Sermon

Acts 19:1-7

Experiential Religion

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Acts 19:1-7

Experiential Religion

By Dr. Mickey Anders

One of the controversial issues in many churches today is the issue of rebaptism. Rebaptism simply means being baptized again. Some pastors simply refuse to baptize a person a second time, and others require it quite often.

There have been a few people I have known who have been baptized several times – three, four or five times! Sometimes this becomes an emotional disorder as some insist on being rebaptized because they still don’t feel they have their conversion experience just right. Sometimes it is a theological problem thinking that baptism is the only way to receive forgiveness of sins. Sometimes it is just a tourism attraction as when people are rebaptized when visiting the Jordan River in Israel.

I always find it a bit odd to ask a person when they were baptized, only to have them reply, “Which time?” It seems that baptism, real baptism, should be once for all.

Today’s text is the only occasion that I know of in the Bible where people were baptized again or rebaptized. For me, this is a very instructive passage and helps to shape my understanding of both the faith and the meaning of baptism.

The text begins by relating a footnote about Paul’s travels. Apollos, the great orator and rising star in the Christian ministry, stayed in Corinth, while Paul made his way through the interior regions to arrive at the great city of Ephesus.

I suspect that Paul was a bit surprised to find people in Ephesus who were already disciples of Jesus. This bit of information reveals some important facts about the early expansion of the message about Jesus – there were obviously more missionaries that just Paul’s entourage.

It only makes sense that many early believers in Jesus would spread the news about him as they traveled about the Roman Empire. And we have the strong impression here, that these particular witnesses had also been followers of John the Baptist.

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that John the Baptist quit his ministry after baptizing Jesus, but the Bible makes it clear that he continued to preach and have disciples, much like Jesus did. Some of the disciples of John had apparently made their way to Ephesus. There they preached a gospel which was a mixture of the good news about Jesus and the baptism practiced by John the Baptist.

Verse two tells us that there was a test of faith that Paul administered. I find it very interesting to note the test that Paul administered to see if one’s baptism was valid. And it is as interesting to me what he did not ask as what he did. Let’s look at some of the things Paul did not ask.

First of all, the test was not doctrinal in nature. He did not ask if they believed in the virgin birth of Jesus. He did not ask if they believed Jesus was God become flesh. He did not ask if they believed in the Resurrection, predestination, eternal security or the inspiration of the Bible. It seems that Paul does not measure these followers by doctrine at all.

Second, Paul did not ask if they were baptized into the right church. Many denominations consider baptism in any other denomination as invalid. When a person comes to join that church, they will be required to be rebaptized in that church to make sure it was done correctly.

Quite often in this practice, there is the underlying assumption, though seldom specifically expressed, that the competing churches are not real churches. Their thinking goes this way: If our church is the only correct one, and we have all our doctrines and beliefs exactly right, then by definition, other churches are incorrect and wrong. In fact, those churches are nothing more than social clubs with incorrect doctrine. Therefore, baptism in those incorrect churches was not a real baptism. Ours is the only true church, and baptism in our church is the only real baptism.

Paul seems to have no such concept. Neither doctrine, denomination nor church has anything to do with correct baptism for Paul.

Third, he did not ask about the authority of the one who performed the baptism. In many churches there is a strong emphasis on the minister having the right credentials. In some, there is the requirement of ordination. Only those who have been properly credentialed by the denomination are allowed to perform the ordinance of baptism.

I remember serving a church in Louisville while I was a seminary student. While the church was without a full-time pastor, one of the seminary students baptized several people. When the new pastor arrived on the scene, he immediately required the rebaptism of all those the student had baptized.

I always suspected that he merely wanted to inflate his denominational credentials by claiming a large number of baptisms in his first year of service there. In denominations that measure success according to the number of baptisms recorded in the annual report, there is a strong temptation toward such rebaptism.

Fourth, Paul did not mentioned the authority of the pastor by line of succession. In some churches, there is a requirement that the minister serve in a direct line of authority passed from minister to minister through the centuries. Our Catholic friends were the first to claim this direct line of authority preserved from pope to pope down through the ages in a direct line from Simon Peter.

Some creative Baptists responded by putting forth a claim that their direct line of authority descended from John the Baptist who preceded Peter, and therefore the Baptist church was superior to the Catholic Church. If the Catholics can claim they are the true church because of a direct line to Peter, then the Baptists can claim that they are the true church because of an even earlier historical lineage. But once again, Paul has none of that.

When our Wednesday morning men’s group looked at this text, their first response applied to church leaders. Jim Brown observed, “When you join the church, you don’t join the pastor or the leaders of the church. We are not supposed to worship the pastor or the leaders. We have joined ourselves to Christ and received the Holy Spirit. We worship Christ, not the pastor.”

I would add that I have been sorely disappointed in every pastor that I ever worshipped, and you will be too. But I have never been disappointed in worshipping Jesus! And you won’t be either.

Fifth, Paul did not ask about the mode of baptism. History has seen terrible battles regarding baptism by immersion verses baptism by sprinkling. This battle still rages today in some circles. Those who believe in sprinkling often argue that the amount of water does not determine the validity of the baptism. Baptism is made effectual by the work of God, not by the amount of water. Those who prefer immersion argue for the importance of the image of burial and resurrection. In baptism we are buried to an old way of life and raised to walk with God in our hearts.

