Can someone lose the Holy Spirit? This is an oft-asked question in Pentecostal circles. Rather than simply stating my position on the question I will offer a few thoughts and insights to stir up your own. Once there has been sufficient discussion I will state my position.
I am somewhat uncomfortable with the way the question is even framed. While it could be a mere limitation of language, I wonder if the way we frame the question reflects a theological misunderstanding of the nature of Spirit baptism. To be filled with the Spirit is not merely having the spiritual substance of God enter your body and spirit in a special way. Spirit baptism involves the regeneration (making-alive) of an individual’s spirit that was “killed” by sin. It is a rebirth as Jesus described it in John 3.
If this understanding of what it means to be filled with the Spirit is correct, then to lose the Spirit would mean our spirit has to be spiritually “unborn.” Losing the Spirit would not be a mere departure of God’s spiritual presence from one’s body/spirit, but a removing of the spiritual life God infused into the individual, so that her human spirit is left for dead once more.
Is this feasible? Is it possible for God to undo a spiritual birth? Nicodemus asked Jesus how a man could re-enter his mother’s womb to be born again. He recognized that birth is a decisive moment in time that cannot be repeated, nor undone. If such is true of the first birth, is it also true of the second? Can the spiritual birthing of our spirit from a state of death to life be undone, yet alone repeated (for those who believe one can lose and then regain the Spirit)? We know it is not possible to undo a natural birth, but is it possible for God to undo our spiritual birth?
If so, how? What Biblical or rational evidence leads you to this conclusion? What would it take for God to “unbirth” you? Is it persistent sin? If so, how long does one have to persist in that sin before God reverses their regeneration? Is it a particular amount of sin? If so, how much is too much?
If regeneration is not reversible, how do you explain the many passages of Scripture that warn of believers falling away from God?
Thinking to Believe 
June 19, 2006 at 10:19 am
Excellent question. This is one that I have long thought about. As you have rightly observed it is a central question of soteriology. It concerns not merely how “full” a person is of the Holy Spirit (probably one of those misuses of language concerning the Spirit you referred to) but regeneration itself. Actually this question has been a perennial question in theology and is at the heart of issues such as assurance, eternal security, perseverance of the believer, and others.
I have several questions/points to add to those you have asked:
1) When exactly does regeneration occur? Is it simultaneous with speaking in tongues-spirit baptism, or can we know? Is it instantaneous?
2) I don’t see how it can be said, that a person has the Holy Spirit one moment and not the next, or something like that. That is simply not tenable, biblically or practically in my opinion. Being full of the Spirit from moment to moment has nothing to do with goosebumps and chills but with being regenerated and growing in sanctificaton–bearing the fruit of the Spirit.
3) Being born again means being born of God! This is something that God does to a person. Can a person undo that work? Can I “undo” my position as a son of my natural father? Only by dying, I suppose. So, the only way to lose the Holy Spirit would be to completely die spiritually, apostasize, reject the grace of God and the blood of Christ.
4) The question is this: such a person who eventually rejects God, were they ever really regenerated to begin with? A Scripture comes to mind now, which may be wrong in context: “they went out from us because they were not of us.” This would lead us back to my first question: what is tongues-speaking really evidence of? Is this objective evidence of new birth or something accessory or accompanying new birth but which is not absolutely indicative of it?
I suppose that part of the angle that I’m working from is that numerous examples come to mind of people (ministers, altar workers) giving advice and preaching to already Spirit-filled believers to: “speak in tongues, speak in tongues!” or, “If you haven’t spoke in tongues in while, you need to get ahold of God, you need to be re-filled!” Now, I’m not against speaking in tongues at all, but I feel we have so connected speaking in tongues with experience of the Holy Spirit that we’ve forgetten the full work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. I’ve never seen someone go down amongst believers praying at the altar saying, “come on manifest some joy! Where’s the love at? You need to be meek! Show me some kindness and gentleness and longsuffering! Where’s the fruit, come on, talk to God, where’s the fruit?” I’m sort of thinking of the old Wendy’s commercial, “where’s the beef?”
