. 4:2, Rom. 5:1, and Acts 19:2 all show an inseparable cause and effect linkage between the two elements. So grammatically believing either causes, or coincides with, sealing by the Spirit. The latter is better, since it is the Spirit who gives conviction of sin and gives faith in the first place.
But the real point is that the interpretation doesn’t matter to the rest of the letter. Paul’s fully-initiated “Spirit-filled” converts are, for all that, still lacking full heart-knowledge of these rich blessings, so that Paul is praying for them all in vv17-23, and even does so in terms of their being given “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.” Or is it “the Spirit”? After all, Isaiah calls the Holy Spirit that of wisdom and knowledge, and there is no revelation except by the Holy Spirit.
Similarly in his second prayer, 3:14-19, he asks that Christ may dwell in their hearts, through the indwelling Spirit, to enable the kind of full understanding he wants for them. But does that imply that Jesus is not already dwelling in them, and that they need to receive a baptism of the Spirit to achieve that? Clearly not. What he longs for, he prays for all of them, from the tongues-speaking ex-disciples of John (if they were still in the city) and the senior elders, to all those newbies converted since he left Ephesus.
Evidently he is not praying for a “fresh outpouring” of the Spirit to give the entire church a transformative experience of revival. Rather he is implying that there is never sufficient appreciation of the infinite glories of Christ in even the most mature believer, and that there is always more to be comprehended through the Spirit. Only such a progressive growth in Christ could make his letter relevant to all the Christians in Ephesus, let alone for all time everywhere.
It follows that there will, in any church, be a whole range of Spirit-inspired degrees of knowledge of God, from not-a-lot to near-beatific vision, yet with the same Spirit sealing all. There is no spiritual class structure – we are all on the road together. Paul wants all to progress from one degree of comprehension to a greater. This must come by God’s grace, or else Paul’s prayers would be pointless. But careful reading also shows the means Paul wants them to employ in bringing it about, and there is a singular lack of any instruction about prolonged prayer, confessing all known sins, believing they have received, laying hands on each other or anything else familiar from Charismatic practice.
The most immediate means for developing their appetite and satisfying it is his teaching on what Christ has achieved itself, which he expresses passionately in the letter. And as he says in 3:3-5 (specifically with regard to the Jew-Gentile question, but by implication to everything he is telling them) this teaching was revealed by the Spirit to the apostles and prophets. In v4 he refers them to a previous writing of his, and so their insight comes not from a direct revelation to their spirits, but by the indwelling Spirit’s making apostolic teaching alive to their hearts. And so in 3:8 grace was given to Paul to preach all these riches, not to preach how to gain a spiritual experience that would by-pass preaching.
The crucial role of apostolic/prophetic teaching to their spiritual insight is stressed in 2:20-22. It is foundational (and so I’m inclined to equate the “prophets” with OT prophets whose foundation the apostles built on, rather than the revelations of someone like Agabus). It is the cornerstone of Christ (by which Paul means all Jesus’s astonishing redemptive work, as in ch1), and the foundational teaching of the apostles, through which the indwelling Spirit builds the new temple of God. It shouldn’t need to be said (but in the Charismatic age needs to be) that the Spirit’s focus is all on Christ and the Father, not on himself. He increases faith in the gospel of Jesus, not faith in his supernatural power.
It follows, then, that the knowledge of Christ’s love, that surpasses knowledge, is not a climactic event, kundalini or otherwise, but a product of growth in Christ, sudden or gradual by turn, by the Spirit’s application of apostolic teaching to the believer’s heart. This is self-evident, for as Jonathan Edwards points out in his Religious Affections, knowledge of Christ’s love is not an emotional apprehension in a vacuum, but comprehension, with all the saints, of all that Jesus has done out of divine love. Sensations of love occur in kundalini experiences and near death experiences across religious boundaries, but the love of Christ crucified for us is from the true God alone.
With this basic understanding in place, Paul follows on with more apostolic foundational teaching on how this growth process in the Spirit proceeds. Ch 4 stresses both our behaviour, and the various ministries God has distributed in the Church to equip and build up the body to perfection (v12-13). Note that this is the same process and end goal that he has described as the work of the Spirit in 2:20-22. Ministry of the word in various forms, pastoral care, and instructive and corrective fellowship are therefore the ways Christians gain the blessings of the Holy Spirit.
By way of a direct reference to being filled with the Spirit (the continual process Charismatics often like to stress), Paul uses a similar construction to that in 1:13: suggesting that singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to each other is intimately linked to being filled. This is not an instruction to be used as an alternative to Benny Hinn’s jacket for Spirit Baptism – it is simply a truth that when people of the Spirit sing the praises of Christ, everyone becomes closer to him.
Paul famously closes his letter with the “full armour of God” passage. 6:10 makes it clear this is about spiritual strength – that is to say, the strength of the Spirit to resist evil. And once again, it is all about a process of using what the Reformers called “the means of grace.” Truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, God’s word, and prayer: these are the things that Paul has addressed throughout the letter as the ways that God, through his Spirit, applies the blessings of life both to our living and our understanding.
In summary I can see plenty of transcendental spiritual experience in Ephesians. I’m not so sure I find any Pentecostalism, though.
