NOTES for Act 19:6

What is the relationship, the connection, between baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit? In the second chapter of Acts, baptism is accompanied by the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit (2:38); in the eighth chapter, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus did not lead to the outpouring of the Spirit (8:16); in the tenth chapter, the descent of the Spirit precedes baptism (10:44-48); and now in the nineteenth, the Ephesians needed John's baptism, baptism in the name of the Lord, and also the laying on of Paul's hands. Truly, the Spirit blows where He wills (John 3:8)!

Second, what is the connection between the gifts of the Spirit and salvation? If salvation is given by faith and baptism (Matt. 16:16), why is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit needed? Perhaps the Holy Spirit gives those being saved the power for witness.

Third, why does the book of Acts insist precisely on these gifts of the Holy Spirit, tongues and prophecy? After all, Paul also writes about many other gifts of the Spirit manifested in the Church (1 Cor. 12). Perhaps the point is that the gifts described here appear in people immediately after conversion; these gifts are visible at once, while others, such as the gift of healing, teaching, and working miracles, appear later.

Today we read about the ministry of the apostle Paul and his companions in the large port city of Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia. In several episodes described by Luke, we can see events very similar to what happens in our own day.

Then as now, there are people burning in spirit, striving with all their hearts for knowledge of the truth, for awareness of what matters most in life. One such person is Apollos, ready to preach and bring to other people everything he has learned about salvation, and at the same time open to greater knowledge, ready to hear the good news about Christ and the gift of the Spirit from Paul's disciples, Aquila and his wife Priscilla. It is no accident that afterward Apollos becomes one of Paul's closest coworkers and friends, for the combination of readiness to teach and readiness to learn is a great and rare gift.

And this is exactly how the living message about Christ acts and is handed on. If we always thirsted for the deepening of our faith and knowledge of Him, while always being ready to share faith and knowledge with others, we too would be able to help in the work of evangelism.

Today's reading allows us to see more clearly another aspect of spiritual life that is extremely important to us. It is about the incident with certain Jewish exorcists (19:13-16). Of course, the situation these people found themselves in was far from ordinary. But in it, as in a drop of water, was reflected that which concerns everyone, regardless of whether one has to deal with the possessed or not. As can be seen, the exorcists mentioned by Luke decided to use the name of "Jesus, Whom Paul preaches". Most likely, they had only heard of both Paul and Jesus, not knowing either of them personally. But they may have seen with their own eyes that, to use modern language, the method works. And, apparently, they decided to reproduce what Paul was doing. The result, judging by the evangelist's testimony, turned out to be sad and, it seems, unexpected for the experimenters themselves. They probably counted on the mere mention of the name of Jesus working, but, obviously, nothing of the sort happened.

At first glance it might seem that this is about an attempt to use the name of Jesus as the most ordinary magical incantation. But things were hardly that simple, because it was still a matter of believing Jews, of Judeans who knew all too well about the prohibition imposed by the Torah on everything somehow connected with magic and corresponding practices. Perhaps it would be more correct to see in what happened a practice quite common in the Jewish milieu during the Gospel era of casting out demons through the invocation of the name of God. There also existed certain prayer formulas which, it was believed, allowed one to achieve the desired result with a greater degree of probability. Most likely, the exorcists mentioned in the story decided that Paul too uses some special, secret prayers to cast out demons from the possessed, allowing him to achieve success where others suffer defeat.

Not knowing the essence of Christianity as a teaching about the resurrected Messiah and about the messianic Kingdom entering the world, they seem to have taken it for some new method of exorcism. And they were severely put to shame: for the deliverance of the possessed from the power of dark forces through Paul's prayers happened not because his prayers were somehow special, but because he himself lived the life of the Kingdom, to which others also joined through his prayers.

Christianity is not a spiritual or prayerful practice that gives its adherents some special abilities or reveals to them some secrets of the universe inaccessible to the uninitiated. It is simply life in the Kingdom. A life that can and should be accepted, and, having been accepted, shared with others.

The Kingdom's entrance into the world begins on the day of Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit. God's breath permeates the Kingdom, forming its nature (or, more precisely, what replaces nature in the Kingdom). And afterward the spread of the Kingdom through the world continues in the same way: it becomes a continuous Pentecost, repeated again and again.

Not some other, new Pentecost, but the very same one, appearing now here, now there, everywhere there are people seeking the Kingdom and desiring to enter it. God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, enters the world, but always through people. It cannot be otherwise: the Kingdom consists of people who have firm, stable, and completely real relationships with God and with Christ. These relationships form the structure of the Kingdom, insofar as they can be called a structure at all. Yet despite its apparent dependence on a person and his choice, the power of the Kingdom is fully real. It is so real that, once it has entered the world, everyone senses the effect of this power.

Of course, they sense it in different ways: although the power of the Kingdom can be felt anywhere and at any time, its breath, full of God's love, can be felt only by opening the heart to it and entering it. It is no accident that the Book of Acts so often mentions magicians who sensed the power of the Kingdom and left their former way behind. They felt the power of the Kingdom very well, but they could not feel the breath of God's love that stood behind it until they themselves became its inhabitants, and therefore Christians.

There is no other way: one cannot simply make use of the Kingdom. Some wanted to, like the "exorcists" who tried to use the name of Jesus to achieve their own goals. They had apparently heard the words about the name of Jesus by which one can be saved, and they decided that it possessed power in roughly the same sense as the names they used in their magical practice possessed power. The result was disastrous, and the newly minted exorcists barely escaped with their lives.

The power of the name of Jesus shows itself only when a person becomes an inhabitant of the Kingdom, and only to the extent that he has become one. It cannot be otherwise: God's power always changes a person from within, and God never merely wants to make a person His instrument by giving him certain special abilities. He wants to renew him, turning him into an inhabitant of His Kingdom. That is what matters most. Everything else is only forms and means, which in themselves give a person nothing.

How should we understand the baptism Paul performed in Ephesus in the name of the Lord Jesus? Should we consider it a second baptism, or was it the completion and fulfillment of John's baptism? Christians of different denominations have debated the meaning of baptism for centuries, and there is still no end in sight. In many Christians' interpretation, the baptism that brings a person into the Church is more like the baptism of repentance enjoined by John. Yet we see that, for Paul, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus is not reducible to washing away sins: it is something more, although it includes liberation from the sins one renounces.

Let us note, however, that nowhere else in Acts is a second baptism mentioned. Nevertheless, while the Holy Spirit descended upon Cornelius and those close to him before baptism, here a second baptism proved necessary for His descent. But let us not forget that Cornelius had already accepted Christ even before he was baptized. It is difficult to tell whether the disciples who knew only John's baptism had fully accepted Christ, but there is no doubt that they did so after meeting Paul.

We then see another attempt to use the Name of Jesus for practical purposes apart from faith, which ended badly for the exorcists. They did not acknowledge Jesus as Lord, nor did they even consider who He was, the One whom Paul preaches. But lack of faith leaves people defenseless against the forces of spiritual darkness, with which both the sons of Sceva and the many modern sorcerers who practice magic with candles and icons, but have no genuine faith in the Savior, recklessly try to deal. They seem to be opposing demonic powers, but without Christ such a confrontation turns out to be a “sham fight.”