So I think the logic often goes that the longer the time since one has spoke in tongues then the less “full” of the Spirit one is. This is extrapolated into greater questions such as the one being debated and by some strange logic, the loss of the Holy Spirit is postulated and the issue remains at the merely experiential level of what have you experienced lately instead of the deeper question of regeneration. I think this is why we are commanded to make our calling and our election sure.
Just some thoughts of mine.
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June 19, 2006 at 10:28 am
Another related question to this post. In relating the New Birth to physical birth, this question comes to mind. Your physical birth is not something you as an individual initiated, decided, scheduled, or controlled, no it happened to you and you were thrust into the world at the will of another. Are we to think of the New Birth in this manner? John ch. 1 tells us that believers are “born of God” not the will of man or the flesh. John ch 3:1ff tells us that the Spirit is like the wind, one cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes but one only recognizes the effects. In other words, a person has no control of the wind or the Spirit. So can we initiate our own “New Birth,” i.e. regeneration?
If not, then how does this relate to the common OP interpretation and correlation of John 3:5 with Acts 2:38? If so, I suppose the standard understanding of these two passages is the right one…?
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June 19, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Here are my two cents to your original post “Can someone lose the Holy Ghost”
The Bible clearly illustrates the fact that dedicated followers/believers were ‘filled’ with the Holy Ghost numerous times. It is unbiblical to believe that re-filling is only for “backslidden” people or people that need to re-dedicate their life to God. ALL believers need to be spirit baptized over and over again.
Acts 2:4 and 4:8 clearly show that Peter and the other believers were filled with the Holy Ghost, but then we see them filled again in Acts 4:31:
31 After this prayer, the building where they were meeting shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they preached God’s message with boldness. Acts 4:31 NLT
With this, I can’t conclude believers retain the Holy Ghost after the initial experience. If we did, why are there examples of being re-filled?? The retention theory doesn’t seem logical.
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June 19, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Chad,
Great additional questions.
1) As Pentecostals I think we would all agree that receiving the Spirit (regeneration) occurs at approximately the same time as speaking in tongues. But what comes first? Speaking in tongues or Spirit baptism? I think most assume that speaking in tongues is the result of having been filled with the Spirit, not the cause, and thus most would agree that chronologically speaking a person is regenerated prior to speaking in tongues. But how much time could elapse between the two events? A half-second? A few seconds? A minute? Days? Is it possible to receive the Spirit without immediately speaking in tongues?
Based on what we see in the book of Acts it seems the norm is regeneration followed by instantaneous tongues-speaking, but to say exactly how much time might elapse between the two seems impossible to tell from our perspective. Why? Because all we can see is the evidence that one has been filled with the Holy Spirit. We cannot see them being filled with Spirit to be able to measure the amount of time that lapsed between that event and the first words spoken in tongues.
2) Agreed. The only way we can know someone has the Spirit is by the evidence of it: tongues. There is no other way for us to tell, except perhaps the fruit of the Spirit. But that is a pretty subjective test, and one we may not be equipped to make. Besides, a tree that doesn’t bear much fruit isn’t necessarily a dead tree. Fortunately for us admission into heaven doesn’t require a perfect tree!
3) Agreed. But what constitutes apostasy?
4) Good question. That is one that Calvinists have to consider all the time to explain those who are Christians for a good amount of time and then leave the faith. I don’t think it works to explain those who fall away as never having been saved to begin with. Paul and others give many warnings to the “saints” to not fall away. If one who is truly a saint can never fall away the warnings are unnecessary and rather meaningless.
Even on an experiential level we’ve all seen people who walked with God faithfully for many years eventually turn their back on Him. They had all the evidence of being a genuine Christian. They repented in faith and God responded to their faith by filling them with His Spirit (unlike Apostolics, Evangelicals have no way of knowing whether someone’s repentance and faith is genuine or not. We have the advantage in that we have a sign from God showing us that their faith and repentance was real. Knowing that God filled someone with His Spirit shows they were genuine Christians at one point.). They continued in faith for a season as manifested by the fruits of the Spirit, good works, etc. It seems ludicrous to think their faith was not genuine during that time. But just as faith can be exercised, faith can be withheld. Likewise, as grace can be acquired, grace can be forfeited.
