Jessie Penn-Lewis
What takes place in a Christian’s life after being baptized with the Holy Spirit? This is a crucial question to answer, and naturally, many Christians throughout history have been preoccupied with this. In 1892, a young British woman named Jessie Penn-Lewis had a profound spiritual experience related to this very question. As she read Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 6, it became clear to her that baptism in the Holy Spirit could only be the starting point of her Christian life. After this, the Christian had to seek communion with the cross of Christ on Golgotha. She formulated her new goal as follows:
“[…] through the death of the Cross, into union with the Ascended Lord in the bosom of the Father.”
Jessie Penn-Lewis had already been an active Christian for several years, including through her involvement with the YWCA. But after her experience in 1892, she received far more attention and reached a much wider audience.
>She published her first book, The Pathway to Life in God, in 1895, and she began her public missionary work in 1896. She began attending the Keswick Conference, a Christian conference held in Keswick in northern England that focused on sanctification. She also traveled to several different countries as a missionary, including the United States, Canada, and India.
The Welsh Revival—and collaboration with Evan Roberts
In 1904, a revival broke out in Wales. This revival spread rapidly, and within a short time, hundreds of thousands of people had turned to God. The central figure was a young man named Evan Roberts, the son of a miner. Ever since childhood, he had felt a deep longing for God; he prayed and read the Bible frequently. Robert’s message resonated particularly strongly with miners. Many of the social problems that had previously plagued the mining towns—such as alcohol abuse and violence—largely disappeared as a result of this revival.
But success came at a price. Evan Roberts suffered a nervous breakdown in 1906 and was forced to withdraw from public preaching. Jessie Penn-Lewis and her husband took care of Roberts. He stayed with them, and from then on he devoted his life to prayer and writing.
The Overcomer
Jessie Penn-Lewis and Evan Roberts began publishing The Overcomer, a periodical that focused specifically on a life of Christian progress. But they also analyzed the revival in Wales. Their conclusion was that, although the revival had brought about many positive changes and had helped many people, there were also dangers associated with such a revival that needed to be warned against.
In 1912, Penn-Lewis and Roberts published the book War on the Saints. Their main point was that revivals, even though they were the work of God, could also lead people astray. They warned in particular that new Christians could fall victim to what they called “spirit possession.” They also warned that a baptism of the Spirit that is not accompanied by a sharing in Christ’s sufferings is, at best, incomplete; at worst, false.
Many Christians sought “spiritual experiences,” and through them they came to experience the power of the Spirit, which stirred up strong emotions. But if they did not seek deeper into God and experience what Paul describes as “sharing in his sufferings,” it would easily result in a superficial Christianity, and in the worst case, people would be completely led astray.
>War on the Saints became the subject of heated debate and criticism from many quarters, both from charismatic Christians and from more rationalist advocates of holiness. Penn-Lewis, however, stood by her analysis, and she further develops it in her writings.
Soul and Spirit
In 1913, she published the book Soul and Spirit. This book describes the significance of Christian conversion and also explores the challenges associated with Christian revival movements. It was precisely this distinction between soul and spirit that became very important to Penn-Lewis in this context.
>Penn-Lewis’s book takes as its starting point Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12:
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/bible/ESV/HEB.4)
Penn-Lewis argued that Christians’ ignorance of the difference between the soul and the spirit was common, and that this was also a major reason for the lack of growth in the spiritual lives of many otherwise devout and sincere Christians.
In her analysis, she begins by explaining the Greek terms for spirit (pneuma), soul (psuche), and flesh (sarx) as they are used in the original Greek text.
>The human soul is either guided from below (by the flesh, the animal nature) or from above by the life of the Spirit. The soul is described as the seat of self-consciousness, a “vessel” that governs the human being itself. This is where personality, intellect, emotions, etc., come into play. According to Penn-Lewis, Christians fall into three categories:
1. The spiritual person, governed by the Spirit of God, who dwells within the person and energizes the renewed human spirit.
2. The soulish person, dominated by the soul—that is, the intellect or the emotions—and
3. The carnal person, ruled by habits or desires.
The basic premise is that, following the Fall, the human spirit had sunk into the soul, and the soul had fallen into the flesh. By this, mankind became separated from God and was in darkness. Only through being born again, through being baptized with the Holy Spirit, and through being crucified with Christ could the human spirit once again be united with God, as God had intended.
>Liberation from the “power of the flesh” thus takes place through the cross; that is, the Christian himself “is crucified with Christ.”
How do we distinguish between the soul and the spirit?
Once a Christian has ceased to walk according to the flesh and now believes that he is a spiritual believer, renewed and led by the Spirit of God, an even more important lesson follows: namely, the knowledge of the “inordinate activity of the soul.”
>This, combined with the power and will of the mind, poses the greatest danger to both the individual and the Church, Penn-Lewis argues.
>“The soulish Christian is therefore one whose intellect and emotions are still governed by the first Adam life and not by the Life-giving Spirit of Christ,” Penn-Lewis writes. Even if a person has the Holy Spirit, they can still be influenced by the soul’s senses and “taste” for what they, as human beings, like and find pleasing. In this way, the carnal life can still exert influence, even if a person believes themselves to be spiritual. This can cause a great deal of unrest and discord, and even division within Christian assemblies.
Penn-Lewis finds her answer to the question of how the spiritual life influences us—and how we become a spiritual person—in Hebrews 4:12. A Christian must allow God’s word to penetrate deeply and separate the soul from the spirit.
>Here she also cites the example of the high priest from Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15, who is a symbol of Jesus: “[…] the only One Who can take the sacrificial knife and patiently ‘divide’ the soulish life from its penetration into thoughts and feelings, the intellect and even mental conceptions.”
And once again, the cross is upheld as the solution—that is, our crucifixion with Christ. Here, Penn-Lewis cites a verse from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 3, verse 10: “[…] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” (source: https://app.hiddentreasures.org/en/bible/ESV/PHP.3).
Influence and impact
Jessie Penn-Lewis had a significant influence and was a source of inspiration to many prominent evangelical Christians of her time. Her influence upon the Keswick movement has already been mentioned. The founder of the Oxford movement, Frank Buchman, recounted that he had a revelation that helped him reconcile with people he had taken a dislike to when he heard Penn-Lewis preach about the cross at the Keswick Convention in 1908.
Other prominent evangelicals, such as F.B. Meyer and Andrew Murray, were also enthusiastic about Penn-Lewis’s writings. The Chinese pastor Watchman Nee, who founded what is often called the Little Flock or Local Church movement, also read her books.
Her books and articles continue to be reprinted, and entire issues of The Overcomer periodical are available online.
Women as preachers of God’s word
Being a woman in what was at the time a male-dominated environment—one characterized in part by skepticism toward women’s participation in evangelical work—means that history has likely failed to do justice to Jessie Penn-Lewis’s influence on the Christian movements of her day. Women who became involved in evangelical work quickly fell victim to malicious gossip and were also dismissed with labels such as “weak” and “emotional.” Penn-Lewis herself fell victim to this form of chauvinism.
Penn-Lewis fought against this chauvinism wherever she could. Among other things, she published the pamphlet The Magna Carta of Woman, in which she outlined her views on the role of women in the church.
>In many ways, she was a pioneer who fearlessly and steadfastly stood up for women’s rightful place as “members of the body of Christ.”
Watch part 1 of the film about Jessie Penn-Lewis here.
Watch part 2 of the film about Jessie Penn-Lewis here.