What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Do not get drunk with wine, says Paul in

Ephesians chapter 5, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, addressing one

another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

This image of being filled with the Spirit has led some believers to imagine themselves as cars

with spiritual gas tanks that constantly need topping up.

There is this popular view that a Christian needs to be filled

from time to time, as if the presence of the Holy Spirit is something that somehow gets depleted

as we live the Christian life, or we somehow need more of the Holy Spirit than we currently have.

But that's not what Paul teaches. Actually, earlier in that same

book of Ephesians, Paul is clear that a believer receives the Holy Spirit when they first believe,

and he remains with them without any depletion for the rest of their lives. When you heard the word of

truth, Paul says, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, you were sealed with the

promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. So there's no sense here in which

the Holy Spirit comes and goes in the life of a believer, and it ought to be said, no sense in which

we need to look for some kind of second blessing of the Holy Spirit. In some circles, people have

taught that there are two or more spiritual

stages in a believer's life. The first stage is the moment when a person is born again,

the moment they first believe. The second stage is sometimes described as the baptism of the

Holy Spirit and is usually connected with the appearance of

particular gifts of the Spirit, for example, speaking in other tongues, prophecy, healing, singing

in the Spirit, and the other gifts mentioned in 1st Corinthians 12 and Romans 12. But again, this isn't

the picture painted here in Ephesians.

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