HARMONY WITH GOD Part 3 of 3 by Zane C. Hodges - Chafer ...

Repentance and John the Baptist
Harmony with God 21
We can hardly find a better summary of the ministry of John
the Baptist than the one Paul gives in Acts 19:4. There he is
addressing some disciples who seemed to lack the gift of the Spirit.
His question to them had been: Did you receive the Holy Spirit
when you believed (Acts 19:2)?
To this question the disciples replied, We have not so much as
heard if the Holy Spirit is here (Acts 19:2; underlining added). The
words “is here” translate a Greek phrase that can be rendered
simply “is.” From this fact many have drawn the conclusion that
these disciples of John the Baptist had no knowledge of the Third
Person of the Trinity, i.e., they did not know He existed.
This is highly improbable, since John the Baptist, whose
disciples they were, preached about the Spirit (Mark 1:8 and other
places). But a clue to the real meaning of the text, we find in John
8:39.
In that passage John explains a statement made by our Lord
by saying, But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those
believing in Him would receive; for the Spirit was not yet given
[supplied by NKJV], because Jesus was not yet glorified (John
7:39). The literal rendering would be: “the Spirit was not yet”!
Both in Acts 19:4 and John 7:39, the coming of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost is described by a simple “to be” verb. Since the
author of the Fourth Gospel was almost certainly originally a
disciple of the Baptist (i.e., he is the unnamed disciple in John
1:35–40), we probably have here an expression used among the
disciples of the Baptist. To say that “the Holy Spirit is not yet” or
“is” was to state that He had not yet come or had come. This alone
makes real sense of Acts 19:2.
Once he has discovered that these men did not yet possess the
gift of the Spirit, Paul asks a further question: Into what then were