1 Cor No.23 Introducing the Charismata

Spiritual gifts brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagan somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to dumb idols. Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

There are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but the same God works all of them in all men.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge, by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another the ability to speak in different kind of tongues, and still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit and he gives them to each one just as he determines.

Bibles open at 1 Corinthians and chapter 12. You may remember that there's a comment made in the ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus he must needs go through Samaria. It's the authorized versions rendering of John 4. He didn't have to go through Samaria to get to Galilee and as much as he could have gone across the Jordan and up the other side and into Galilee but he determined he must needs go.

He had to go through that somewhat difficult land well it seems to me that that comment is not exactly without its significance when engaging in consecutive ministry of 1 Corinthians sooner or later even if you totter for four weeks on the subject of the Lord's Supper you must needs go through chapters 12 to 14 and they are indeed fascinating chapters even though theological controversy has, does, and probably until Jesus Christ returns will rage around them. Here are a trio of passages of scripture which have right at their heart one of the great well-known chapters of the whole New Testament vying possibly with only Psalm 23 as being the best known and well loved portion of scripture. Paul's love sonnet of the thirteenth chapter.

Some have suggested that this triplet of passages of scripture form in effect a sandwich and in the thirteenth you get the honey and there are lots of folks who like the honey very much but are not too impressed about the way that the honey is enfolded by the problems of the teaching within the twelfth and fourteenth chapters which surround the thirteenth. However it is for us as mature Christian people this morning to commence a series of studies within this overall series looking at the whole business of the charismatic gifts and you will have observed from the notes and news handouts that all I seek to do at this juncture is to introduce the subject to you and I'm aware that here in our congregation we have varying degrees of information represented by the people. There are some for whom the very word charismatic will be novel and they will wonder what it's all about.

There are others who have been in the Christian way far longer than I who are knowledgeable about these things and the contents of these chapters but let me go slowly so that even those who are limping along might keep up and let me say that that word that I've included in the introduction for the title of this of this address introducing the charismata, that word charismata is really just a simple Greek word that seems now to have locked itself into our vocabulary. It really means gifts and God in his grace has granted gifts by his spirit to the church. These are known as the charisma or the charisms and you get the adjective charismatic from that word so it's as simple as that.

The word charismatic nowadays is very often used to denote a particular movement that exists in ever swelling numbers within the evangelical church but basically the word is a biblical word and finds its expression in 1 Corinthians 12 and also in other passages of the New Testament. Now when you start to read about spiritual gifts the commentaries and books and magazines and booklets and tracts and leaflets that have come off the presses in these days you might get somewhat confused to say the least. There are several ways in which people have approached these chapters.

One thinks in terms of the Catholic charismatic movement and the amount of books and literature and tapes that have been produced by our friends in that particular grouping. One thinks about historic Pentecostal churches that came about at the turn of the century and the many books and magazines that they have authorized. One thinks in terms of the tapes that are circulating by charismatic leaders in house church fellowships.

I have read and read and read and reread on this subject and listened to tapes from every angle until I'm almost persuaded to suggest that if anyone ought to be confused it should be myself in as much as I have tried to expose my mind my thinking down the years to all that people are saying in respect of the charismatic movement and spiritual gifts. Let me just add a word of warning however. Dr. Jim Packer one of the great theologians of the Anglican Church perhaps one of the greatest theologians of all time in a recent article or two articles in the English Churchman has been humble enough to suggest that there will never be a satisfactory answer given to some of the questions that crop up as a result of Paul's teaching in these 12th and 14th chapters in particular.

And so it well behoves all of us to be one humble and two always to adopt a learning posture as we come before the Word of God. Another warning. I would advise against always darting off to this meeting and to the other meeting to listening to this tape and the other tape and this book and the other book even though that happens perforce because of my responsibilities here to be my duty.

I think sometimes you can get yourself into a position that you're like a dog chasing its own tail and you're never happy. You're never really satisfied. There's always an element of discontent.

They've got a better suggestion for a few months. This group has come up with something else. Maybe that's more delightful, more exciting, more entrancing.

And there along you can lose your peace and your composure as a Christian disciple and that surely is a very harmful thing because the basic commitment that we have is to the presenting of the gospel of Jesus Christ and his salvation work to as many people as possible in a short period of time and to get sidetracked onto issues which though interesting are not necessarily always vital to the evangelistic program is most unfortunate to say the least. Well that just by words of preliminary introduction to my subject. Again I'm presuming and perhaps too much on the fact that you are knowledgeable of these 12th, 13th and 14th chapters but let me engage at this point for those who have little information and understanding by just introducing you in the way of a survey to what the Apostle Paul is here covering and then later on we will break this up and take it at a slower rate.

