How do Cessationists view “being filled with the Holy Spirit”

Question

I'm aware that Cessationists do not believe in spiritual gifts. However, how do they view the process of being filled with the Holy Spirit?

Tozer's How to be filled with the holy spirit defines the process as a very dramatic, sudden process. Do Cessationists also take this view, or do they view it as a more gradual process?

Answer 1

A Cessationists can believe that a person is ‘filled with the Spirit’ in the sense and way described, but generally they do not. An example of a Cessationist that believed in being filled with the Spirit would be Jonathan Edwards but not exactly as Tozer would explain it. However, at the time of Tozer, the idea of being filled became viewed as a more of a ‘one time’ experience, after conversion, according to the influence of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement. Later on people like Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones argued that a person can be filled ‘many times’ and this was nothing more than a kind of personal Revival that can happen whenever God in his sovereign will allows it, typically in response to praying for revival.

To confuse the issue, various views and distinction of words cropped up, where people distinguished between ‘being filled’ versus having a revival, etc., as ‘a filling’ could be thought more along the lines of general, slow and steady ‘sanctification’, but an ‘outpouring of the Spirit’ was something else. In this confusing time when every theologian had there favorite terms, I thought it was pretty clever of Billy Graham to say ‘I don’t care how you get it, just get.’ (regarding the filling of the Holy Spirit)

For a very insightful view of how a Cessationist describes special fillings or outpourings of the Spirit and how it really happens, I would read this Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls, In Northampton and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages in New Hampshire, In New England, by Jonathan Edwards. He also has a very acute sense between real and counterfeit experiences during a revival in the book, Religious Affections.

Answer 2

Hmm, I've never heard the term "Cessationist" before, but the description in that article petty much matches the beliefs of many churches that I've attended.

Anyway, most non-charismatic evangelicals that I've known -- fine, I'll call them "Cessationists" -- say that a person is "filled with the Spirit" at the moment that they accept Christ. "Salvation" and "being filled with the Spirit" are seen as either simultaneous events or two names for the same event. Charismatics will normally say that they are two distinct events. A person can be saved but not be filled with the Spirit until a later date.

Also note that charismatics normally say that when one is filled with the Spirit this immediately results in speaking in tongues, and that if you do not speak in tongues you are, ipso facto, not filled with the Spirit. Cessationists say that speaking in tongues is only one of many spiritual gifts, and one that is no longer given to believers. Cessationists distinguish the "sign gifts" of tongues and prophecy from the other spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Cor 12, etc, like teaching and administration. They then say that we no longer have apostles, as Christ is no longer here to commission them, and we no longer have sign gifts, as they are not necessary.

The verse most often cited for this is 1 Cor 13:8-10

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

They then explain that "the perfect" is the New Testament canon: Now that we have the New Testament, we no longer need these sign gifts.