Articles
Not a Literal Indwelling
Not a Literal Indwelling
Pentecostals believe the Holy Spirit literally dwells inside the Christian. In Allen Loder’s thesis on the classic Pentecostal beliefs about the Holy Spirit, he cites this quote from another scholar: “When the word baptism is associated with the believer’s experience in his relationship to the Holy Spirit, it conveys the idea of a saturation of the inner being of a human by the heavenly divine Being.” Later, Loder says, “Spirit-baptism is believed to be so overwhelming that one’s experience of it is unmistakable. As one yields himself or herself to the Holy Spirit, he takes control of every part of one’s being.” In other words, the Holy Spirit literally comes down, saturates our insides with Himself, and takes control. Certainly the Bible says Christians have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). However, there are 3 problems with taking this literally:
1) The Holy Spirit cannot be contained. When Solomon built the temple for God in the Old Testament, he asked a great question: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). Certainly, God made the temple His dwelling place, but it’s not like God literally shrunk Himself down to live in a box. Likewise, when the Bible says our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, it’s not like the Holy Spirit literally shrinks Himself down to make His home inside our physical bodies. It simply means God is with us, He has made a home in our hearts, and we’re to showcase His glory by living holy lives.
2) God, Jesus, and the Word dwell in us too. 2 Corinthians 6:16 says, “For we are the temple of God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; I will be their God and they shall be My people.’” Romans 8:10 says “If Christ is in you…the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Colossians 3:16a says, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.” If this is all literal, it’s getting mighty crowded in our bodies! It would mean we have God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and their words all tightly squeezed inside us! No. It’s all synonymous language to describe our Godly character.
3) We still sin. If the Holy Spirit had literally saturated us and taken control, we wouldn’t sin anymore. We’d only be able to do things the Holy Spirit does. Yet free will remains! We can still choose to live by the flesh or by the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-14). We can even choose to grieve the Spirit (Eph. 4:30) and quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).
The Holy Spirit dwells in us, but don’t think Ghostbusters; think new, Godly inner character.
