1 Cor No.26 The Gifts No.1

Paul has the idea in mind of the Christian church in terms of the human body, and each part of the latter is very vital to the well-being of the other. Those who've ever had an ingrowing toenail will testify to the pain and the discomfiture felt throughout the body. Well, Paul has that very homely, and in one sense very amusing, analogy in his mind as he describes the way that all of us should be ministering and working together for the benefit of Christ's church, of which we are part.

1 Corinthians 12 and verse 14. Now, the body is not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, behold, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.

And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you. The head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor.

And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its part should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.

If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now, you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church, God has appointed, first of all, apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret, but eagerly desire the greater gifts? And there we leave Paul's reading. I'd be grateful if you'd have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 12. For those who are visiting the tabernacle, and we have such folk each week, let me explain, though you may already have picked it up, that it's our practice, generally speaking, on a Sunday to make our way through one of these great books of the Bible, and by expository ministry, passage by passage, chapter by chapter, review the teaching and endeavor to apply it to our own situation.

And at present, we are in the 12th chapter, sometimes thought of as a very controversial and difficult to understand passage of Scripture, the 12th chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. And I think it would be accurate to say that as we have been digging into this chapter now for some three weeks, we have begun to discover some gold. Spiritual prospection, the task of a humble prospector in the word of God, sometimes brings abiding principles of sterling worth to the surface.

And I think that that is the case as we have been looking into Paul's teaching here on spiritual gifts, teaching which he will develop further in the 13th and particularly, and perhaps even more difficult, in the 14th chapter of this letter. Let me review what I have been concluding so far from my grasp of Paul's teaching so that it's clear and in perspective as we break open, just for a short time, some new ground later on. First of all, I have argued that the concept of the body of Christ, made so very clear in this chapter, is a very precious one and a very abiding one.

This idea of the church of Jesus as part of a living organism is not new to Paul here in this letter. Our Lord set the seal on it, you recall, by the analogy he makes between the vine and its branches. And he tells us there in John's gospel that as the branches are in the vine, so we must be in him.

And he makes that categorical pronouncement, which must last for the whole of the church era and on into eternity, that without him we can do nothing. Now, I was very interested, in one sense honored, during my researches into these studies to see John Calvin quoting Augustine, one of the great theologians of the early church, and both of them coming to the same conclusions as I had, if that doesn't sound too immodest for me, in indicating that they felt that the Lord's comment in John's gospel must be related to this whole analogy of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12. Says Augustine, since we are in Christ, a fruit bearing, since we are in Christ, a fruit bearing vine, what are we out of it but dry twigs? In other words, if you don't live within Christ, if the sap of the vine doesn't flow through you, then you cannot live.

You become like a twig. And so our first comment this morning by way of challenge is, am I part of the living organism of Christ, or am I a dry twig? Well, I leave you to work that one out for yourself, but don't blame me. It was Augustine who said it and Calvin who repeated it.

I'm just sharing in the 20th century their comments. The concept of the body of Christ is basic to the whole of scriptural teaching. If you want another, if you please, seeing as it's an inward these days charismatic analogy, then you no need to go much further than 1 Peter in chapter 2. And there it's not a body that you have as an analogy.

It's not a vine that you have, but it's a building. And Peter really demands that we use all our imagination for his analogy because he talks of the church in terms of the temple of God and living stones, not just ordinary stones, but living stones built into the temple, which in turn as each living stone is in place becomes a memorial to Jesus Christ. So 1 Peter 2, 5, you also like living stones, lively stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ and so forth.

You see the analogies. Scripture is replete. That means full of them.

This idea of life through the church and the life initially derived from the Lord Jesus Christ as the head gives life to the body and presides over the human body. So I've argued for the concept of the body of Christ as being a present reality today. I've also argued that the word charismatic is descriptive of the gracious enablings whereby the Son of God by the Holy Spirit enables the body to function.

