3561—The Second Blessing
By Editor
Please explain Acts 19:2. Are we to understand by this scripture that if one has been converted, he must seek sanctification before he can be saved? he must claim the second blessing? V. J. Acts 19:2 has nothing whatever about a second blessing, or sanctification. It simply has to do with more light and more blessing, because more light is received. Paul came to Ephesus and found there a certain group of disciples. He asks them, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they say unto him [as given in the Revised Version], Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was given"—not that they had not heard whether there was any Holy Ghost, because John preached of the Holy Spirit (see Matt. 3:11). These disciples of John did not know that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that the Holy Spirit had been poured out. They had not learned all these things. Paul asks them, then, unto what they were baptized; and they said, "Unto John's baptism." John simply baptized with a baptism of repentance. Paul explained to them then the work of Jesus, and what Jesus was to the children of men, and then they were baptized in His name. Baptizing in the name of Jesus was equivalent to just what is stated in Matt. 28:19, 20—"baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Baptized into the name of the Father was into the character of the Father—God's righteousness imputed to them, their sins all forgiven. Baptized into the name of the Son means absolute renunciation of self. "He emptied Himself," that God might fill Him. Baptized into the name of the Spirit is a fitting for service; for it is by the power of the Spirit that God's children serve Him, and through the Spirit gifts are distributed to each one of them. Therefore these disciples, having received new light, were baptized into the full meaning of the Gospel. We presume, without question, that they received at that time a second blessing; and as greater light came to them, and they accepted it, they received a third blessing; as they followed on in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, they received blessing after blessing. Sanctification implies two things: first, the absolute giving of the man himself to God, setting apart himself to God's service—an instantaneous work of the will; and secondly, the carrying out of that purpose in a holy life of service to God. Sanctification, therefore, is on the side of the will an instantaneous work, on the side of the character an entire life-work.