How would you know if someone was full of the Spirit?

In Acts 6 the growing church in Jerusalem has a problem. The Hebrew Christians were neglecting the Hellenist widows in the daily distribution of food. Worth noting that this church had a daily distribution of food. Anyway to solve the problem the apostles tell them to pick some qualified men who could solve the problem. They were to look for a few vital characteristics: good reputation, wisdom and they were to be full of the Spirit (Acts 6:3).

Which makes me wonder, how could they tell?

A good reputation is fairly easy to verify. You can ask a bunch of people about this person or that person and sooner rather than later you have all the information you need. We still do this today: we take references.

Being full of wisdom is a little trickier but not so much so. We’re looking for knowledge, smarts, understanding, competence, insight. We still try and figure this out today: we do interviews.

But how would you tell between one Christian and another, which one was full of the Spirit? What would you look for?

Maybe it was a reference to the day of Pentecost. The Spirit was poured out and they wanted a guy who was there on that day and received the Spirit. I guess that’s a possibility.

It could just be a shorthand for Christian, because we all Christians have the Spirit in order to be Christians in the first place. But that doesn’t seem quite right because firstly it’s a redundant qualification. They were picking from inside the community not outside. That would be like saying, ‘Christians, pick a Christian who has a good reputation, is wise, and is a Christian.’ I mean I guess, but I don’t think so.

And then there’s the qualification to the Spirit, which is to be ‘full of.’ Not just having the Spirit but being full of the Spirit. It seems the apostles are aware that even if they all have the Spirit not all may be full of the Spirit.

I imagine, depending on the priors, Christians today would tend to split themselves down the familiar fruit/gifts line. You could say that someone full of the Spirit is a mature Christian showing evidence of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). If that’s you, please don’t neglect to look for joy.

Alternatively you could look for gifts (1 Cor 12:1-11 say) and say that someone full of the Spirit demonstrates evidence of the use of the gifts of the Spirit.

I think given what Acts goes on to say about Stephen (Acts 6:8-15) is that they chose guys who were both.

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Commentaries

I’m aware that discussion of what ‘being full of the Spirit’ probably happens elsewhere in the commentaries but time doesn’t permit me to go deep just now on this. So here is what my selection of commentators had to say about the passage in question:

CK Barrett: “For ‘full of the Spirit’, showing all the marks of the work of the Holy Spirit.”¹ This by itself isn’t all that enlightening but the connection with wisdom means that, “the men appointed had to excel in spiritual and in natural gifts.” He points back to earlier discussion of the pouring out of the Spirit, “Luke believes that the gift of the Spirit is constitutive of the Christian life (see 19:1–6; there is something wrong with a disciple who has not received the Holy Spirit).”

So for Barrett the people are looking for evidence of spiritual gifts.

Derek Thomas: Thomas picks up the issue in his comments on Stephen but would apply them back to the chosen seven.

“So we could describe Stephen as a very mature Christian, which he was. We could use other great metaphors of the New Testament to describe him; he was someone who was clothed in all the armor of God. We could describe him as someone who had presented his body to God as his spiritual worship. We could describe him as someone who had denied himself and taken up his cross and followed Christ. Or we could go to the passages from Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus that describe for us the character and behavior of an officer in the church, and Stephen would fit the bill for all those descriptions. But Luke simply abbreviated maturity to the very minimum, and said, “He was a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.”²

I Howard Marshall: Marshall goes a slightly different route focusing on the wisdom aspect.

The men chosen were to be distinguished by their possession of wisdom (6:10; 7:10, 22) and the Spirit, i.e. a wisdom inspired by the Spirit; we may recognize a parallel with the appointment of Joshua (Num. 27:16–20).³

David Williams: Williams seems to follow Marshall here.

A distinction needs to be made between being ‘filled with the Spirit’ and being ‘full of the Spirit.’ Being filled has reference to a momentary inspiration, being full, to the believer’s possession of the Spirit, or better, the Spirit’s possession of the believer and his endowment of the believer with spiritual gifts. In this case the church was to look for men with the gift of practical wisdom that would enable them to manage the fund.⁴

I’m not sure about Williams’ full/filled distinction.

David Peterson: Much the same

…implying that wisdom would be a particular manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in their lives. Wisdom may have been especially necessary in dealing with the complexity of relationships hinted at in the passage.⁵

Ajith Fernando: Fernando highlights a problem but doesn’t particularly help with the solution.

We tend to put people into positions of leadership in administrative matters if they are administratively capable (i.e. if they have wisdom) and have a high place in society, regardless of whether their lives give evidence of the fullness of the Spirit. Thus, we end up with rich and influential people on boards and project committees, but people with few spiritual qualifications. They may indeed bring in money and other resources. But later we complain about the undesirable influence they have on the movement.⁶

Stott, Pelikan, Barclay, Alexander, Gooding didn’t particularly address the question I’m asking.

1. C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 312–313. [↩]
2. Derek W. H. Thomas, Acts, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2011), 169–170. [↩]
3. I. Howard Marshall, Acts: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 5, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 135. [↩]
4. Williams, David. Acts. Peabody  Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1990. p.118 [↩]
5. Peterson, David. The Acts of the Apostles. Grand Rapids  Mich.  ;Nottingham  England: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ;;Apollos, 2009. p.233 [↩]
6. Fernando, Ajith. Acts. Grand Rapids  Mich.: Zondervan, 1998. p.236 [↩]