Most of us have seen an intoxicated person. First he deliberately chooses to drink intoxicating spirits. Then he drinks more and more until he is drunk. At this point his behavior changes. I have known men who were timid when they were sober, but who became belligerent and pugnacious when they were drunk; men who were hard as nails when sober, but sentimental and tearful when drunk; men who were congenial and friendly when sober, but morose and surly when drunk. I have seen drink turn a moral man into an immoral man and make a filthy-minded man sing hymns learned at his mother’s knee or argue about religion. Drink turns a man into another kind of person. It distorts his conduct and degrades his conversation.

Being intoxicated illustrates—in reverse—being filled with the Spirit. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is a deliberate choice. In Ephesians 5:18 Paul said, “Be filled.” Most of the Holy Spirit’s ministries to believers are once-for-all, sovereign acts of God. The indwelling, the baptism, the sealing, the earnest, and the gift of the Spirit are in no way dependent on us. They are wrought in us by the Holy Spirit at the time of our conversion; they are irreversible and irrevocable. The filling of the Holy Spirit, however, is different. It is conditional because it depends on our cooperation with the indwelling Spirit of God.

When a Christian is filled with the Spirit, he is transformed into another kind of person. He exhibits the loveliness of Christ and the fruits of the Spirit. It is evident in his walk and in his talk that something has happened. People take knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus.

The Holy Spirit’s filling is not permanent. Paul used the present continuous tense: “Be ye being filled with the Spirit.” A person can be filled with the Holy Spirit one moment and grieve the Holy Spirit the next. When he grieves the Spirit, he needs to confess his sin, claim cleansing in the blood of Christ, and seek a fresh filling.

Stephen Olford used an equilateral triangle to illustrate the process of a continuous filling. The base of the triangle can be labeled “The Lordship of Christ.” We determine by God’s grace that Jesus is to be Lord—

Lord of every thought and action

Lord to send and Lord to stay

Lord in speaking, writing, giving,

Lord in all things to obey,

Lord of all there is of me,

Now and for Eternity.

(E. H. Swinstead)

One side of the triangle can be labeled “The Word of God.” (The same phenomena associated in Ephesians 5:19 with being filled with the Spirit are associated in Colossians 3:16 with being filled with God’s Word.) The remaining side of the triangle can be labeled “The Spirit of God.”

With this simple figure in mind, note what happens. As we begin to read the Word of God, the Spirit of God brings some divine truth to our attention: a promise to claim, a sin to confess and avoid, a command to obey. Because we have established the basic premise that Jesus is Lord and made that the foundation of all our behavior, our immediate response is to obey. We yield on whatever issue in the Word of God the Spirit of God has brought to our attention. As we yield, He fills us and we receive the power to turn that teaching into practical reality. As this process continues, the Holy Spirit enlarges our horizons, increases our capacity, deepens our spirituality, and enables us to grow in grace and increase our knowledge of God.

Sin or self can short-circuit this process. A person can be filled with the Spirit one moment and be filled with self or fall into sin the next. Peter’s experience just prior to ascending the mount of transfiguration is an example. At the time he was not indwelt and filled by the Holy Spirit, but his experience illustrates how swiftly a change from spirituality to carnality can take place (Matthew 16:13–23). The Lord asked His disciples who people thought He was. The disciples replied that people were ranking Him with John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, the prophets—the greatest men of the past and present. That answer was not good enough, so the Lord asked the disciples, “Whom say ye that I am?”

Instantly Peter replied, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus responded, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Jesus then began to talk to the disciples about the cross.

Peter was aghast. “Be it far from thee, Lord,” he blurted out.

Jesus turned on him. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” He said. “Thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Peter was a channel for the Holy Spirit one moment and was speaking in the flesh the next. Such is human nature.

That is why Paul wrote, “Be ye being filled.” When we lose the infilling of the Spirit, we need a fresh filling. The way back is the way of the cross, the cross Peter so vehemently rejected. We must come back in repentance and with confession to the gracious Spirit of God, beg His pardon for having grieved Him, ask for cleansing, and receive a fresh filling. (We should note that in this age no believer loses the indwelling of the Spirit.)

When the truth about the filling of the Holy Spirit is first revealed to us, there is a crisis. We have to choose whether or not to yield to the Spirit. The crisis sometimes coincides with conversion, but more often comes later. Often we spend time in a spiritual wilderness first, and God has to bring us, like Israel of old, to the Jordan for a fresh, more mature comprehension of our spiritual death, burial, and resurrection with Christ.

In the Old Testament, the children of Israel symbolically entered into an experience of death, burial, and resurrection at the Red Sea. In the strength of that experience, they could have gone directly into Canaan. Their unbelief at Kadesh-barnea, however, led to forty years of wilderness life. They had to have a fresh experience of the truth of death, burial, and resurrection at the Jordan before they could enter into victorious living in Canaan.

At the time of his conversion a Christian could enter into the truth of Romans 12:1 and present his body as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is [his] reasonable service.” However, months—even years—of worldliness, carnality, and defeat often intervene before he has a new experience with God that opens up the way to a Spirit-filled life. That crisis experience, be it early or late in his Christian pilgrimage, is the moment of surrender and yielding that is taught in Romans 6.

Once the lordship of Christ is established, there is a process of a continuous filling as described in the above illustration of the triangle. But what happens when, in the ongoing process of fullness and failure, the Christian discovers unsuspected areas in his life that have never been yielded? Does he have to start all over again? Must he present to the Holy Spirit, one by one, the members of his body and the various areas of his life? Perhaps the following illustration will help answer these questions.

An avid collector of old books is visiting a home. Browsing through his host’s bookshelves he notices a battered old book. The cover is frayed, the casing is cracked, the pages are loose—some are even missing—but his collector’s eyes gleam. He says to his host, “How long have you had this book, my friend?”

The host glances at it. “That old thing!” he says. “I don’t know. It’s of no use to me. I was going to throw it away. My wife picked it up off the floor behind the chair there the other day. It must have fallen off the shelf. I think it used to belong to my father. You can have it if you like. Pay for it? Dear me, no. Take it.” The guest gratefully accepts the book, lamenting only to himself that some of its pages are missing.

Several days later the collector visits his friend again. “Oh by the way,” the host says, “remember that old book I gave you? Well, I moved the chair yesterday, and guess what? I found more pages. If you give me the book back, we can start all over. I will give you the book again, including these missing pages.”

Wouldn’t that be an odd thing to say? It is not necessary to start all over again each time another missing page is found. The original owner only has to say, “Remember that book I gave you? I found a few more pages. I’m sorry they were missing. Here, they belong to you.”

This illustration of the battered book can help us understand the filling of the Spirit of God. When the Holy Spirit shows someone an area of disobedience in his life, something not yet surrendered, there is no need for him to go back and start all over again. All he needs to do is say, “Gracious Holy Spirit, here is an area where I have been holding back what belongs to You. I meant for You to have all of me when I first surrendered to You. Please take this area of my life too.”

So the message of Ephesians 5:18 is “Be ye being filled.” It is the filling of the Spirit that enables us to do all that the Spirit of God demands of us in the previous verses and all that will be required in the verses that follow.