Continuing our study of Ephesians 5:18—Be filled with the Spirit— we see in Scripture four commands concerning the believer’s relationship to the Holy Spirit that without question affect the control the Holy Spirit will have on the believer. The first is we must not grieve the Holy Spirit.
Second, we must not quench the Holy Spirit. Closely linked to but still distinct from “grieving” the Holy Spirit is “quenching” the Holy Spirit. We read of this in I Thessalonians 5:19: “Quench not the Spirit.” The Greek behind “quench” (sbennumi) in the literal sense means “to extinguish by drowning with water, as opposed to smothering.” Mark 9:44, for example, speaks of hell as a place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Figuratively, then, sbennumi means “to dampen, hinder, repress, as in preventing the Holy Spirit from exerting His full influence.” How do we “drown” the Holy Spirit’s working? By simply saying “No” to Him, by resisting His guidance, by opposing His will.
What are the practical ramifications of quenching the Holy Spirit? Think a moment of the qualities of fire and how the metaphor of quenching applies. The first quality of fire we usually think of is that it produces heat, so when we quench the Spirit, there is no longer any warmth in us. We become cold, indifferent, even apathetic. Paul counseled Timothy to “stir up the gift of God, which is in thee” (II Tim. 1:6). The full idea in the Greek for “stir up” (anazōpureo) is “to kindle up the flame” or “to rekindle the fire, to stir up smoldering embers into a living flame.” Just as we occasionally have to stir a fire in a fireplace, fan it a little, and add some fuel, every Believer needs the same spiritually speaking. The fuel is the Word of God and the Holy Spirit is the fan and the stirring that rekindles the warmth and passion in the believer. So the first implication of quenching the Holy Spirit is that we will “cool off,” the warmth of God having faded from us.
A second quality of fire, of course, is that it produces light, so when we quench the Spirit, we “lose the light.” As construction workers sometimes must stop building or filmmakers must stop shooting because they “lose the light,” we lose the light of knowledge and discernment. If there is one definitive characteristic of Christianity in our day, it is that of an almost total lack of discernment. The majority of the Church has “lost the light” of God’s Word; it simply is not Spirit-controlled.
This reminds us of the children of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness: “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.” Without that light to guide them, they would have wandered aimlessly. We, therefore, must not quench the Spirit lest we lose the light that will illumine our path. As the Psalmist declares, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Ps. 119:105).
A third quality of fire is power. The power of fire is truly astounding. The infamous Chicago fire of 1871, for example, destroyed about four square miles of the city, which was almost one-third of its total area. The Holy Spirit’s power is infinitely above any power that we can conceive, whether natural or supernatural. Paul wanted the Corinthians, for example, to understand that his “speech and [his] preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (I Cor. 2:4). Unlike today when talented orators philosophize, psychologize, and make people feel warm and fuzzy, Paul did none of that; he simply preached the Truth.
Paul likewise told young Timothy that God had given him, and by extension all God’s people, “not . . . the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Tim. 1:7). In the last letter Paul wrote, his emphasis was not on the type of “ministry” we see today, but on the power of the preaching of the Word, as he goes on to write in 4:1-4. We forfeit all that if we quench the Holy Spirit by rebellion or resistance. This principle is linked directly to a third principle.
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