In fact, if a saint can’t go bad, then there can be no such thing as apostasy because only believers can apostatize.
I definitely concur with your last point about assuming the level of “one’s Holy Ghost” is proportional to the amount they speak in tongues. While I believe saints should speak in tongues on a regular basis, if they don’t it doesn’t mean they don’t have enough of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is regeneration whether one speaks in tongues afterwards or not. Granted, usually if someone has not spoken in tongues in a long time it is because they have not prayed in a long time, and frankly, such a believer is usually spiritually dead even if they are filled with the Spirit. But on the other hand, I had a teacher in Bible college who did not believe people should continue to speak in tongues after having received the Holy Spirit unless they had the gift of diverse kinds of tongues. He hadn’t spoken in tongues in years. Does this mean He is not filled with the Holy Spirit? I don’t think so. As the old analogy goes, tongues are to regeneration what smoke is to fire. It is only the external evidence of the presence of an even more important substance. Just because we can’t see the external evidence does not mean there is no internal substance.
Jason
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June 19, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Chad,
You’re starting to sound like a Calvinist!
While the text in question lines up quite nicely with Calvinistic doctrine, it does not necessarily imply that. The point is that the Spirit is not under man’s control. Man can’t make God do anything. God is not obliged to “rebirth” us. He willingly does it of His own accord. But this does not mean that our consent is not involved in the form of faith. The Calvinistic idea that conversion precedes faith simply does not fit the Biblical pattern. Even Millard Erickson (a Calvinist) acknowledges this.
Jason
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June 19, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Linda,
Actually, the Bible does not illustrate that numerous times. The only time I know of when someone who is already filled with the Spirit is said to be “filled with the Spirit” again is the passage you quoted in Acts 4.
Also, where do we get the idea that people NEED to be filled with the Spirit numerous times? In the one example above we simply read that they were filled with the Spirit, not that they needed to be. The text merely described WHAT HAPPENED at that event, not what would be normative in the lives of believers, nor what believers SHOULD expect to happen. Even if we concluded that such “refillings” were normative based on this single text, it still would not follow that they are necessary. They could be isolated events for special purposes similar to the way people were said to be filled with the Spirit in the OT. They did not have the same regeneration experience you and I have, but were said to be filled with the Spirit to accomplish some specific task.
To build a doctrine that we need to be filled with the Spirit many times after being born again off of a single text that only describes one post-salvation “refilling” is probably not the best thing to do. Too much is being deduced from too little in the text.
You wrote, “I can’t conclude believers retain the Holy Ghost after the initial experience. If we did, why are there examples of being re-filled?” First, why presume that the Acts 4 infilling was a “refilling.” It only says they were “filled,” not that they were “refilled.” What’s the difference? To refill something presumes that there was something that was lost that needs to be replenished. To fill something means to put more in. For all we know this subsequent filling of the Spirit was merely adding “more” to what the disciples already had. The very language of “refilling,” then, makes theological assumptions that the text does not bear out.
On your view what causes us to lose some of the Spirit, necessitating a refill? Are you suggesting our bodies have a slow leak? Ha! We can’t say it’s because of carnality or a lack of prayer, because the only people in Scripture who are said to be filled with the Spirit twice are the disciples. Clearly they were not lacking in spirituality!
To speak of the Holy Spirit the way you do seems to treat the Holy Spirit in just the way I was addressing in my post: as a substance that fills our bodies in a quantitative way. The Spirit of God is not a physical substance that can be lost. It’s not like a battery that runs low. It is a spiritual substance of a spiritual quality that transforms us from spiritual death to spiritual life, not a physical substance of a spiritual quantity. People don’t get spiritually dead because they’re running a quart low on the Holy Spirit, but because they are not relying on the Spirit in their lives. They are not living the way they have been “rewired” to live when the Holy Spirit made their spirit alive. The Spirit cannot diminish Himself from their body because He is not a physical substance that can be diminished. He is either there or He is not. If they begin to rely on the Spirit once more they will see more spiritual fruit in their lives—not because God pumped more Spirit into their bodies—but because they are finally utilizing what has been available to them all along.
