Did You Receive the Holy Spirit?

Paul in his Letter to the Turkish Believers in Galatia made it very clear that there was one major issue that he wanted to resolve with them.

Galatians 3:2, AMP, “This is all I want to ask of you:”

Notice Paul did NOT say, ‘There are a lot of things that I want to ask of you, and this is one of them, but it’s not very important.’

Paul is talking to Believers, not to Idol Worshippers, and he asks, Galatians 3:2, AMP, “Did you Receive the Holy Spirit as the result of obeying the requirements of the Law,…”

All Spiritual Warfare revolves around this one conflict between Grace and Spiritual Law.

When we understand this we can rightly discern the tactics used by Religious Legalists to divert us away from the Gospel of Grace.

Religious Legalism is Ego driven, as it is all about what you can achieve through earning Spiritual Points by performing Rituals.

This is why Paul cuts to the chase, and asks the Believers how they Received the Holy Spirit.

Religious Legalists downplay the role of the Holy Spirit, and emphasise how you can earn Grace Points by participating in Meditation Ritualism, or Lighting Candles, or earning ‘Indulgences’, or Magical Mystery Psychedelic Mushroom Occult sessions, or Carl Jung’s Psychotherapy integrating your Evil Dark Shadow into your Psyche, or endless Spiritism, or the Seventh Day Adventist Second Atoning Work of Jesus, or earn your way to Heaven Mormon style, and so on.

As soon as someone says, ‘We don’t Believe in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit here, they all passed away with the Apostles’, you know some form of Spiritual Legalism will be offered as an alternative.

Paul didn’t bother asking the Believers in Turkey what form of Legalism they were being enticed with, but rather questioning whether they Received the Holy Spirit through the Legalistic trickery.

We cannot Receive the Holy Spirit any other way than by Faith as Paul explains, Galatians 3:2, AMP, “Or was it the result of Hearing the Message of Salvation, and with Faith Believing it”.

The first step in Legalistic deception is to be taught that if God wants to give you the Holy Spirit, then he will do so when you earn it, in His own good time.

So the deception continues, if you don’t have the Holy Spirit now, it means that you aren’t good enough, and as a result you need to earn more Grace Points in our Rituals to try to measure up to God’s impossibly high standards.

By comparison Paul clearly Teaches in Galatians 3:2, “With Faith Believing it”

Believing is a Verb, it is an action word, and it requires the consent of the individual.

You have to decide to Believe of your own Free Will.

This is why the Political Correctness Agenda is trying to restrict our Freedom of Choice, so that all decisions about what we want to Believe will be made for us by the Big Brother State.

Religious Legalists also try to persuade people that it is not up to our own Faith whether we Receive the Holy Spirit, but it’s up to the Legalistic Religion to decide who is worthy based on the number of Grace Points earned.

None of this denigrates the role of Good Works which spring from our Faith, which the Salvation Army exemplify with the Love of Christ helping millions of people in need worldwide.

Only our Faith in Christ enables us to Receive the Holy Spirit, which then produces the Fruit of Good Works, and not the other way around.

We cannot Receive the Holy Spirit passively, without exercising our Faith by Believing.

It’s not up to God to decide when you are good enough to Receive the Holy Spirit, as it is up to you to decide whether you are willing to Receive the Holy Spirit, that is by Faith Believing for the Spirit.

As Paul explains in great detail to the Turkish Believers that trying to be Justified before God results in coming under the Curse.

Galatians 3:1, AMP, “Who has bewitched you that you should act like this,”

When we come under the Bewitching Curse of Legalism, we start to act differently, especially towards those who we consider do not measure up to the impossible Standards of the Law.

This Bewitching Curse causes Self-Righteousness and Hypocritical Spiritual elitism.

This is why the Turkish Believers who had been deceived were acting differently, and were demanding Male Circumcision and strict Sabbath observances, which even they were not able to perfectly abide by.

Would you like to Receive the Holy Spirit by Faith?

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