March 9

Read: Acts 8:5, 12, 14-17

Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost (Acts 8:17).

Samaritan Converts Needed To Be Sanctified

The disciples who had been sanctified on the Day of Pentecost were already followers of Christ. The baptism with the Holy Spirit came to them after their conversion. This was the order also in the Early Church following Pentecost. In verse 12 of our scripture we read, “But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized.”

Then as now, water baptism was recognized as the acknowledgment of conversion. But before the visit of Peter and John these new Christians had experienced only the first work of grace. The New English Bible translates verse 16 forcefully: “Until then the Spirit had not come upon any of them. They had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, that and nothing more.” After these Samaritans were converted, they needed to be baptized with the Holy Ghost.

No language can tell the story as well as Luke’s own inspired words. “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost… Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.”

If we believe that entire sanctification and the baptism with the Holy Ghost are fundamentally the same experience of grace, could scriptural teaching be clearer that sanctification is a crisis experience which comes after we have been converted?

He who has pardoned surely will cleanse thee, All of the dross of thy nature refine. Cleansed from all sin, His power will enter,

Fill you and thrill you with power divine.

— Mrs. C. H. Morris