The ABC’s of the Christian Life (20): Following Jesus Christ Rightly (13b): Spiritual Gifts (2)

Last Lord's Day we began to address the teaching of God's Word regarding spiritual gifts and their use within the local church. The employment of our spiritual gifts within the church body is one of the primary ways that we are to serve the Lord, that is to follow the Lord as disciples.

We are to love one another and serve one another within his body, the church. The Lord, of course, has ordained the local church to be the primary instrument through which he conducts his work in the world.

He's therefore distributed spiritual gifts to each and every one of his disciples so that they might serve the body of Christ, that they might serve the local church. And through the use of our spiritual gifts and serving the Lord and his people, we will be better able to serve Jesus rightly, and that ties it into the theme or the subject that we've been addressing now for quite a number of weeks.

Paul’s Corrective Teaching on Spiritual Gifts in 1 Corinthians 12

Last week we considered two places in the New Testament in which spiritual gifts are addressed, 1 Peter chapter 4 as well as Romans chapter 12, and today we want to address our attention to a passage of scripture in which Paul really addresses this subject most thoroughly, and this is in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, and if we had time we'd go into 14 too, but we don't.

We'll be doing well to address what we have here in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. By the way, we're coming toward an end of this series. I keep getting suggestions, good suggestions, and so I don't know how many more weeks we'll continue on this.

I'm very seriously considering working through the gospel of John after this. I've never preached the gospel of John in all my years, and so that's what I'm considering at this time. We'll see. I want to begin by reading the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 12.

It's important to read it in context, I believe. Paul wrote,. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led.

Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit.

There are differences of ministries but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.

For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?

And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?

But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty.

But our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another.

And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ and members individually. And God has appointed these in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, and gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.

We're all apostles, we're all prophets, we're all teachers, we're all workers of miracles. Do all have gifts of healings, do all speak with tongues, do all interpret, but earnestly desire the best gifts.

And yet I show you a more excellent way. Paul opens up this passage, 1 Corinthians 12, by addressing the wrong use of spiritual gifts that were in the church. The apostle wrote this epistle to the church quorum, not only to instruct them in matters of the faith, but also in large part to correct them, to answer questions that were posed to him.

Paul had received word from this church or about this church that they were having difficulties of various kinds, and some of them were quite grievous. But some of the problems they were having in the church had to do with the use of spiritual gifts.

And so this passage is largely designed to be a corrective of errant belief and practice regarding spiritual gifts. And so we see that Paul was answering their concerns in the words of verse 1, now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant.

This is an important matter, and Christians need to be informed about this. The church had not used the spiritual gifts that God had given them in a right manner, but rather than serving others with their spiritual gifts, they had been using the gifts to exalt themselves as individuals, to set themselves up higher than others within the church body.

Rather than using their gifts to serve others, they were using the gift to serve themselves as individuals. And apparently they had emphasized the gift of tongues in their errant use of gifts within this church body.

The Corinthian believers had come out of great spiritual darkness. Corinth was known as a wicked place, wholly given over to idolatry. And so Paul wrote these words in verses 2 and 3, you know that you were Gentiles carried away to these dumb idols.

In other words, idols that couldn't speak, they were silent. They didn't communicate to these people who worshiped these dumb idols. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God called Jesus a and no one can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.

And so Paul assured them that the Holy Spirit himself was governing the speech. Even the confession of Christians regarding their faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit was at work among them. And so here the apostle was asserting at the outset that of his corrective of their practice, that their speech was to be understandable to the church, was to be able to communicate, not like their former ways where there was no communication from the dumb idols, but the Holy Spirit was communicating clearly, understandably to the members of the church.

We see in verses 4 through 6, the apostle set forth the bestowal operation and results of the gifts of the Holy Spirit or the gifts of the Holy Trinity. And in verses 4 through 7, we have one of the clearest explanations of the nature of the gifts, spiritual gifts in the church.

God is at work and through his people in order to accomplish his purposes in the churches. And so we read, there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord, probably a reference to Jesus.

