Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. In chapter 12, the discussion turns to spiritual gifts. Lots of information coming your way, and as one of my former instructors would say, put your thinking caps on. It’s about to get interesting. Paul? First Corinthians chapter 12, confusion over spiritual gifts.

Are you ready to talk about something controversial today? I’ve noticed there’s a veritable cottage industry these days that’s grown up on social media, YouTube, and so on, dueling Facebook posts, focusing on Christian controversy, scandals, debating theological differences, pitting one famous preacher against another, and so on. If you’re not aware of that, good for you. Don’t search for it or soon it’ll flood your social media as it does mine. At Share the Word, we really don’t enjoy focusing on controversies. That’s not our thing.

Our goal is to, best we can, explain the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. In the process of that, though, sometimes we come across a section of Scripture that’s understood differently by different groups of Christians. That happened when we came to a section in Romans that’s often a battleground between those who emphasize determinism and those who emphasize our free will. I purposely chose not to get into that debate, if you remember, because I think it’s largely unproductive and, frankly, past our figuring out. But when we are in such passages of Scripture that can be variously interpreted, we do need to think about the ramifications of the views we take. If adopting a certain view leads Christians to start ignoring other clear instructions of Scripture, then there is a need to call that out as going too far.

I tried to do that in Romans 9 to 11 with determinists, those who adopt a system of theology known as Calvinism, that if they carry their logic to a place they no longer feel any need to share the gospel because, according to their view, God has already predetermined everyone’s fate, that perhaps seemingly logical extension of their theology is a very wrong conclusion. Why? Because Jesus clearly told us, Proclaim the gospel to everyone everywhere. So although there’s certainly room for differences on some questions, watch for where those things take you once you buy into a system of interpretation. Now, when we come to chapters 12 to 14 in 1 Corinthians, it brings up another topic that has become a point of debate among Bible-believing Christians. And when I use that term, I mean Christians who want to decide what they believe solely on the basis of the Word of God.

So among churches that would say, We take the Bible as our sole doctrinal authority, around half probably take one stance on this question, and about an equal number takes the opposite. What’s the question, Paul? Well, let me set it up this way. In chapter 12, we’re in the midst of a section where the apostle Paul is stressing to the Corinthian believers that everything that happens in their church services should be proper and reflect God’s divine order. And here and in the next couple chapters, he turns his attention to a big concern of his in this area, and I say big concern because of the amount of time he spends on it. The subject is the purpose and proper use of spiritual gifts.

Remember, the New Testament teaches us that when we become Christians, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us, and along with that, he gives us a gift or gifts to benefit the building up of our church, contributing to the body of Christ in some way. This is what Paul’s referring to in verses 4 to 7 when he says, There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of workings, that is, things God wants to do through us, but the same God who is working everything in everyone. And to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. By manifestation of the Spirit, Paul means something the Holy Spirit can do through each of us, our spiritual gift, that is good for the church body as a whole.

Then in the following verses, he mentions several spiritual gifts apparently manifesting through individual members of the Corinthian church. I’m going to be completely honest with you. I’m not even sure what some of them were. I’ve heard various explanations over the years, but without that time machine I was wishing for last time, I’m not completely sure what some of these gifts amounted to. For example, Paul speaks of a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge, and then later the distinguishing of spirits. If I had to make an educated guess, I think probably the first two had to do with revealing and explaining New Testament truths before the New Testament was available to early Christians.

In other words, since early believers in Corinth in the middle of the first century didn’t have what we call the New Testament yet, the Scripture for our time, it may well be that the Holy Spirit revealed New Testament truths through individuals in their church and their proper application through other individuals. That’s what I imagine these gifts were about, but that’s a guess. Those with the distinguishing of spirits gift may have been members with the discernment to know when such a message was really from the Holy Spirit, since evil spirits are always trying to confuse us. And maybe these members could discern if an application someone made was the correct application. But again, I’ll be honest, I’m not absolutely sure.