As I mentioned from the 12th chapter and onwards he speaks specifically about those gifts that the Spirit of God has placed within the church. From the 7th verse down to the 11th verse of 1 Corinthians 12 he makes a list, notice the indefinite article, he makes a list of some of the gifts. There are other lists in other passages in this epistle and also in other letters in our New Testament.

From the 12th verse and right down almost to the end of the chapter, not quite but almost, the Apostle Paul uses an analogy of the human body and he says that as the human body consists of many many parts and each one is necessary for the function and the well-being of the whole. So the Church of Jesus Christ has many parts to it or to her and each part is extremely vital. So the Apostle uses this analogy and he's concerned for the proper functioning of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church.

From the 28th verse to the end of the chapter he makes another list of gifts and offices created by the Holy Spirit. Then you move into the 13th chapter and here you have that love sonnet to which I've already referred. Interesting not only because of the beauty, the poetry of the language which comes out exquisitely in the authorized version of the Bible in particular but also relevant to this subject because on two or three occasions it makes mention of the vexed question of tongues, the limitation of tongues and the probability indeed the certainty that one day they along with other spiritual gifts shall cease.

Then you move into the 14th chapter and here is perhaps the most problematic of the three passages of Scripture because it is here specifically that Paul lays down instruction for the public use of the gift of tongues that occupies him for virtually all the chapter until towards the end having from the 26th verse given us an insight into the mode of worship, the style of worship in Corinth. He then moves on to dealing with prophecy and how that gift is to be employed in the local community and then right towards the end from the 34th verse he has one or two words to say of prohibition in regard to women and their participating publicly in charismatic gifts and right at the end the 37th verse he uses his apostolic authority to say that his teaching is binding and he draws together a conclusion and a summary in the 39th and 40th verses of all that he's argued in these three chapters. So that is more or less what the Apostle Paul is saying.

He's covering a great sweep of practical teaching in respect to Christian worship and bit by bit we shall be having a look at the Apostles teaching. But this morning as I say I'm just engaging in pure generalities to set the subject up into perspective so that when I minister more particularly on specific passages from these chapters you will have the overall picture in the back of your mind. How are we then to approach the Apostles teaching in these chapters? I put that question because it seems to me that there are two main ways in which all the commentators have come to these passages and have made their conclusions.

For the sake of brevity and clarity I would suggest that one of these ways could be referred to as the historical approach. This would be summed up for example in the writings of a theologian for whom I have great respect, Professor FF Bruce, who indicates in his commentary on 1 Corinthians that really Paul is dealing with an infant situation in the Christian church and by the end of the first century, the first two or three centuries, then all this business of spiritual gifts has really fallen into abeyance. This is just the instructional part of the Christian story, its very beginnings and therefore as spiritual gifts ultimately ceased, a great deal of what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14 is of only passing interest to us.

Now that's expressed, that viewpoint is expressed by others who differ from Professor Bruce in certain aspects of his theology but nonetheless dealing with this subject they follow his reasoning. For example most of the books that you come across produced by, shall we say, the Banner of Truth Publishing, a company once in London now in Edinburgh, take this line. It's the historic position, usually though not always, espoused by those who take a Calvinistic view of Scripture and the great reformed doctrines as were proclaimed by John Calvin and Martin Luther.

The idea again is that all these things were very much basic to the first chapter or so, if you please, of church history. The rough thesis, briefly expressed, it would really take 20 or more minutes to expound it fully, is this. At the beginning of the Christian era one might expect supernatural phenomena in a way that would not be carried through down the centuries.

Here you have these unique people, the Apostles, and according to Paul when he writes in 2 Corinthians 12, and I think it's verse 12, there are certain attendant phenomena in their ministry which help to authenticate the message that they preached. You get exactly a similar reference in Galatians chapter 4 and also in Hebrews chapter 4. The idea is that right at the beginning of the story of the church, God moved in a dramatic fashion and there was the miraculous in evidence in a way that it had not been even in the Old Testament Scriptures, at least in the same degree, and in a way that it would never be again. And when you read through the Acts of the Apostles you find some phenomenal events.

You come across men who are raised to life. One comes across such an instance as the very shadow of Peter having such power within it that those who come under his shadow are healed. The Apostle Paul is used in such a miraculous fashion that he makes almost an illogical distinction between special miracles and ordinary miracles.

There are times when prison doors open. There are times when in the most remarkable fashion God pours out his spirit upon Samaritans and upon Gentiles and they reproduce phenomena similar to that of the Acts of the Apostles, of Acts chapter 2. And so this argument goes on, well that was alright, that was the beginning, that was to be expected. God was doing something remarkable, something phenomenal.