And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all, probably God the Father is what Paul is referring to. And so Paul set forth each person of the Holy Trinity as having a role in imparting and using the spiritual gifts of Christians.

First, the diversities of gifts is attributed to the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit who distributes specific gifts to individual Christians. Secondly, Paul attributed to the Lord Jesus, the differences of ministry.

This would be the way in which those gifts would be used and functioning within the local church. The Lord Jesus governed this. And then Paul referenced God the Father to the diversities of activities.

This speaks about the results of the work accomplished through the spiritual gifts given by the Spirit, employed by King Jesus, and the purposes of God the Father were accomplished. And so the Holy Trinity is set forth here.

As one once wrote, the Divine Trinity is here indicated in an ascending climax, in such a way that we pass from the Spirit who bestows the gifts to the Lord, who served by the means of them, and finally to God, who has the absolute first cause and possessor of all Christian powers, works the entire sum of charismatic deeds in all who are gifted.

This passage is always, and then he cites a couple early church fathers from Chrysostom and Theodoret onwards, been rightly adduced in opposition to anti-Trinitarian error. In other words, in the first few centuries, there were heretics who were denying the Trinity, denying the deity of Christ, denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and this commentator Meyer said that this verse was commonly used to refute those people who denied the Holy Trinity.

Then the Apostle set forth a list of spiritual gifts in verses 7 through 11. He first declared that the purpose of the Holy Spirit in giving spiritual gifts to Christians is that the gifts would bring profit to all.

Critically important. If just this was understood, it would correct so much errant practice in evangelical churches. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. This is foundational to our understanding of spiritual gifts.

This is how it's to be used rightly. The spiritual gift is never given to you to bring immediate benefit to you, to edify you, but it's given to you that it might edify others. And so it underscores what we asserted last week.

If you're a Christian, God gave you a spiritual gift, maybe more than one, to enable you to serve others for their spiritual benefit, in other words, for the building up of the local church. That's why God has gifted you.

And we saw this in the passage we addressed last week, 1 Peter 4 .10, which reads, as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. God did not impart a spiritual gift to you so that you yourself would be built up or edified by that gift.

And many of our charismatic friends advocate just that. They say they speak in tongues and that builds them up personally, edifies them. God never gave the spiritual gift for that purpose. He gave the purpose to build up others, not yourself.

Critically important. It's a major principle that governs the purpose and true use, biblical use, is spiritual gifts. One of the great defects of the Corinthian church was that there were those using miraculous revelatory gifts, that is, gifts by which they received revelation, information from God, but they used it for selfish purposes in order to edify each one with his own gift, build himself up, that he might be more highly regarded by his brothers and sisters in the church, that he might be regarded as more important, more valuable, higher in the hierarchy of the local church.

That's sinful. Instead of using his gift to build up the church, he was using the gift to build himself up in the eyes of the church. And again, the problem at Corinth is still a problem among many of our charismatic friends today.

They claim to have spiritual gifts by which each one builds himself up. They individualize the use of the gifts, each one thinking that God gave to him his gift for his own personal benefit. But God makes it very clear through Paul and through Peter that God gave gifts for the benefit of others, not for you, but he benefits others through you.

And in this way, he builds up the local church body. He gives gifts to his people so they can serve the other brethren in the church. I've been engaged in a conversation with a radio listener in the last two weeks, and I was able after a while to determine a little bit about his background, and finally he kind of laid it out to me two days ago.

And this is an actual verbatim email that I received from him. He revealed to me he was a charismatic preterist. I'll explain what that is there in a minute, but here are his words. And I want you to notice as we read his words about what he thinks he has, this gift of tongues, which he doesn't have, but he claims he does, I want you to notice how individualistic and selfish he is in understanding this view is for him, not for the church.

In fact, he's not even involved in a local church, I discovered. I suspected it just by his comments, and when I asked him, are you in a local church, serving local church under the authority of church leadership that's able to instruct you and correct you and guide you, he wrote back, why do you keep insulting me?

