1 Cor No.25 The Charismtic Community (John 15)

John 15. I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful.

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself.

It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers.

Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burnt. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you. This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

I think you will find it useful to have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 12. Although I shall be making reference to other relevant passages of Scripture, inasmuch as we've been working our way through this first letter of Paul to the Corinthians for 20 plus weeks now, we shall keep coming back to this chapter which has occupied our attention for the last two Sundays. Let me read to you just a couple of verses.

If there was time, I'd read the whole chapter, but we've already read it once and I'm sure that many of you have given some extra study to it in addition. I'll read to you the 12th and the 13th verses. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body.

So it is with Christ, for we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. I don't know if you have ever noted the connection that there is between the Gospels, and particularly the Gospel of Luke and the fifth book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles. Luke, you remember, writes to a friend of his and he wants to tell him all that Jesus was engaged in doing during his earthly ministry, and that's why he wrote the Gospel that bears his name.

And so in the opening verses of the Acts of the Apostles, he says, in my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven. And there's quite significance in the language there when he says, I told you all that Jesus began to do, as though he hasn't completely finished. And if that's the deduction you draw from verse one, then you're dead right.

Jesus hadn't finished when he was taken up into heaven, what we call the ascension. He bestowed abilities upon his disciples so that they, in turn, could act on his behalf and continue the work that he had commenced. That's the reason why the fifth book of the Bible is called, of the New Testament, is called the Acts of the Holy Spirit.

Actions, activities, what one is engaged in. But it's not so much the Acts of the Apostles, it's the Acts of the Spirit, the Spirit of God who indwells the Apostles, enlivens them, and enables them to work in the name of Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who is the vicar of Christ on earth.

Let that be said, particularly this Sunday. The Holy Spirit who is the vicar of Christ on earth and who compels men and women who have submitted to the authority of the Lord Jesus to achieve what the Savior wants to be done here on mother earth. And so when you read the Acts of the Apostles, you see this connection between the Lord Jesus and the Apostles, and the connecting factor is none other than the Holy Spirit.

Now, why do I say that? Well, it seems to me that that's a very key point to have in mind when you come to 1 Corinthians and chapter 12. For the life of me, I don't know why this chapter is an embarrassment in evangelical circles. There are many segments within the evangelical church today, because if this chapter and the ones that immediately follow say anything at all, they underline the point that Luke has already made in writing his gospel and the Acts, and that is that the Holy Spirit is vital in the church age for the performance of the ministries of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the executive of the Godhead. He compels, as I've indicated a moment or so ago, he compels people, empowers people to achieve what are the purposes of the Lord. So you've no need to be embarrassed about 1 Corinthians 12.

Instead of embarrassment, you should find encouragement. Instead of glossing over it, you should rather glory in it. Here is the presentation of the church as she should be, not an organization that needs to be directed by men, but an organism that takes its life from the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit.

If you're a member of the church of Jesus Christ, you're not related to it like someone might be related to a trade union. That's an organization. You have a card that you carry.

You have a fee that you pay. You submit to the authority of your union. No, it's far more glorious than that.

To be a member of the church of Jesus is to step into the very life of Jesus Christ, so that you're part of the body of the Lord Jesus. Now, this cannot be said often enough. There is an intimate relationship between Jesus Christ, the head of the church, and men and women born again in the tabernacle and around the world today.

They're part of His body. They function if they are rightly related to Him. They function in such a fashion as they achieve His purposes for them.

Now, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 14 in particular, it brings this out. We are organically connected to the Lord Jesus. I would go so far as to say I can feel the very pulse beat of Jesus in these chapters.

Of course, that doesn't apply only to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. It applies to the whole of the New Testament, but particularly here is set up not a temporary structure, but a basic abiding principle. I operate in the service of Jesus as His Spirit operates within my life, and without the latter, I can't achieve the former.