Ultimately I am persuaded that all speech about the Spirit in quantitative terms is due to a limitation of language to express such an esoteric concept as a qualitative spiritual thing like the Spirit of God.
Jason
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June 21, 2006 at 9:07 am
Jason,
I like your last comments. Quite funny actually, your statements use a sort of “argument ad absurdum”, which is often a useful mode of discource to dismantle faulty positions. Does our body have a slow leak? Ha! That’s hilarious to think about and really ridiculous.
What we need to say is that sanctification is a whole lot more than continuing to speak in tongues!
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June 22, 2006 at 9:28 am
The only passage in Scripture that seems to address our question directly is II Corinthians 13:5 which reads, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” This is an explicit admission that one can lose the Spirit. But what are the grounds for such a loss? Reprobation.
“Reprobate” is from the Greek adokimos, meaning “failing the test, depraved, rejected as false, corrupted.” It’s the same word used in Romans 1:28 describing the state God gave those over to who continually rejected the knowledge of God in favor of idols and immorality. Reprobation is no mere backsliding or wavering in the faith. Reprobation is an utter rejection of God in favor of the not-God; a rejection from which there is no return. The individual rejects God to such an extent that God finally and utterly rejects them. If and only if a person reaches the point of reprobation will Jesus Christ no longer be in them.
Obviously reprobation is a grave condition. Arguably, based on the descent toward reprobation described in Romans 1, it is not easy to become reprobate—not even for the non-believer, yet alone for one who became a believer at some point in time past. A carnal Christian who struggles in his faith, wandering away from and back to the Lord time and time again, can hardly be said to be reprobate. And if he is not reprobate, then he is still filled with the Spirit of God even during his days of wandering and immorality. While God may not be pleased with the wandering individual, they are still Spirit-filled.
To put it another way, if the ground for losing the Spirit is reprobation, and reprobation is the point of no return, the typical backslider must still be filled with the Spirit. We know this because backsliders often return to Christ, and such a return would be impossible if they were in a reprobative state. Seeing that they were not in a reprobative state, Jesus Christ was still in them.
What about the comparison to natural birth made in the original post? If a person cannot be unborn from his natural birth, how can he be unborn from his spiritual birth as Paul indicates in II Corinthians? While spiritual birth is analogous to natural birth in many ways, it is not analogous in every way. Natural birth by its very nature cannot be undone, but the nature of spiritual birth does allow for its reversal.
Natural birth is the bringing into existence of something that did not previously exist. Our natural birth cannot be undone because existence cannot be undone. In a temporal world that which has begun to exist will have always begun to exist in the annals of history. It is possible to stop that thing from existing in the present (by killing or destroying it), but we cannot stop the thing from existing in the past. When it comes to spiritual birth, however, we are not talking about something coming into existence, and when it comes to losing the Spirit we are not talking about obliterating the existence of anything. Spiritual birth and spiritual abortion, if you will, are simply a change in the state of something that already exists, not the creation or destruction of something new. That which exists (person X) is changed from a state of spiritual death to a state of spiritual life by regeneration. When the Spirit withdraws from someone’s life their spirit reverts from that state of spiritual life back to a state of spiritual death, all the while their existence remains. As I wrote in the original post, “Losing the Spirit would not be a mere departure of God’s spiritual presence from one’s body/spirit, but a removing of the spiritual life God infused into the individual, so that her human spirit is left for dead once more.”
While spiritual abortion is a genuine possibility (according to a plethora of Scriptures), by no means is it easy to achieve. I am persuaded based on a reading of Scripture that if one of God’s children is going to be lost, they will have to work real hard at it. God is not about to let them go that easy!
Jason
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July 17, 2012 at 11:05 am
I believe one can lose the Holy Ghost, especially when I look at what David ask the Lord not too take His spirit from him but create within him the right spirit etc. Also, the Holy Spirit won’t dwell in an unclean Temple!
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