These services were very unlike ours, probably for one big reason: they didn’t have the New Testament yet in their hands for pastors or teachers to open and speak from. Other gifts mentioned here, like the gifts of faith, healing, miracles, tongues, or better interpreted languages, I think we may know more about because we do see examples of these in other passages of the New Testament. We see Jesus healing people in the Gospels we’ve already seen in Luke and John. Those he sent out under his authority, his apostles, were also given authority over sicknesses, evil spirits, and so on. Miracles certainly were manifested through Jesus. He overruled the laws of nature sometimes, doing supernatural things like walking on the water or calming a storm with a word.

He turned ordinary water into wine. He created lots of food from one boy’s lunch. I’m trying to think of an example of someone other than Jesus doing a legitimate miracle. I can’t think of one. Can you? The first and clearest example of the gift of languages is in Acts chapter 2, when the apostles were given the ability to speak languages they did not know for the benefit of foreign people who were in Jerusalem when the church was born on the day of Pentecost.

It was a supernatural sign given by God that caused people then to listen to the gospel message when the apostles proclaimed it. We discussed that in episode 48. By the way, the spiritual gifts listed here, and there’s another list at the end of the chapter where he adds apostles, prophets, teachers, helps, and administration. I don’t think these are necessarily intended to be exhaustive lists. I say that because Paul repeats some of them even in this chapter, as well as adds others in other places in his letters. In fact, I’ve heard people disagree over whether the New Testament talks about 18 or 19 or 20 or 21 spiritual gifts.

As I’ve said, it’s hard for us to know from our distant vantage point exactly how some of these, possibly other spiritual gifts, were being used and unfortunately misused in the Corinthian church services. And they were being misused, and that is what Paul is writing to address. There are several statements he makes in these chapters which are important to help us guard against misuse. One we’ve already touched upon. If spiritual gifts are being used properly, the body of Christ is benefiting. Paul said, Each one is given a manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable, or as other translations put it, for the common good.

I have been in church services where people thought they were demonstrating their spiritual gifts, I guess, but which seemed to me to be just a lot of individuals speaking or praying unintelligibly all at once, which sounded like confusion. The Holy Spirit is never the author of confusion, as Paul says later in chapter 14. That is not, to use Paul’s words here, profitable. When used properly, every spiritual gift is benefiting the church body. Another point to keep in mind is when Paul writes that the Holy Spirit distributes to each believer as He wills, spiritual gifts are not things we choose or gain by pleading with God for them. Rather, they are gifts given to us by God as Paul says, He chooses.

In verses 14 to 18, Paul makes the analogy to how God put together the human body with its many parts, and he argues that all the parts serve a purpose and are interdependent. Together, they make up a whole, healthy, functioning person. Some parts of our physical bodies are more noticeable, and we pay a great deal of attention to them, he says, while others are usually unnoticed. They’re covered. Some, in fact, we’re hardly even aware of. Someone in my family recently was telling me about another relative of ours who was having a serious problem with their adrenal glands, and I nodded along as I listened.

But in truth, I wasn’t even sure what adrenal glands were or what they do. As soon as we finished that conversation, I was in my car Googling adrenals, and I realized after reading, man, those things are pretty important in our body. In a church body, Paul says there may be some people who are gifted in ways we give more honor and attention to, and others we may not even see their contributions. But everyone is gifted in some way and all are needed for the proper functioning of the church. By the way, this strongly suggests to the extent that any of us are not using our gifts and abilities for the benefit of our local church, that church is lacking. It’s not all it could be.

This is one of the biggest reasons every believer needs to be part of a functioning church, local church. None of us are vestigial organs that are not needed in the body, or none of us can function well apart from one. Eyes and hands and even adrenal glands need to be part of a body to be functioning as God intends. That’s Paul’s point. So do we. Now, it sounds like, again, without being there, just reading Paul’s words here.

