A Sermon given to All Saints Anglican Church on January 14, 2007, based on I Corinthians 12: 1-11.
Charles Ryrie says this about the city of Corinth: “Located on the narrow isthmus between the Aegean and Adriatic Seas, Corinth was a port city and wealthy commercial center. Ships wanting to avoid the dangerous trip around the southern tip of Greece were dragged across that isthmus. The city boasted an outdoor theater that accommodated 20,000 people; athletic games second only to the Olympics; a Greek, Roman, and Oriental population; and the great temple of Aphrodite with it 1,000 prostitutes. The immoral condition of Corinth is vividly seen in the fact that the Greek term Korinthiazomai (literally, “to act the Corinthian” came to mean “to practice fornication”. …Corinth was noted for everything sinful.”
Paul preached the Gospel here on his second missionary journey and stayed some 18 months, living with Aquila and Priscilla. After he moved on to Ephesus Paul wrote back to the church at Corinth instructing them on various matters such as divisions in the church, immorality, and questions about marriage, food, worship and the resurrection. There were also many aberrant beliefs and practices rampant in the church itself… Has quite a modern feel, don’t you think?
Against this backdrop of immorality and idolatry, it is somewhat startling to come to chapter 12 of this letter and find a discussion of Spiritual Gifts. Paul is talking to recent converts – people who used to worship idols just a year or two ago, before their conversion. They haven’t had time to develop a lifelong practice of spiritual discipline, and are still very immature, even heretical or verging on it at times.
Yet, we see Paul instructing the people on the proper use of Spiritual gifts! From these brief observations, can draw out some inferences:
-Spiritual Gifts were regularly operative in the church.
-Maturity is not a necessary prerequisite to operate in a gift.
-Manifestation of spiritual gifts is not dependent on having everything occurring ‘decently and in order’, before their appearance.
Chapter 11 describes how people are misusing and abusing the love feast associated with the Lord’s Table. And there are apparently many divisions in the church – again very similar to our own day. Now in chapter 12, Paul launches into the teaching about spiritual gifts; literally “charis, ‘grace’, maton, ‘gifts’. The fist principle or assumption is that Jesus is Lord, ‘Kurios”. If you don’t start there, everything else is mull and void. Beyond that the overall message of the chapter is unity in diversity.
As we take a look at our text beginning in v. 4, we start to see certain words recur. If you have a pencil or pen, ,look for the word ‘varieties’ and circle it every time it appears, along with the word ‘various’ in v. 10. How many times does it repeat? (4):
Varieties of Gifts, v. 4
Varieties of Services, or ministries v. 5
Varieties of Activities or effects v. 6
Various kinds of tongues v 10
Now look for the word ‘same’ and underline it. Repeats 5 times.
Same Spirit v. 4
Same Lord v 5
Same God. v 6
Same Spirit v 9
Same Spirit v 11
Now check out the word ‘another’. It occurs a whopping 8 times within 3 verses. (vv.8-10).
Very clearly, we are to understand that different people have different gifts. Why? In v. 7 we see the purpose: “For the common good”. There are many people who would say that spiritual gifts are not for today, that they functioned as signs to the world at the beginning of the church age and after the apostles passed of the scene, the gifts are no longer needed.
I would counter this by saying that we haven’t outgrown the need for the common good in the church. I believe this is foundational to our understanding of the Spirit’s work in our midst: that He gives grace gifts for the building up of the church in love, for the common good. This is timeless. Also, in Paul’s emphasis on varieties of ministries and effects, we see no suggestion that these varieties of ministries are to cease. Rather, Paul seems to take for granted that the gifts are given to common believers for the common good. The gifts are not just for the apostles for a limited time – although it is true that the Apostles functioned in the gifts in a way that we don’t as average believers.
No, the gifts and all their attendant varieties are intended for the unity of the church – for the common good.
So what exactly are the gifts? To list them, they are:
The Word of Wisdom
The Word of Knowledge
Faith
Gifts of Healing
Miracles
Prophecy
Discernment of Spirits
Tongues
Interpretation of Tongues (two different gifts)
Note the progression: we start with Wisdom. Very appropriate as the book of Proverbs describes the Lord as having created the world via Wisdom (Jesus that is). Wisdom is the ability to apply principles from the Bible and from life into practical situations, obtaining a good result.
Wisdom is both something that one obtains over time, through living the Christian life, and it is a gift that can be bestowed upon even the youngest member of a group – just because God seems to like to use the weak and foolish things of this world to confound those who think themselves Wise in a worldly fashion.
Wisdom is the application of the right principle at the right time for the right reason. The result of this application is uniformly positive. It is a gift of inestimable value in the church.
The Word of knowledge can also be understood as pertaining to practical knowledge of spiritual things, but I believe we see several biblical examples that lead us to understand that the Word of knowledge is something more. For instance, when Jesus says, to the woman at the well of Sychar, in John chapter 4:18: “you have had five husbands and the one that you now have is not your husband…” – this is a word of Knowledge given to Jesus for the purpose of ministering life to this woman.
Or when Peter calls our Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 for keeping back part of the money from the sale of a property – God told Peter what had happened so that there could be discipline in the church.
These experiences happen today, all the time. John Wimber tells the story of looking at a man on an airplane and being impressed with a name that seemed to be written on the man’s forehead. When he asked the man,” Who is Mary?”, the man took Wimber aside and confessed an extra-marital affair - which led to the man’s eventual salvation. The Word of Knowledge happens today and is very much needed to bring the power of God’s conviction to bear in people’s lives.
The gift of Faith is the ability to trust God for remarkable answers to prayer, such as praying in provisions of food or to trust God for big things. Persons who exemplify faith would be George Mueller, or Mother Teresa, both of whom regularly believed God to provide for thousands of children and adults under their care, without any visible means of support.
The gift of faith is to be distinguished from that of saving faith, which is also a gift, but is given to every Christian in order to help them come to salvation through Christ.
Healings (Plural). Some commentators believe this refers to ‘bringing people back from the dead, but the plural would seem to militate against this. There are varieties of healing gifts. They occur in differing ways. Last week we talked about John Alexander Dowie and his healing ministry. When I began to learn about him and his ministry, I prayed to receive the same kind of gifting he had. Instead, my ministry gifting appears to operate in helping people recover from past traumas, and emotional healing – a different kind of gift. Some of you might be good at praying for back injuries or cancer. You don’t know until you try.
Along that line, one of the ways you begin to discover your gifts is by being with those who operate in their gift and working alongside of them. One of the ways to do this is in the context of small group meetings where people have the opportunity to make their needs known and have other believers to minister to those needs. This is part of the practical training we need to receive to build one another up in our faith and to see God work powerfully in our lives.
Miracles. The Apostle Paul once preached so long into the night that a young man named Eutychus fell asleep and tumbled out an open second story window, breaking his neck! (you would think Paul might have got the idea that preaching was not his hottest gifting!). But Paul quickly runs downstairs and brings the young man back from death, not missing a beat as he went back to preaching! There are healings that fall into the category of Miracles. Miracles also include such things as watching food multiply and for sight to be restored and the lame to walk. Too often this is the realm of hucksters and the sensational, but despite the bad rap, if we are truly Christian in our belief, we must admit the possibility that miraculous things may happen through us. The emphasis though is not us, but the Lord of the Universe, who is perfectly free to intervene in our lives as he wills.
Prophecy is both foretelling and forth-telling. The job of a prophet in the Old Testament was to call people to repentance and to encourage them through their penitence. A true Prophet was known by whether or not his prophecies came true. It’s a little different today. There are people who can prophecy about future events, but this foretelling does not carry the same “thus says the Lord” as did the words of the OT prophets. However, the gift of being able see into a person’s life and to encourage them is very helpful, particularly as they go through hard times. Cindy and I have both experienced several times when people spoke into our lives in a way that was really Spirit led and very encouraging at the same time. Some folks do get enamored with this particular gift, so in general, it’s best to listen closely enough to the Lord so you hear from him yourself, without needing an outside person to tell you God’s will.
The old saw goes, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” A person gifted with discernment can tell the character of a person, but also can also discern whether someone operates in an evil spirit and how to either confront or steer clear of it.
Then comes Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues – not necessarily the same gift. It’s pretty clear from the book of Acts that the initial gift of Tongues was actual recognizable foreign languages. There were those in the audience who understood the Gospel being preached in their own native language. Based on this, some would say that Tongues and their interpretation were sign gifts and that they are no longer needed today. However, later in this same letter, chapter 14:4, Paul also says that one who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, he speaks to God not to men, speaking mysteries in his spirit (v.2). To me, this indicates some room for the idea that there may be ‘ecstatic’ or ‘angelic’ languages. Most of the folks who speak in tongues today do so in a style that I just call ‘scat praying’. Just like Ella Fitzgerald did scat singing, I think it’s possible to do scat praying. We pray with our spirit directly to God and God knows how to interpret these prayers. Many find it helpful their own prayer life.
The rule of thumb for the assembled body is that there should only be speaking in tongues if there is an interpreter. That way the meaning is brought out and if there are unbelievers present, they won’t think we have gone mad.
(I Cor 14:23)
The principle again is the edification of the body for the common good. Our time has not allowed us a complete explication of these things. I hope to be able to return to this topic more fully another time. But may God grant us grace to begin to understand the gifting He has placed within us, and the opportunity to begin to operate in our gifts. AMEN.