Without the latter, it's an organization. It's not an organism. I must be related to the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, this is what the apostle has to say here in this glorious chapter. Here is described, don't have a heart attack because I use the word, here is described the charismatic community. Why on earth we should surrender good biblical concepts to certain segments within the church and let them exploit those words as though they belong to them and are manufactured in the 20th century alone, I don't know.

The concept of the charismatic church is as old as the day of Pentecost. So in no way am I this morning engaging in novelties. Here is the apostle Paul, and he is telling us, first of all, that the charismatic community, the community that is gifted by, empowered by the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit, has a deeply intimate relationship with the Savior of Calvary.

So verse 12, Paul refers to the human body. You have a picture of that in front of you. Later on, he's going to develop it more from the 14th verse and right down to the end of that paragraph, the 20th verse.

And he says the body itself has many parts and each part is intimate, intimately connected with the other. Every part of the body is very necessary for the functioning of the whole. Now he goes a little further when he lifts this metaphor out of the page and he applies it to us who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it is, he says the latter part of verse 12, so it is with Christ. We are part of the body of the Lord Jesus, and our connection is so intimate that when Paul refers to the church just here, he refers to it as though she was an integral part of Christ himself. That's how near you are to Jesus.

That's how near I am. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all of its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.

We're part of Christ in as much as he has died to save us. Do you know that the word Christian is not used in the New Testament apart from falling from the lips of pagans? The apostle Paul never uses the word Christian. How does he describe the believer? Well, he describes the believer as a person, a man, a woman who is in Christ.

In Christ. So you and I who claim to belong to the Lord Jesus, we have this intimate relationship which is the most superb experience that one can have in life. It says the apostle gathering up his thinking and underlining the emphasis of intimacy, verse 13, we were all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one spirit to drink.

Do you remember in Jesus's earthly ministry how on one occasion reference was made to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus speaks in terms of water which will flow from the innermost being of those who confess him as Lord. On the last and greatest day of the feast, this is John 7 37, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, if a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.

What do you mean, Lord? Well, John gives us a comment. By this he meant the spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

But on the day of Pentecost, the spirit was given and the spirit ministers salvation to all who trust Jesus as Lord. And so the apostle makes this definitive statement of a Christian. He's speaking of the Corinthians, but he's using them as illustrative of the total body of Christ, the total company of worldwide believers as it exists today.

We were all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one spirit to drink. Praise God for the day when you bowed your knee to Jesus Christ at Calvary and his spirit entered into your heart and confirmed through faith that you belong to Jesus. I came to Jesus and I drank of that life's giving stream.

Remember how the Christian poet puts it? Well, there is this intimacy of relationship, which is a vital aspect of the charismatic community. Paul brings it out time and time again. What my body is to my head, so Christ's followers are to him.

And my body is not in the relationship of an organization to my head. If you take my head off, I do assure you my body will refuse any longer to live. It is not organized into some piece of machinery that is independent of my head.

My head is vital to my body. It is organic to my body. So the body of Christ, the church, is intimately related to the head, the first aspect of the charismatic community, the intimacy of relationship between the believer and the Lord Jesus.

The next thing then obviously follows, and I'm lifting out Paul's logic, not having time to expound all these verses, bringing it under certain heads. The next constituent factor of the charismatic community is this. She is utterly dependent upon the head.

She is utterly dependent upon the head. Time and time again in this epistle we find that it's the Lord Jesus Christ who is sovereign and brings about his will in respect of his body. But let me expound to you at this moment, not in the interest of novelty, but simply because it always strikes me as being obvious.

I can't understand why the commentators haven't waxed eloquent on this. Let me expound to you John's gospel in chapter 15, the vine and the branches. Now this reading that I brought to your attention a little while ago is very well known.

It's a sort of parable, parabolic teaching of our Lord Jesus. And he sets himself up in the imagery of a vine, the vine being the national symbol or one of the national symbols of Judaism. Now Jesus says that what he is to the vine and the branches, or rather what the vine is to the branches and the fruit that the branches bear, so he is to the church.

I am the true vine. My father is the gardener. And he goes on, he cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit and so forth.

