.......................................................................................
Children And The Holy Spirit
Can little children be filled with the Holy
Spirit?
Biblword
“. . . he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his
mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15)
Your Question: Can a small child have the Spirit
of God in him?
Many
parents wonder if their little children know God yet, or to put it another way “have God’s Spirit in them.”
The two expressions mean the
same thing since all believers have the Holy Spirit in them (Ephesians
1:13).
But children’s understanding
of the world around them, including spiritual matters, is very limited.
So can a little child
actually have God’s Spirit?
To answer that question,
let’s look briefly at how the Holy Spirit works to save people.
In
the Bible, Jesus told a man named Nicodemus how a person becomes born-again.
But he doesn’t tell Nicodemus
four easy steps to follow in order to become born again. Instead, he explains
it this way:
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you
do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8 ESV)
Jesus’ answer sounds rather
mysterious because the “how” and “when” of the Holy
Spirit causing a person to be “born again” is mysterious.
Nobody really knows how,
when, or why the Holy Spirit changes a person’s heart so that they will repent
and believe the Gospel.
Born
again or “regeneration”
What
we do know is that the Holy Spirit needs to make us born again (sometimes
called “regeneration”) before we grasp the truth of the Gospel and confess
Christ.
The
Bible says, “even
when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by
grace you have been saved — ” (Ephesians 2:5).
Dead people can’t do
anything, and those who are dead spiritually can’t decide for Christ, and they
can’t repent and believe – unless God brings
them to life.
Only when God chooses them
and makes them alive, can they then choose God.
The Bible says that when God
chooses to save somebody, he oversees the whole process of salvation from
beginning to end:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed
to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many
brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he
called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans
8:29-30)
John
the Baptist
Usually
the act of the Holy Spirit causing a person to be born again (or regenerate) is
followed closely by them repenting and believing in Christ.
In the case, of a little
child, we know from the Bible that it is possible for the Holy Spirit to dwell
in even an unborn infant, as in the case of John the Baptist:
“. . . he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his
mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15)
Now, even though John was
indwelt with the Spirit from birth, the Bible doesn’t indicate that he had a
mental capacity any different from any other child.
That means that John probably
acquired an understanding of the great truths of God as he grew up, and that
his faith grew as he did.
Because
the Bible says that he was filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb, we
know that he knew God as he grew up.
But if we didn’t have that
Bible verse, it would probably have been hard to tell until he grew into
maturity.
Many
years
If we
think about how the Holy Spirit saves people in general, and about the example
of John the Baptist, we can conclude that a small child can have the Holy
Spirit in him.
However, because children are
immature both mentally and spiritually, it will normally take many years before
there is a certain outward expression of that internal regeneration
(born-again-ness).
All
Christian parents hope that their children know God savingly from an early age.
From Scripture, we know that
it is possible. But in experience, we must be extremely cautious is saying
whether a child is filled with the Holy Spirit, and is thus saved.
Biblword is a ministry of GlobalRize. Marten
Visser is the founding director of GlobalRize. Marten is a pastor from The
Netherlands with long years of experience as a missionary in Thailand. We now
have around 200 people from all over the world involved in GlobalRize’s
ministry. Besides the English page, Biblword also exists in 13 other languages
on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment