George Whitefield on Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
At the moment of saving faith
And, however some men may say, there is a fitness required in the creature, and that we must have a righteousness of our own, before we can lay hold on the righteousness of Christ; yet, if we believe the Scripture, salvation is the free gift of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord; and whosoever believeth on him with his whole heart, though his soul be as black as hell itself, shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
THE POSITION
His sermon on the indwelling Spirit ties receiving the Spirit to believing, following his text, John 7:39: whoever believes on Christ with the whole heart, however black the soul, "shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost," and this is the common privilege of all believers in every age. But the same corpus calls true faith "wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God," so the Spirit is at work before the moment of faith. He never sets out the order of regeneration, faith and indwelling, which is the question this locus asks, so the stance follows the wording of the sermon and the tier records that he did not frame it.
37 On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and called out in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within him.’” 39 He was speaking about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
4 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Anglican priest and field preacher of the Evangelical Revival and the First Great Awakening, who crossed the Atlantic seven times and died on his last American tour. Wesley's Oxford companion and, from his 1740 letter answering Free Grace, his public opponent on election — the Calvinist half of the Methodist split, set here beside Wesley and Edwards. This entry rests on that letter and eleven of the sermons printed in the standard selected editions.
Cite this page
"George Whitefield on Indwelling of the Holy Spirit", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/whitefield/indwelling (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/whitefield/indwelling).