And then down to the fourth verse, remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine.

Verse five, I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. You see the analogy, we've gone into the realm of horticulture.

We're out of the hospital and we're into the area of farming and what have you, horticulture. Well, here is the Lord Jesus Christ and he's setting up what is almost the same teaching, but employing a different metaphor. If I am a branch, then I am dependent upon the vine.

If I am a body, I am dependent upon the head. And so the Lord Jesus is here teaching the utter dependence of believers on him to perform anything in his name. Now that's basic to the charismatic community.

Not only am I in an intimate relationship with the Lord, further than that, I am utterly dependent upon him. Now that applies not just to the beginning of the 20th century when certain new teaching came out on the doctrine of the spirit. This has been the case ever since the acts of the apostles.

Listen to Jesus spelling it out in verse five. Is it, I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remain in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. Now look, if 1 Corinthians 12 is only for the apostolic era, then I'm in problems. I have great problems.

I need to be as wedded to the Lord Jesus as the branch needs to be part of the vine. Why? Because the latter gets the sap from the vine. It can only fruit from the strength of the vine.

And there's never been a Christian man down the centuries who has ever achieved anything for Jesus Christ in his own strength. Jesus says it's impossible without me. You can't do anything.

Yes, you can organize. You can't bring men and women to yourself. You can't bring them into an experience of salvation.

You can theologize. You can write your great books. But unless your preaching and your activity is drenched, is saturated in the sap of the Spirit, which flows from me, it'll end up in a zero.

It cannot possibly achieve anything at all. You are utterly dependent upon me. You see, this is a very charismatic statement that the Savior is saying.

This whole teaching, it blends into what the apostle has to say later on, as you'd expect if the apostle is inspired as our Savior was. But just to stress that I'm not making a point that's not in any sense possible to take from Scripture, look at Peter in Acts chapter 3. Now, we've got this teaching of the vine at the back of our mind. What's that got to do with Peter in Acts 3? Well, you'll see.

He's been used by God remarkably in the healing of a man who was a cripple. The man was by the gate beautiful. You remember the story, not too much time to give it in detail.

He's begging for money. Peter, typical of many preachers, says, I haven't got any money, but what I have. And here he's not typical because alas, many of us don't have in the spiritual what Peter had.

I haven't got any money, but what I've got I'll give you in the name of Jesus. Get up and walk. The great crowd gathers as a result.

Peter always seizes an evangelistic opportunity which results from a healing. And he addresses the crowd. Verse 12.

Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? Who did it? The Lord Jesus, by the power of his spirit, under the authority of almighty God, causes a discharge of dynamic to flow through Peter and from Peter to the man who's a cripple and his condition is remedied. Without me you can't do anything. Do you think, says Peter, that we did this of our own initiative, through our own empowering? Not a bit of it.

We don't have the ability so to do. The charismatic community is utterly dependent, utterly dependent upon the head in whom it has, with whom it has an intimate relationship. But let me move on and make another point without taking you at the moment back to 1 Corinthians 12.

Let me take you to what I'll call, if you please, a charismatic parable. Let's go back to the parable I just referred to in closing at the end of my address last week. It was Luke 19.

And there you remember is a story told by our Lord Jesus of a nobleman who leaves his own country. And before he leaves, you start to read the parable from the 11th verse, but we're not reading it all. I'll give you a summary of it.

Before he leaves, you remember this nobleman calls together 10 servants. And he gives each one of his servants a gift. In the AV it's translated pound.

In the NIV it's translated mina. But just to have a common denominator between the versions, let's translate it as gift. Stood for an endowment which belonged to the nobleman, but was placed in the trusteeship of his servants.

So each one of these men were gifted and each gift added up to the same in value. Now stop there for a moment, because it seems to me that this is a very interesting parable. In as much as most parables Jesus told, somewhere in the story he writes himself into it.

And it's in no way perverting an application of scripture by suggesting that the Lord Jesus is the nobleman who goes away. And he entrusts the running of his estate in some degree to his servants. Each one is given a gift.

