ChristB4us
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Baptism of the holy spirit born again and... born again again?Who believes that? I don't know anyone who believes you receive the Spirit again and again and again.
Whether they describe it as being baptized with the Spirit again and again and again or being filled with the Spirit again and again and again, it is the same thing as receiving the Spirit again and again and again.Correct. We receive the Spirit once. But then what? Does the Spirit then just sit there inside us, dead and quiet, doing nothing? Or is the Spirit active and alive and God's empowering presence within us? Receiving the Spirit is not the end, but the beginning. If the Christian life is anything, it's life in the Spirit. The Christian life is the Spirit-filled life. And Ephesians 5.18 gives the imperative command "to be filled with the Spirit." The verb is in the present tense, indicating that we are to be filled with the Spirit continually. That is different from the initial reception of the Holy Spirit. How do we know this? Because in Ephesians Paul is writing to Christians who already have the Holy Spirit. So, this is not about initial Holy Spirit receiving, but Holy Spirit living.
In respect to the bold in your quote above as highlighted, it is present tense because Paul is exhorting believers not to get drunk with wine but remain sober thus filled with the Holy Spirit. It is not telling believers to seek a continual filling of the Spirit but do not get drunk with wine so as to "be" filled with the Spirit as in "remain filled" with the Spirit as opposing to the works of the flesh by getting drunk.
There are other verses exhorting believers to be sober as plainly written to be sober which does not exhort any such calling of seeking to be filled continually with the Holy Spirit as if you are a leaky vessel needing to be filled again supernaturally.
Matthew 9:17 Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
The Holy Spirit being always in us and will never leave us is the reality that Paul is talking about while warning believers not to seek another spirit to receive, which believers are doing by seeking another Jesus hence another Holy Spirit to receive again as if not received before as they will find themselves seeking a continual filling and thus receiving of that spirit as they are hungering & thirsting for more of that encounter because they are not coming to Jesus Christ but to that spirit of the antichrist.As New Testament scholar Gordon Fee put it in his book God's Empowering Presence which is an in depth biblical exegesis of every reference to the Holy Spirit in Paul’s epistles: “One reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end.”
Because those who have come to Jesus Christ will never hunger nor thirst to be filled again so as to avoid the rudiment of the world in how they seek after receiving spirits again and again and again.
John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Colossians 2: 5 For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. 6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. 8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
Ephesians 1:17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, 20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.
@Agra Man @jeremiah1five @Wordsmith