Spirit-Filled

Not too long ago I went to Mars Hill Church Olympia. I was running sound during one of the member meetings. They talked about some of the distinctives of Mars Hill Church, but I'm only going to get into one of them here.

That distinctive is called "Spirit-filled."

Pastor Steve was talking about partnering with other churches, even through some differences in distinctives. He said, as an example, something along the lines of working with a church that held all of their distinctives except for the "Spirit-filled" one and how that was still great.

Wait.

WHAT?!

I know what he meant. He meant they could work with a non-Charismatic church. Mars Hill Church is charismatic, which specifically means that they believe that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit (i.e. tongues, miracles, healing) are still in effect today. Actual charismatic-ness (insert coinage) has nothing to do with a church's music style, contrary to popular belief. It has to do with their view on the charismata, or spiritual gifts.

But this is an extremely misleading thing to say in a church.

Every Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9 says "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." If we don't have the Spirit, if we aren't "Spirit-filled," we don't belong to Christ.

1 Corinthians 6:19 says, "[D]o you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?"

Galatians 3:2 says that we receive the Spirit by hearing with faith. Along with this, Titus 3:5-6 says "[H]e saved us . . . by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior." It doesn't say anything about there being some Christians without the Spirit in them.

In fact, 1 Corinthians 12:3 says that "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit." We can't even make a true profession of submission to Christ's Lordship without the Spirit!

In other words, if you have a church that isn't Spirit-filled, you do not have a church. All Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, you have no Christians. No Christians means no church, or at best a lukewarm church like the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-22.

Again, I know what he meant by what he said. But it just bothered me because it was a very, very wrong way of saying what he meant. To say something about a church that isn't Spirit-filled is to say something about a group of people who claim to be a church, but aren't actually one.