But, so the thesis goes, by the time you move into the later books of the New Testament, the ones that Paul penned towards the end of his life in particular, then it seems you don't come across this phenomena so much. There's little, if any, reference to supernatural activity. So one gets further inferences that this whole explosion of the miraculous on the day of Pentecost and in the weeks and years that followed immediately after that event now quietens down and the church moves into a period when having ultimately a full complement of Scripture, the miraculous is no longer to be expected.

Now, if you go along with that particular theologizing, and as I say, I've only briefly expressed it to do it better justice, you would have to listen to a more convinced exponent than myself. But if you go along with that view and you are confronted with, say, the claims of the Pentecostal Church, the historic Pentecostal Church, or the claims of the charismatic movement in its many permutations today, well you just write it all off. You say, well, they're good brothers and sisters, but you can explain the phenomena to which they make testimony in terms of the psychological.

And some have been even more devastating and endeavored to explain it in terms of the demonic. Now, what are we to say to this? Well, forget the last comment about the demonic. In one sense, this whole piece of theologizing, it attracts me, quite frankly.

It attracts me because I think it's a theology of convenience. So often I'm inundated with people, with letters, with literature indicating dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit. Some seem to be quite wonderful and reasonable.

Others almost verger on the bizarre and the mad, if not the insane. And one has to, therefore, make some sort of evaluation. And it would be very easy, in one sense, to say, well, it's all psychological.

It's all an attempt, misguidedly undertaken, to get back to the acts of the Apostles, to get back to those great days when God was doing something. And here are these, alas, immature people. And because we live in the day of small things, because we seem to have a famine and not a revival, lunging after what is not really valid.

And these experiences that they have, they are to be explained in terms purely of the psychological. Well, as I say, in one sense, that is a very convenient argument. It seems to have some credibility, historically explained.

But I find myself, although drawn to it as a theology of convenience, to be satisfactory, both as my mind tries to sum it up and as my own experience dictates certain things which seem to me to cause me to disassociate myself from that view. Is it the case that spiritual gifts, in their entirety, have been withdrawn from the Church of Jesus Christ? Is it the case that they could never, if been withdrawn for a while, be restored? And if they could be restored, why cannot they be restored in the 20th century? These are questions to which I've tried to give myself hours of study and reflection before the Lord. And the conclusions that I draw are simply these.

That the gifts of the Spirit within the purposes of God, within the sovereignty of God, are an abiding characteristic of the Church of Jesus, potentially. Why do I argue this way? Well, for several reasons which I will try to list simply. First of all, the historical argument is weak in as much as it it is an argument of inference and ingenuity.

There is nowhere in the whole of the New Testament a categorical statement which says spiritual gifts will be withdrawn. Ah, you say, but what about 1 Corinthians 13 when it says, whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be prophecy, it shall pass away.

Well, I admit that ultimately there will be a cessation of charismatic gifts. But this is twinned by the Apostle Paul to a state that he describes in terms of the perfect having come. And I believe that when the Apostle Paul refers in the 10th verse of 1 Corinthians 13 that he is speaking of the advent of Jesus Christ.

He who is the epitome of all perfection. When he returns, when he gathers his own, when he brings the Church faultless and presents her in the presence of his Heavenly Father, then the charismata will be packed away like some scaffolding that served a purpose and now can be maintained in the Museum of Heaven as one of the emblems of God's gracious dealings with his children here on this earth. I find no categorical statement as to the cessation of spiritual gifts.

My second reasoning is this. There are more lists of the gifts of the Spirit than are to be found in Corinthians 12 and 14. I give you an example.

Let's look at Ephesians chapter 4 and there in the 11th verse references made to some charismatic gifts and offices. It was he, the Lord Jesus, who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. Again the idea is of the givenness of these offices, the givenness of these particular endowments by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Are we to say then that these gifts have been withdrawn? Well what a nonsense that would be for a conclusion if we're thinking now in terms of the elimination of pastors and teachers and evangelists. But my reasoning becomes that much more clear I think when you turn back to Romans and chapter 12. And here you've got one of the lengthiest tabulations of the gifts of the Spirit outside the first letter to the Corinthians.

And again the context is basically the same. It's what Jesus Christ is giving to his church. The very word charismata is used in the original Greek as in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14.

I take up the reading from the sixth verse. We have different gifts, different charismata according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

If it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage.

If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Now here you have reference to the more domestic, if you like the less sensational gifts of the Spirit. But do you notice also that one of the more phenomenal ones is also incorporated. The Apostle refers to prophesying.

Now this is my problem. I find it very difficult to postulate, to suggest a church continuing without the basic use of, if you please, these domestic gifts of Romans chapter 12. Administration, encouragement, teaching, and so forth.

Well, if these gifts have not in their entirety been withdrawn, what reason have we to say that never will God endue at any time within the body of Christ some people, however large, however small, with some of those more remarkable, sensational gifts. Another piece of reasoning. In each of the three references I gave you, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, and Romans 12, reference is made to the body of Christ.