Jesus is absent from us now, present by the power of the Spirit, but absent from us physically, visibly. But what has he done during his absence? Well, this is where we go back to 1 Corinthians 12. So if your fingers are not smitten with arthritis, you might rapidly be able to flip back the pages to that passage.

1 Corinthians 12. And here we are told of the charismatic community, the body of Christ, and the enablings that it has received from the Lord Jesus through the Spirit. Look at verse 7. Now to each one, speaking of the members of the church, to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

And he goes on, to one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and so on and so forth. He's talking about individual church members at Corinth. Just in case you don't believe me, drop down to verse 27, and you'll discover he's saying exactly the same.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And then he goes on to list certain functions that members of the body of Christ are to engage in. That's the second list of charismatic gifts.

The earlier list is in the previous verses. So you can draw a general deduction from what Paul is here saying. The Lord Jesus, by his Spirit, has empowered his servant with charisma, with gifts, or a gift of the Spirit.

Just as in this parable, the man who goes away on a far journey has engifted his ten servants. All right, back to the parable. They've got their gifts, and they each use them.

At least three examples are given of the way that stewardship is applied by some of the servants. One man uses his gift extremely well. But notice the way that he expresses, when the master returns, why he has been so successful.

Drop down to verse 16 of Luke 19. The first one came and said, Sir, your minna, your pound, your gift has earned ten more. It was the very gift itself which had the capability of multiplying, of multiplication.

It wasn't so much the expertise of the man, but the willingness of the man to take the gift, and for the gift to be put to a particular function. And that's exactly the same with the endowments that Jesus Christ gives to his church. As they are used, whatever the ministry may be, the ministry of proclamation, the ministry of hospitality, the ministry of financial giving, the ministry of administration, the most spectacular gifts of the Spirit, however they are used, it is the very gift itself that is powerful.

Not the holder, but the gift. Because the gift comes from the head. The gift comes from the Lord Jesus.

The gift is within the sovereignty of the Lord. And so these men give an account of the way that they have employed their particular pound or minna. And one's done well, tenfold increase, another fivefold.

And then one man who doesn't want to use his gift at all, he's prepared just to take what God has given and to put it idly by. When he stands before the Lord, he is embarrassed. And Jesus says, take his gift, take his pound, take his minna, and give to the one who had one pound and has used it effectively to the end that the pound itself has multiplied itself tenfold.

To him who has shall be given, to him who has not shall be taken away. And I link that in my teaching in 1 Corinthians to Paul in the opening chapters when he speaks about some who are Christians and will be saved yet as by fire. They never used their gift.

They didn't want to get involved in the service ministries of the Lord God. They came to church, they sang their hymns, they were pretty orthodox in their theology, but as for actually doing anything, they never bothered. They didn't want to get too involved or else they might become extreme.

They might become a little bit fanatical. Lord, you can have those gifts, it's all right, let the others have them. The one that you've got for me, well, I'll hide it under a napkin and I'll wait until you come back.

And when the Lord comes back, the man, the woman who's not used the gift that he or she has, though saved, will be embarrassed on the day when accounts are made public by the Lord Jesus. You see, my friend, my point is this, that we are all gifted. That's what the parable says.

Not just the parable, it's perhaps not so plain in that, and that's why I brought you to to 1 Corinthians 12, in case some of you thought I was manipulating the teaching of the parable. I'm not manipulating 1 Corinthians 12. Paul says it again and again.

We all have a gift. We all have gifts which we are to use in the service of the Lord God. Now let's try to summarize in the last couple of minutes and draw all this together.

Every provision is made for us in our Lord Jesus Christ, the moment that we are converted. When the apostle Paul writes to the Colossians, in Colossians chapter 2, he makes a reference to what the Savior has placed at the disposal, so to speak, of the church. 1 Colossians chapter 2. He says that we are, in the sixth verse, as we have received Christ Jesus as Lord, we are to continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

He goes on later on in the chapter, and having encouraged the Colossians to engage in enterprises for the Lord Jesus, he speaks of those, alas, who did not respond to their requirements as Christians. Look at the 18th verse, towards the end of the 18th verse. Here is someone who has become disconnected from the vine.

