COMPLETELY INDWELT BY HIM

Several pagan practices were especially influential in the church at Corinth. Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most obvious, was that of ecstasy, considered to be the highest expression of religious experience. Because it seemed supernatural and because it was dramatic and often bizarre, the practice strongly appealed to the natural man. And because the Holy Spirit had performed many miraculous works in that apostolic age, some Corinthian Christians confused those true wonders with the false wonders counterfeited in the ecstasies of paganism.

Ecstasy (Greek, ekstasia, a term not used in Scripture) was held to be a supernatural, sensuous communion with a deity. Through frenzied, hypnotic chants and ceremonies worshipers experienced semiconscious euphoric feelings of oneness with the god or goddess...Often the ceremony would even include drunkenness (Eph. 5:18). Contemplation of sacred objects, whirling dances, fragrant incense, chants, and other such physical and psychological stimuli customarily were used to induce the ecstasy, which would be in the form of an out-of-body trance...

Another form of mystical experience was called enthusiasm (Greek, enthusiasmos), which often accompanied but was distinct from ecstasy. Enthusiasm involved manic formulations, divination, and revelatory dreams and visions, all of which are found in many pagan religions and philosophies today...

Satan spends a lot of time in church. Nowhere is he more anxious to pervert God's people than where they are worshiping. Some members at the church at Corinth had become so fleshly and confused, and their worship so paganized and frenzied, that they even allowed the Lord to be cursed within their own congregation. Paul rebukes the entire church for allowing such ungodliness and for being so undiscerning about what is spiritual and what is demonic. He gives two principles, one negative and one positive, for testing the validity of gifts and their use. It is the first of several tests the Apostle mentions in 1 Corinthians, chapters 12-14...

The ministry of the New Testament church was, like the other sign gifts, to validate the message and power of the gospel. They were disporportionately exalted and seriously abused in Corinth...1 Corinthians 12:6-7;11 states that every believer is spiritually gifted. Those with gifts are not spiritual elite, but they comprise the whole church, the entire Body of Christ...

FORMING OF THE BODY:

The church is formed as believers are baptized by Christ with the Holy Spirit. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. The Holy Spirit is the agent of baptism, but Christ is the baptizer. (Matt. 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33)...As Savior, Christ baptizes with the Holy Spirit; as Judge, He baptizes with fire. All believers receive baptism with the Holy Spirit. All unbelievers will receive baptism with fire. Therefore, every living soul will be baptized by Christ...

1 Corinthians 12:13 states that baptism with one Spirit makes the church one body. If there were more than one Spirit baptism, there would be more than one church...There are no partially indwelt Christians...A person who does not have the Holy Spirit does not have eternal life, because eternal life is life in the Spirit...

Being "filled up to the fulness of God", of which Paul speaks in Ephesians 3:19 has to do with living out fully what we already possess fully, just as does the working out of our salvation. (Phil. 2:12). When we trust in Christ, we are completely immersed in the Spirit and completely indwelt by Him.

---Commentary of 1 Corinthians, John MacArthur, p. 280-314