As an aside, I would caution against the mistaken use of the term “submersion” for the technical term “immersion.” I have heard many who were new to the faith talk about submersion. According to the dictionary, they both have the same meaning of plunging beneath water, but immersion is the only one that really applies to baptism.

And some people immerse by different modes. There are those who baptize three times by plunging the subject beneath the water once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Spirit. Others of us immerse a person one time in the name of all three. Paul doesn’t seem to care if they were immersed, sprinkled or dunked one time or three times.

So what is the test that Paul gives? He asks them about their experience, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” Isn’t that an interesting question?

There is the assumption from Paul that the person being baptized should know that the Holy Spirit has come on them. Once again there are many interpretations of this test.

Our Pentecostal friends sometimes insist that a person have a separate baptism. It is also a rebaptism of sorts, but it is the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” By that phrase, they mean that some time after a person’s physical baptism, they will normally have an experience with the Holy Spirit which always leads to speaking in tongues. When they burst forth into tongues, they are considered to have been baptized in the Holy Spirit.

But in our text, there is the assumption of Paul that believers should receive the Holy Spirit “when they became believers.” This verse indicates that Paul expected a person to know they had the Holy Spirit upon their conversion to Christ.

My own interpretation of this expression by Paul is that the person should have an experience of God before or during the time they are baptized.

I remember reading some old books from theologians of the 18th century who talked about “experimental religion.” As I studied those books, it seemed that those writers meant by “experimental” what we today mean by the word “experiential.”

According to Miriam-Webster Online, the word “experiential” means “relating to experience, derived from experience or providing experience.” But the word “experimental” means “relating to or based on experience or experiment.” And my only association with this word ties with the second meaning which is associated with experiment, which means to me something that is still being tested.

To say that I have an experimental religion means that I am just conducting a few tests or experiments to see if I believe this. But to say that I have an experiential religion means that I am absolutely convinced of my faith because of my experience with God.

It seems to me that Paul is arguing for an experiential religion. “Did you experience the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”

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I confess to you that experiential religion is my personal test of the validity of baptism. I believe you can be baptized by the very best of modes (whatever one may determine that to be) and one can be baptized by a minister with the most impeccable of credentials and authority, and it still mean nothing.

In the same way, I believe you can take the elements of the Lord’s Supper and, if you experience nothing, it is just the ingesting of a cracker and juice. But if your heart is right, then those simple elements are transformed into communion with the Divine.

If we do not experience God, then our baptism was just a dunking in water. And on the other hand, our experience can make our baptism valid no matter the mode or the minister. Whether we are sprinkled or immersed, dunked one time or three times and no matter who the minister was, our experience with God is what counts for me.

Some of this I learn from my own experience. I know I was converted when I was eight years old. As you have often heard me say, “I gave all that I knew of myself to all that I knew of God. I didn’t know much about myself and I didn’t know much about God, but I made the best decision I could at that point in my life.” And fortunately, I have never once doubted my conversion experience.

There was a time when I was disturbed that I couldn’t remember the name of the minister who was preaching the revival services in our little church in Crossett, Arkansas when I decided to accept Christ. What if he turned out to be a charlatan? What if he wasn’t really ordained? What if he was wrong in some of his theology? Was my conversion still valid?

Of course, it was! It was valid because of what happened in my heart and had nothing to do with him. And the same is true with my baptism. I can’t remember the name of the pastor who baptized me. I suppose I could look back in the history of that church and figure it out, but at this moment I don’t know. Does that bring my baptism into question? Not in the least. I don’t care who he was. It may even be a good thing that I don’t remember, because the only thing that matters is that God was there, and I was there. It was the experience that counted for me. It was experiential religion at its best.

When people come to join this church and have been baptized elsewhere, I have only one question: “Are you satisfied with the experience of your baptism?” Sometimes people are not. In fact, they are bothered about some inadequacy of the experience of their baptism. For some reason, they feel dissatisfied with their baptism. When I hear that, I am eager to rebaptize them so that they can feel like I do about my baptism. It’s a cruel thing to worry about or doubt your own baptism.

But neither do we require rebaptism. We have the audacity to believe that other churches are real churches, that baptism in those churches is a real baptism, and we don’t want their baptism to be a barrier to becoming a part of this fellowship of faith. My only test of baptism is this: “Are you satisfied with your experience of baptism?” If they are satisfied, then we say, “Come on in!”

In our text, Paul goes on to ask these disciples in Ephesus, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they reply, “Into John’s baptism.”

Paul explains to them, “John indeed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.” And they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Verse six then explains, “When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with other languages and prophesied….”

The speaking in tongues and prophecy are the evidence that something had happened to these new believers. For me, this does not mean that every Christian must speak in tongues and prophecy in order to prove they are a Christian. It simply means that they had an experience that resulted in a change in their behavior. And that is the essence of conversion – a change, a transformation.

Religion can be experimental or experiential. I hope that it is not merely an experiment for you, but that it is something that is experiential, and therefore, something that can never be taken away from you.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2006, Dr. Mickey Anders. Used by permission.