MARK 1.6-8: Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. (7) And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. (8) I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (ESV)
When Jesus came to John and revealed Himself publicly, John’s life and actions were transcended by Jesus. John was His servant, and now John’s practice of water baptism, a symbolic representation of an individual’s commitment to repent and to live a new moral life, would eventually give way to the baptism of believers by Jesus with the Holy Spirit. So what is being baptized with the Holy Spirit? It could also be translated “baptized by the Holy Spirit”, or “in the Holy Spirit”. The footnotes of the New American Standard Translation make this very point.
From the Gospel of John 4.2 we learn that Jesus Himself did not baptize people in water. His disciples did, but not Jesus. So when John the Baptist says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit, it is most likely a reference to the action of the Holy Spirit working within a person that John is referring to, since Jesus did not baptize people in water. The practice of believer’s baptism, as is commanded by Jesus in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.18-20, is not the same as what John is referring to in verse 8 above.
1 Corinthians 12.13 makes reference to believers in Jesus being baptized by the Holy Spirit, when they become part of the body of Christ. This verse says, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” (NIV)
I believe this verse is not a reference to spiritual gifts, but rather the action by the Holy Spirit in the spiritual realm to bring a person into the body of Christ, which is His church. The word “church” is from the New Testament word which means, “called out ones”.
I believe that baptism “by the Holy Spirit”, or “in the Holy Spirit”, or “with the Holy Spirit” means that the Holy Spirit comes and actually lives within a person, and changes the person from the inside out, so that a person lives with new objectives and aspirations, those of seeking God. 1 Corinthians 12.3 says, “Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Spirit.” (NIV).
In some people this change, this new direction, this new aspiration can be immediate. In others it can take quite some time to be recognized. But in all cases it must take root, as in the growth of a tree, and be allowed the time to develop.