In other words, you know, I hit home where his issue was. But here were his words the other day. Anyway, as I, and please excuse the grammar and his syntax, it's laborious, frankly. Anyway, as I read the Bible, the Holy Spirit came upon me and I started speaking another language, which completely freaked me out.

I went to the Baptist pastor who told me that does not happen, etc. You know the Baptist theory on these matters. Well, at the time, I did not know the theory, nor did I even know anything about Pentecostal teachings.

I know I do not have the devil in me, and I know this language I speak is divine, and I know that God gave this gift for me to use. So having this gift, knowing what is taught about this in the Baptist church, knowing how you all see the scriptures and completely deny the gift, it's not like I'm going to thank you all have the answers.

I know when my tongues moves in ways I cannot make it do, it is not of me. It is not me. I feel the Spirit's feelings and opinions about things, and it's not me. The obvious, you know, obviously, obvious loves everybody and everything.

I have a twin sister who does not have very much church knowledge. She's untainted. She's pure. She's better off because she doesn't have church knowledge. After the Spirit came upon me, she was worried about me, so she read the Bible, and the exact same thing happened to her.

But she is a little different than me. Her face turns red when the Spirit is on her, and he has her do funny breathing stuff. The stuff she sees and hears at first, I always think she's whacked. Then, like a good student, I research her theory or what she was told me in the Bible, and guess what?

She's always right. She hears directly from God, and you'd be amazed at her teachings. I suspect I would be. I have so much religion pre-taught stuff in me that it's harder to put that aside. She does not.

We both agree we're in the new covenant. We both agree Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father ruling. I will pop into different church denominations. I like to see how God is working with the different branches.

I'm loyal to one. I'm blessed beyond measure. I do not have to work. God is very gracious to me. I'm always wondering why I'm so blessed. Everything I touch pretty much turns to gold. There's nothing I cannot do with Christ.

Animals flock to me, as they know I have the Spirit of God inside me. I know that some disturbed people stand close to me as they can feel the Spirit, and it calms them, kind of like when David played for Saul.

I am in the kingdom. I am a light that shines. Notice in his description of this gift, he claims God gave him. It's wholly personal and has nothing to do with ministering in a local church, a local body.

This is not biblical in any way whatsoever. He believes, in fact, that his gift has set him apart and above the church. He wishes he was like his sister who had not been tainted by the teaching of the church.

His whole understanding of spiritual gifts is tainted. His use of what he thinks is a spiritual gift is wrong, and yet what he espouses is very commonly believed and practiced among professing Christians.

By the way, this man claims to be a full preterist in his understanding of the end time. In other words, he believes that the second coming of Christ has already occurred. It took place in A .D. 70 when Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.

That's when Jesus came back the second time. And he believes that we're now living in the eternal state, that we're now living in the new heavens and the new earth, and this is what eternity is going to be.

I mean, this fellow has got problems, and he claims that the Spirit is speaking directly to him, and so he knows this to be true. And so he wouldn't receive anything I had to say, even though I was trying to show him from the scriptures.

Corinth had problems with spiritual gifts. People today have problems with spiritual gifts because they fail to read the scriptures and to follow the scriptures in their instruction. Now, in verses 8 through 11 of 1 Corinthians 12, Paul gave a list of spiritual gifts.

But before we look at them specifically, let us stand back and reflect on several lists of gifts that we find in the holy scriptures. We've already considered some, particularly in Romans 12. There, last week, we considered prophesying.

This is when a person is given the ability to either foretell the future, foretell an event, or to tell forth the word of God, you know, to someone or to people. Secondly, the gift of ministry, which is simply serving.

The Greek word translated for ministry is used with regard to deacon serving. Teaching, exhortation or encouraging, giving, leadership or administration, management, and lastly, mercy. There's also a short list in Ephesians 4.

This has to do more with gifted persons that the risen Lord Jesus gives to his church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and perhaps the fourth and fifth pastors and teachers should be regarded as one office.

And then, as we turn back now to the passage before us, 1 Corinthians 12, verses 8 through 12, we see another list. And so, not one of these lists is complete, identifying all the spiritual gifts, but many are listed.

