Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04109 Philip is introduced in Acts 6 as one of seven men chosen to distribute food to widows in the Jerusalem church. He was not an apostle. He was not a member of the Twelve. By Acts 21:8 he is known simply as “Philip the evangelist.” Yet in Samaria he performed healings and cast…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04111 Few topics in practical Christian theology generate more pastoral confusion than the relationship between water baptism and Spirit baptism. Acts appears to offer contradictory evidence: Samaritans were baptised in water before the Spirit came; Cornelius and his household received the Spirit before any water was applied; the Ephesian disciples received the Spirit only…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04107 Luke is a careful and purposeful narrator, and he places the Simon Magus episode immediately after the account of the Samaritans receiving the Spirit. This is not loose sequencing. Luke is doing what good historians do: following a remarkable account of genuine gospel advance with an equally instructive account of what counterfeit interest…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04108 Acts records four distinct episodes in which the Spirit’s coming upon a group of people is described with enough detail to note the circumstances and sequence. These episodes are not evenly distributed through the book; they cluster at moments of significant transition in the gospel’s outward movement. And they are not uniform. Each…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04104 There is a common but mistaken assumption that once a person has the Spirit, the hard work is largely done. If the Spirit of God genuinely dwells in every believer, why does Paul write as though Spirit-directed living is something that requires determined, daily effort? The commands to “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04106 Philip is one of the more interesting figures in Acts, and his ministry tends to be overshadowed by the drama of the Simon Magus episode and the theological puzzle of the Spirit’s delay. But he deserves attention in his own right. He was not an apostle. He was one of the Seven appointed…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04101 Whether the Spirit’s indwelling can be lost is not an abstract doctrinal puzzle. It reaches directly into the believer’s daily experience of assurance. A person who believes their salvation is conditional on sustained spiritual performance will live in a very different psychological and spiritual state from one who understands their security as grounded…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04103 Few questions about Christian practice generate as much confusion as the relationship between water baptism and Spirit baptism. The confusion is understandable. The New Testament uses baptism language in more than one sense, the episodes in Acts appear to follow different sequences in different situations, and the denominational noise around the subject has…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04102 John 20:22 sits in the Gospel of John like a question mark. On the evening of resurrection Sunday, Jesus appears to the gathered disciples, breathes on them, and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The same disciples will be in Jerusalem fifty days later when the Spirit falls with wind and fire at Pentecost….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04050 Of all the gifts Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12, the gift of interpretation of tongues is perhaps the one most easily misunderstood, partly because it sounds technical, and partly because it is so closely tied to tongues itself. Yet Paul treats it as a distinct and necessary gift, not an add-on, and…