That the Corinthians all wanted to be considered gifted with the most honored or most visible kinds of gifts, maybe the supernatural ones. I take that from these lines starting in verse 14. The body is not one member, but many, Paul said. If the foot says, Because I’m not a hand, I’m not a part of the body, it’s not for this reason any less a part of the body. Or if the ear says, Because I am not an eye, I’m not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

If the whole were hearing, where would the smell be? But God has appointed members in the body, each one of them, just as He desired. I have to add, most translations get the gist of the last verse in this chapter completely wrong. Rather than translate that sentence as an imperative, but earnestly desire the greater gifts, which is frankly the opposite of what Paul is saying, a better translation is to take it as a simple indicative: You are desiring the greater gifts. But Paul says, I will show you a better way. Okay, you promised us some controversy, so let’s get to it.

Buckle up. The controversy that arises from interpreting this chapter and the couple to follow has to do with whether all the gifts of the Spirit Paul mentions here were intended to be normal in every church body for all time, or whether God gave some special gifts at the outset of the church age, which He has not normally given since then, gifts that had a unique purpose during the foundational era in the first century. Just in the last couple days, I had one reel come across my Facebook of a young bearded guy speaking what sounded like a bunch of gibberish. But when I listened further, he said that he was speaking in tongues and that God had given him a special message through this.

Then the next day, another reel came across my feed with a buttoned-up looking guy in a suit who was speaking about how the spiritual gift of languages, that is tongues, supernatural healing, prophecy, etc., had ceased with the death of the apostles and the canon of New Testament being completed. Of course, being who I am, I had to put my two cents into the comments of both of those posts. So today, I’m being bombarded with replies, pro and con, to what I said. Yeah, it’s controversial. But here is the root question: Should there be members in our churches today working extraordinary miracles? Should some members be performing supernatural healings?

Should some be displaying the ability to speak in languages they have never learned for the benefit of those who speak them? Should pastors be acting as prophetic mouthpieces as God delivers new revelation through them beyond what’s already in the New Testament? Some answer, an emphatic yes. And if those things aren’t happening, those supernatural things are not happening in your assembly, it’s because something is deficient in your faith or in your church’s understanding of all the Holy Spirit has for you. Hmm. With all due respect, those supernatural gifts apparently were happening in Corinth in the first century, and yet there was a lot of deficiencies in that church.

Paul said they didn’t lack in any of the gifts he mentioned, yet the church was full of confusion, pride, factions, and immorality. It’s not talked about in the New Testament as a model, that’s for sure. I’ll give you my view on this after a lot of watching, listening, and thinking about it. I think God, in fact, did give certain supernatural gifts at the outset of the church age, the apostolic age as we call it, the foundational years, to authenticate Jesus as the Messiah and to establish His church. We do not have to accept that we’re missing something or deficient in some way because we don’t see all of those same things happening now. I’ve heard the objection, But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God’s character never changes. That’s true. But the obvious fact is, God certainly has worked in different ways at different times. I realized this once when I was challenged this way to actually go back through the survey of the Scripture and think it through. And taking a long view of biblically recorded history, I realized there are only a few generations during all of that time from Adam through the first century where we read about God doing supernatural things through human beings, and then only through a very few human beings. It happened briefly in Moses’ generation when he was giving the law and was forming the nation of Israel.

God authenticated Moses through supernatural signs. But after that generation, it stopped. It happened again, but not till nearly a thousand years later during the time of the Old Testament prophetic books being written, and God was calling Israel through His prophets back from the brink of destruction. That era was inaugurated by two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, and God authenticated those men with the ability to do miracles. Then again, after them, it apparently stopped. In fact, God seemed to completely go quiet for hundreds of years after the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, until the generation of Jesus and His apostles.

Then, for that special time during their generation, supernatural signs and wonders marked Jesus as the Messiah and authenticated his apostles as they founded his church. But so far as we can see from church history, after that, the supernatural happening through the agency of men again ceased. Now, as I’ve said, in the last hundred years approximately, some have been claiming God is once again now doing supernatural things, giving the gifts of healing again, the miracles, speaking through prophets again, and so on. Sounds great. I would love to believe it, honestly, but I’ve personally seen no credible evidence of that, and I’ve looked. If the claim was true, wouldn’t it be happening commonly with gifted people in local churches everywhere?