That's the way that the church is described. He is the head, we are the body. Now Jesus does not change.

Jesus affects his church, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the same way as my brain affects my body. Now my hand is moving in my demonstration as I'm endeavoring to preach. It does not do that of its own accord.

Locked up within my brain is the ability to command my body to do certain things. It can send a nervous impulse. It can stimulate my body so I get the reaction just as I please.

My brain controls my movement. The potentialities of my body are locked up in my head. The potentialities of the church of Jesus Christ are locked up within the head of the Lord Jesus.

Within his sovereignty he can achieve anything that he wants to achieve at any given time. The argument is sometimes put, the acts of the Apostles saw the emergence of Christianity in the pagan, hostile environment. We can take you to the frontiers of the Christian Church today, where that environment is exactly as pagan, exactly as hostile.

In fact there are reasons to suggest that the very demonic activity is more intense than what it was there. And we need the effulgence, the gifts that the Lord Jesus Christ can bestow upon his body sometimes to affect the repulsing of hostile forces. Another statement of Scripture tells us that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.

You get that in Romans chapter 11 and verse 29. Alright, I know Paul is dealing with the position of the Israel people and the fact that ultimately they will be welded back into the body of Christ. Put back, if you like Paul's metaphor better, into the vine, into the olive.

But that very word gifts again is charismata. And in as much as Paul is referring to the charismata in Romans chapter 12, then it seems to me that we have here, if anything, an inference from Scripture that rather the cessation of gifts, they are retained within the sovereign control of the Lord Jesus Christ, his gifts and his callings, without repentance. My final piece of reasoning, and this is my own for which I take responsibility and I give it to you, to sift, accept or reject as you will.

It comes back to 1 Corinthians in the first chapter. Will you turn to that please? Here the Apostle Paul is doing something that some of the commentators completely overlook. He is congratulating the Corinthians.

He does that on occasions. There is a possibility that you can read the Corinthian epistle and get the idea that the whole lot of the Corinthian believers were the most reprobate group of folks who ever pretended to follow Jesus Christ. The reason why you get such a biased impression of the Corinthian church is simply that Paul is dealing with the problems of the Corinthian church.

If I was to list all the problems in the tabernacle and send them to somebody 5,000 miles away and say, look this is all the information you've got about our church, they might feel that we're not exactly the closest knit community walking in the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ. I could on the other hand, and I'm much more likely to, you ask my wife, will tell me that I'm always biased towards the tabernacle. I'm much more likely to list all our talents and achievements and speak of the young people that we have and the older friends at prayer and the way that we try to love one another and the way that we try to give together and so on.

And if I send a letter like that, then the same recipient in India would think, my what a marvellous bunch of people they are at Worthing Tabernacle. And incidentally there are many Indians who do feel that way. You can get Corinthians out of perspective because Paul is dealing with their problems on the whole.

He's not giving us a case history of the entire community of men and women at Corinth. And in the fourth verse, he thanks God for them. I always thank God for you, says Paul.

Why? Because if his grace given you in Christ Jesus, for in him you have been enriched in every way, in all your speaking and in all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Now listen, he makes reference to what he's going to develop in 12th and 14th chapters. Therefore you do not like any charismata, any spiritual gift, as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.

He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is Paul doing there? He's tying in the charismata with the parousia. He is saying that God is strengthening you.

He is using your ministries. There are corrections that have got to be applied. But thank God he is using you.

He is strengthening you. He is giving his gifts of grace. And you cling on to them eagerly waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ.

If Paul was ever to indicate the cessation absolutely of the charismata, here was the point. The Lord Jesus Christ coming was going to be millennia away from the time when Paul was writing this. But he handles the gifts as though the gifts are in some way related to the parousia.

And the cessation will be when that which is perfect is come. Well that more or less concludes my demolition job, whether you accept it or not, on the historical argument. I wanted, but time has run out, to show you having argued to that point that I do not necessarily as a result, nor do those who follow this argument, have to say that everything that purports to be a genuine manifestation of the work of the Spirit today necessarily is.

We are to be understanding like men. We are not to be naive like children. We are to prove all things.

We are to despise not prophesying. We are to hold on to that which is good. I refuse to surrender my intellect to anyone who comes along and tells me of this phenomenal event and that phenomenal event.

I will bring their testimony to Scripture and make my deduction from that. Ever believing, my theology of revival to which I've not had time to go into this morning, ever believing that in the sovereignty of God he can achieve anything through a group of people or through one individual. Our Lord is the head of the church which is his body and by his genius he can so stimulate the body to achieve anything that he wants and he will continue, I believe, to do that in varying degrees until that day comes when the curtain is unfolded and we see our Lord Jesus Christ face-to-face and in perfection are presented before our Heavenly Father.