Such a person grows into great details about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. Verse 19, he has lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Underline that text.

It's one of the great charismatic pronouncements in the epistle to the Colossians. There is the possibility of losing connection with the head, and if you lose connection with the head, then all the bodily nourishment is lost. All the sap from the vine is lost, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Now I ask you, my friend, is this your experience? Are you, by experience as well as by belief, so integrated into the body of Christ that what the head dictates for the body is put into operation? Or are you paralyzed like the limb of the man who had the withered arm? You see, I believe this, and I'm not arguing cleverly. I've believed this for years. I've never changed as far as I know my own understanding, since I was a student back in Bible college, of the necessity of the charismatic community and the pulsations of the power of Christ through his body on this earth.

To be a Christian, writes a much greater theologian than I shall ever be, to be a Christian is to be charismatic. There is no division between charismatics and non-charismatics, between the haves and the have-nots in the sense, in the community of Christ. All alike are charismatic, for all are eternally in debt to the sheer charis of God, who sought us and rescued us with varying gifts and shared his own loving kindness with us through the Spirit, which he has lavished upon every one of us who are in Christ.

A gifted community, but look, it's pointless me preaching this academically if it's not worked out experimentally. What are your gifts? Identify them. Look through these passages of Scripture in which reference has been made to the gifts of the Spirit.

I put them in the notes for you to study on your own. Realize this, that God has placed endowments within the church, and in the sovereignty of the Spirit, they are to be used for the advance of the kingdom of God. I believe that every Christian by very definition is gifted.

I would go so far as to say this, if he's not gifted or she's not gifted in some way, then they cannot possibly be a Christian. This whole business of dealing with the spectacular aspects of the gifts of the Spirit, to suggest that there is a group within the church that is more gifted than another group, is to me a nonsense. But for a conservative group to deny the more spectacular aspects, so-called, of the gifts of the Spirit is to me license that should not be taken.

I repeat my summary headings. The charismatic community was born on the day of Pentecost and will only conclude, if that's the right word, the day that Jesus returns. And in between, there is an intimacy of relationship between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are utterly dependent upon the head. Each one is potentially, even if they have not realized it, is potentially gifted. And what's more, everyone has, and I would have brought this out more if time hadn't beaten me, everyone has the responsibility to preserve intact relationships within the body of Christ, so that there is no laceration, there is no break, or as Paul more eloquently puts it, so that there should be no division in the body, but its part should have equal concern for each other.

I ask you again, my friend, is that your feeling with regard to the tabernacle, the gift that you have, have you got a concern for the integration of our fellowship so that we're a united, loving group of people? Are these just words that I'm bringing to you, or are they part of the experience of your own heart? Administration helps so many smaller gifts to use human terminology, not used by Scripture. So many aspects of working for the Lord Jesus Christ, loving one another, being bound together, is this part of your attitude to the tab? I ask you that in the name of God, because it is to Him that we are responsible. As a community of Christians, charismatic, graced by God, no one having greater importance in the sight of God simply because of His gift than another.

God looks down, and He sees us potentially as an ungifted people, as the Corinthians came behind in no gift. And we will not divide over the subject of the gifts, but we will search constantly to be that sort of ennobled, empowered people that God wants us to be. That is how I understand the Bible's teaching on the charismatic community.

Father, the concept of the gifted community is so blessed as recorded in your Word. The idea of being in the vine and drawing sap day by day and fruiting within the branches is an exquisite objective that we would like to see realized in our own lives. Father, help us to realize, not only doctrinally but experimentally, what it is to be involved in the ministries within the body of Christ, upholding and upbuilding one another, and extending the kingdom of God through our united enterprises.

Send us on our way, those of us who must go now rejoicing, and keep the rest of us concentrated on Calvary, the source of all blessings. For Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.