Tony and I participate in a pretty dynamic church, just celebrated its 22nd anniversary this past Sunday, and I learned that between 2,400 and 2,500 people have recorded a profession of faith in Christ over those years, or been baptized publicly confessing their faith through our church’s ministries. We’ve also seen people delivered from bad addictions, have prayed for and anointed sick members who’ve recovered from serious illnesses, and have all kinds of ministries in the community to help all kinds of people. But you know what? No one in our church that I know of has ever done a miracle. No one can raise up deathly ill or handicapped people by a word or a touch. I wish we could.

Peter and Paul could. No one who is supported by our church who has gone to another place to do missions work has suddenly been able to speak their language they didn’t study. No one stands up and proclaims that God is speaking a new revelation through me now, beyond what’s already recorded in the Bible. The faith once for all delivered to God’s holy people, as one apostle calls it. So, why not? That’s my honest question.

If God gave supernatural gifts to the really messed up church at Corinth, and he is giving such gifts again today, why not at a really on-track church like the one Tony and I serve? The honest answer to that question, I believe, is that God works differently in different times, as he always has. The Holy Spirit gives gifts as he will. If you’re curious and want to explore this topic more, we have a blog article exactly on the topic you can find on our website, sharetheword.org. It’s called, When It Comes to Spiritual Gifts, What’s Normal? If you want to think it through biblically, not emotionally, I suggest that you give that a read.

It’s not a question about what God can do. We’re not questioning that for sure, because he can do anything, but rather whether supernatural spiritual gifts are his norm for today. As for tomorrow, he may well pour out that kind of authenticating power again in these last days, and I hope that he will. Here’s a couple quick hitters that jump out at me from this chapter before we run out of time. In verse 13, Paul writes, For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, talking about the universal body of Christ. Turn away from anyone teaching you that you do not have the Holy Spirit or have not been baptized in the Spirit unless you have experienced this or that, and the this or that experience differs from one group to another.

If you’ve received Jesus as your Savior in sincere faith, you have the Holy Spirit. There aren’t two tiers of Christians, so don’t let anybody make you feel inferior. Every believer has been baptized into one body of Christ by and indwelt with the Holy Spirit, Paul says, and that happens when we accept Christ. That’s what’s normal for the church age. How filled, how controlled we are by the Holy Spirit depends on how much we yield to Him daily, whether we understand what God desires for our lives and obey the Spirit’s promptings. Second, remember the Holy Spirit gifts each Christian with ways we can benefit our local church body.

Most churches have classes to help you understand how you are best gifted, but if your church doesn’t, experiment and try different things. You’ll find your gifts and your niche if you try different ministries in your church and find ways that you can get involved. Third, your gifts are given primarily for you to benefit the church body, not to benefit yourself. But as you find your place and use your gifts, you will be built up and gratified through that experience. Because when you’re ministering for the benefit of others, according to how God created and gifted you, you are literally fulfilling your life purpose, and there’s nothing more rewarding than that. Finally, let me say, it’s okay if you disagree with me about this question, about which spiritual gifts are legitimately being given today.

Some of my best friends do. It’s one of the gray areas of New Testament interpretation. So let’s keep in mind what we’ve already learned about gray areas, about debatable questions. If you believe all the supernatural gifts are for today, don’t look down on those who disagree with you as less spiritual than you. If you believe that God is apparently not giving those gifts today, don’t label those who disagree with you as heretics and kooks. Be fully persuaded in your own heart as you study Scripture, observe things, and think the question through.

And realize this, even if you believe that every gift Paul listed in this chapter is for our time, that is still not where the Apostle Paul says we should be focused, as Margie will explain next time on Share the Word. Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks, Paul. One point among so many that Paul makes in this podcast that I take to heart is that just because we disagree is no reason to tear each other down. But moreover, we should always strive to build each other up. God gives us each gifts so that we might demonstrate the Holy Spirit and build up one another in faith.

Spiritual gifts help build love and unity in the church. And as Paul said, check out the blog at sharetheword.org. There are so many ways to find out your spiritual gifts. Take the time to seek them out. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.