John 14 is another passage in Scripture that tells us that baptism or the infusion of the Holy Spirit is not intended for sinners. A person must first become a new creation before being able to receive the Holy Spirit.

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you.” John 14:16-17

What is Jesus talking about here? He is saying that the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth. The “world” refers to sinners, those outside of Christ. We just saw in John 3:16 that the world can receive the new birth: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” Jesus was sent to save the world!

So, we know that the world can receive salvation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who regenerates the human spirit in the new birth. This means that the experience of the Holy Spirit to which Jesus refers in this verse, receiving “the Spirit of truth,” must be something other than salvation. Otherwise, if a person has all the Holy Spirit they can have when they are born again and there is no other experience beyond salvation, it must be concluded that Jesus made a false statement.

But Jesus did not make a false statement in John 14:17. The world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, meaning the Holy Spirit in its fullness. In fact, he makes a similar remark in Mark 2:22, stating that sinners cannot be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Jesus declares:

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.“

In this verse, the wine symbolizes the Holy Spirit. In biblical times, wine was put into skin bottles. If new wine was put into old bottles, the skin would not stretch as the wine fermented, and it would burst quickly.

In a sense, Jesus was saying that if a sinner were filled with the glory and power of the Holy Spirit, it would make them burst forth! No, the sinner must first become a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). That’s why, in the new birth, God regenerates our human spirits so that we can be filled with the new wine of the Holy Spirit!

This text is an excerpt from the book “The Power of Speaking in Tongues: Everything you want to know about Speaking in Tongues“, written by Kenneth Erwin Hagin.

We invite you to read the following article “Understanding the doctrine of baptisms“.