Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly, and to achieve that goal, He destroyed the works of the devil. The fallen false self and the reign of sin were accomplishments of the evil one in the finished work of Christ; those things were undone. The finished work of Christ includes the crucifixion and resurrection/ascension of Jesus. Still, from God’s perspective, the finished work is not actually finished until all that Jesus has accomplished for us is experienced by us. Pentecost cannot be separated from the crucifixion and resurrection/ascension of Jesus. At Pentecost, the disciples were baptized in the Holy Spirit, and the filling of the Holy Spirit is that we might actualize experientially our death burial and resurrection/ascension with Jesus. Every Christian is in Christ, and therefore dead to the reign of sin, and in union with the risen and ascended life of Christ, but every Christian doesn’t personally enjoy that union in their daily lives. The Holy Spirit is the divine fiat that actualizes and is the conduit of our oneness with the risen Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that makes real in us the power of the resurrection life of Jesus to live a life of supernatural holiness, and signs and wonders compassionate love and service. When a person is baptized in the Holy Spirit, they don’t get one thing more than they already had, because every believer was brought into union with all that Christ is and all that Christ has two thousand years ago in the finished work, but when a person is filled the Holy Spirit, they are propelled into the personal celebration of all their inheritance in Christ. Baptism in the Spirit is a believer’s immersion into the life, nature, and power of the resurrected King of Kings. Pentecost is not a separate feast day apart from Good Friday, Easter, and the Ascension, but is instead, the consummation of all of that because as I said from the mind of God the finished work of Christ isn’t finished until what he came to accomplish is fully experienced by those he in love pursued in through the ages since the fall of Adam. On Good Friday Jesus crucified the old, but Easter wasn’t fully consummated until fifty days later at Pentecost. Only having been filled with the Holy Spirit can a person fully cry out, “Aleluia, Christ is risen.”