Let's attempt to understand more clearly the nature of these gifts. And there seems to be a miraculous element of these gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12. You have, first of all, a word of wisdom. The Spirit would give some in the early church a spiritual capability, enabling that Christian to say, see through all the confusion and error and give clear counsel on what the will of God is in a matter.

I don't know that God doesn't still give that word of wisdom to people. There just seems to be that there are some people that are able to stand back and assess a situation and say, here's the issue, here's the problem, here's the corrective.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones was that way, others too, but it's just the Lord gives them, you know, great wisdom. Secondly, a word of knowledge. Now, this is a miracle, miraculous gift. The ability to know miraculously some detail that's beyond the normal abilities or capabilities of human beings.

Perhaps this is illustrated by Peter's ability to know that Ananias and Sapphira had lied about giving to the church. A word of knowledge. Faith, special ability to pray, to have God answer in marvelous ways.

Paul said, if I had the faith that I could move mountains and have not love, you know, I'm nothing. Some are just given wonderful degrees of faith. Gifts of healing. I would argue in the early church that there were some that had the ability to heal people.

Certainly Paul did, Peter did, the apostles did. God still heals people in answer to prayer. Are there still people with the gift of healing? I don't see it. They claim to it, you know, Benny Hinn, he claims it.

Everybody claims it on television and whatnot. Here in this town, there was a service of healing just within the last couple of weeks, I noticed on a marquee. I would say if somebody has a gift of healing, go down to the hospital where the prospects are and do a work.

Now, I don't have any faith in faith healers. I have a whole lot of faith in God healing people in answer to prayer when it's in his purposes. The working of miracles. The ability to prophesy, the gift of prophecy.

And because of here it's in association with other miraculous gifts, it's probably speaking about the ability to foretell the future. Agabus was a prophet. Philip had four daughters that had the gift of prophecy described in the book of Acts.

Discerning of spirits, the ability to recognize and distinguish between good and evil, being able to recognize subtleties of deception, different tongues. And this is where we differ greatly from our charismatic friends.

And I'm not saying that sarcastically. I have friends who are charismatics and some very good Christians that I've known over the years were of the charismatic persuasion. Mary and I had landlords for 14 years in Sacramento who were charismatic, godly people, and good, kindly Christian people.

But they understand the gift of tongues to be a heavenly language, a language of angels sometimes it's called. A heavenly language that nobody understands because they argue it's the language of the Holy Spirit that comes upon them and they speak in an unintelligible language.

I don't believe the Bible teaches that anywhere. The gift of tongues in the New Testament is the ability to speak in a foreign language that you never studied before or known before. It's like I could stood up here and began speaking to you in Swedish.

And Paul had this gift, of course, in preaching the gospel throughout the Roman world. And then you had others who had the ability to interpret those languages or tongues. The ability to understand a foreign language not formally known.

You're sitting in church and you hear somebody stand up, start speaking Swedish, and hey, I know what he's saying and gives an interpretation. Maybe the guy speaking in Swedish doesn't understand, but the guy who's listening, he understands and he never studied it before.

And he communicates that interpretation in church. You can see how this would bring the church body to be dependent upon one another and working together. And we would argue that this was a common experience in the early church, but abused in the church of Corinth.

Now this list in 1 Corinthians 12 is troublesome to many. There are gifts here that are clearly supernatural in effect. And by the way, I should have put it in here, but I didn't. One of the major causes of misinterpreting Holy Scripture is making determinations as to what is normative for Christianity.

In other words, just because it's in the New Testament doesn't mean it's normative for all people at all times in all places. Just because Jesus walked on water doesn't mean that you and I ought to walk on water.

It's not normative, is it? Now that's an obvious thing, but I would argue too, just because somebody did something, just because a handkerchief came from Paul and, you know, and it came in contact with somebody who needed healed, and they were healed, doesn't mean that Benny Hinn can send out his handkerchief and heal people in India.

And yet these are the kinds of things they claim. It's a problem of determining what is normative in Scripture. God, of course, is sovereign in these matters. I'm not going to limit God. God is able to do the miraculous, and there's testimonies of that taking place in the world today, particularly in Muslim lands, people becoming Christians in some amazing ways.

But for the most part, God works through the ordinary means of his written word that we have before us. And he has purpose to use humans to speak his word, and the Holy Spirit blesses that spoken word to the conversion of the building up of people.

The Holy Spirit sent Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch in the chariot. The Holy Spirit could have spoken to the Ethiopian eunuch, but God wants to use human instruments to communicate his word to others.

It brings a connection between them and a sense of connection to the purpose of God working in history. And so the revelatory gifts, we would argue, of the New Testament were commonplace. The people needed them for different reasons in the New Testament era.

They are no longer needed as they were in the New Testament era, as we'll be explaining. Our Baptist Confession of Faith states this matter quite clearly. In fact, it's the very first paragraph in the Confession, the very first paragraph of the first article on the Holy Scriptures, and you have it in your notes there at the bottom of page 5.

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation, and therefore please the Lord at sundry times, at different times, and in diverse different ways, diverse manners, to reveal himself, and to declare his will unto his church, and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing.

That's what we have, our Bibles, which makes the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary. And then it makes this statement concluding it, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people be now ceased.

And this was in the 17th century. And this was a Baptist statement, but it's in agreement with the Westminster Confession, the Presbyterian Confession, and the Congregational Statement of the Savoy Declaration.

This was the agreement of Protestants, the finality and sufficiency of the Holy Bible alone. The fact is there were certain conditions in the early Christian era that called for displays and works of a miraculous nature, as well as a need of God to communicate his word directly to his people.

And we might cite two reasons. First, the New Testament books hadn't been written. And even after they were written, it was quite some time before they were finally and fully recognized and widely circulated.

And then secondly, and this is an important aspect with regard to this gift of tongues, this gift of languages, the concept of new Christianity being composed of churches where Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians were regarded as equal within the local church was a truth or reality that was not readily recognized early on.

And the revelatory gifts that God used helped to bring Christians to see the New Testament reality, that the church is worldwide, and the former distinctions between Jews and Gentiles had been broken down in Christ.

Because God was showing forth these revelatory gifts in Gentile Christians in the same way he had through Jewish Christians. And it helped convince the Jewish Christians, these Gentile Christians are legit, because they've been saved in the same way we were through faith in Jesus Christ.

And it was the revelatory gifts, speaking in languages and being able to do miracles that prove to the Jews these Gentiles are objects of God's work of salvation. And so there was a need for these early revelatory gifts.

And historically, we have a record that the miraculous revelatory gifts gradually faded from the scene as the apostles died out, as the first century unfolded. And by the beginning, really, of the second century, they had all but been extinguished, or faded from the scene.

Even in Paul's life, he didn't heal everybody encountered he had to leave, was it Trophimus, he left sick in Miletus. Paul could heal people, but he left Trophimus sick in Miletus. These some of these spiritual gifts, they began to be seen with less frequency, even as the Holy Scriptures began to be produced and recognize the New Testament Scriptures as well as the old.

And as the church became established, and everybody recognizes no longer centered in that temple in Jerusalem among ethnic Jews, but it's everywhere, whosoever, whether Jewish or Gentile, shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Now, after Paul identified the various gifts, he affirmed the unity of purpose and function of those gifts as directed by the Holy Spirit. And so verse 11 reads, but one in the same sphere works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he will.

The Holy Spirit is sovereign in this. Well, fourthly, then, the apostle set forth the diversity of spiritual gifts among the members of the local church, showing the necessity that they function within the body of Christ, the local church.

And we have to understand that the body of Christ sometimes is set forth as the universal church everywhere, all Christians, but in the New Testament, the body of Christ is also set forth as the local church.

In fact, Paul said this directly, I don't remember exactly what verse it is, but he declared to the church at Corinth, now you, and that pronoun is you plural, now you are the body of Christ. He didn't say we are the body of Christ, you are the body of Christ and you are members in particular, a local church.

Our local church is the visible expression of the body of Christ within this community as well as.