In other words, without the charismata, the enablings of God, it is impossible for the body of Christ, for the vine of Christ, for the temple of Christ to achieve its duties. Now the logic of that is unassailable. You must agree to it because of the comment I quoted earlier.

Without me, you can't do anything. So as the head presides over the body and stimulates, so the Lord Jesus presides over his church and stimulates. And that stimulus or those stimuli I regard as being the charismata, the gifts of the Spirit, to which the church of Jesus Christ is indebted and without which she dries up and cannot possibly function aright.

Now there's something else that logically follows from all that. Let's say that you're a member of the body of Christ. You recognize this whole teaching of life through Christ pulsating into the body.

What's the next logical step? Well, it's obvious. I hardly need to repeat it. Every member of the body of Christ must be gifted.

Every member of the body of Christ must be gifted. First of all, the whole idea of salvation. It is a gift of God.

The Greek word charisma. That immediately means that entry into a relationship with Jesus Christ must logically, linguistically, be a charismatic experience. And I will not in any sense myself allow that term to be arrogated to any particular section within the evangelical establishment in the 20th century.

Our entry into the body of Christ must be through the charisma, the gift of God by the operation of the Holy Spirit. So all of us, for starters, are gifted with the gift of salvation. But it goes beyond that.

As I tried to show you from the parable of the pounds or the minas, depending whether you're reading the AV or the NIV, everyone within the community potentially or dynamically must receive and operate gifts of the Spirit. Without that, then they become like those, just to use another parable, who stand idly by in the marketplace. The kingdom of God is not sweet idleness, as one German theologian says.

The kingdom of God is vibrant with activity, evangelism, worship, pursuing spiritual graces. These are all part of the functions of the body of Christ. So if you've grasped this aspect of Paul's teaching here and related comments that are strewn liberally throughout the New Testament, you should by now have started to hover on one conclusion.

Whether or not you agree with me, of course, is a different matter. I can only share with you how God's Word strikes me and the conclusions that I have brought to it or from it as a result of study. And the conclusion is this, that some of the books and the tapes that are in circulation in these days that seem to suggest that charismatic activity, the activity of the Spirit, is a relatively novel thing just cannot be true.

That is not to say that some of the teaching does not have value. But the idea that we have suddenly in the 20th century, at the beginning, in the 1910s with the Pentecostal revival, if that's how one describes it, or in the 1960s with the charismatic resurgence, which really means Pentecostalism going abroad into the different denominations, the idea that through these twin movements we have since discovered the charismata, and they have not as gifts at all been operative since second or third century of Christian history, is really an absurdity. All people do who tell us this is just betray their very ignorance of history.

I could marshal you fact after fact, story after story, account after account, down the centuries of great movements of God's Spirit, the expansion of His kingdom, which had as its enabling the gifts of, in some degree, in some function, the Holy Spirit. Do you know that in Nagaland, in North India, something like 68% of the population are adjudged as Christian? In a continent where there is hardly any, generally speaking, Christian witness, it's something like 1% throughout the whole of India. But in Nagaland it's 68%.

Why the difference? How do you explain it? Well, you go back to Cary, you go back to the strict Baptists, you go back to the missionary enterprise and exploits of the turn of the century and before. And here in Nagaland, with very little teaching that is perhaps being propounded so eloquently, so persuasively these days in the West, there's a very strong Church of Jesus Christ. How do you explain the existence of that Church? Well, simply by the gifts that God has placed within His body being exercised.

Now I could give you many another illustration of this. The Church of Christ cannot advance outside of Christ and the bestowal of His gifts in some respect. So, what I am in effect doing at this point is addressing myself to a question that is posed far more intelligently than I could put it by Dr. J. I. Packer of the Anglicans, who in a very recent article in the English Churchman, an article that spans something like 60 pages, so it really deserved to be a book rather than a contribution, he asks this question, how far are distinctives of charismatic experience confined to professed charismatics? This seems to be an important question, for I think that something of an optical illusion tends to operate here, creating a quite mistaken sense that charismatic spirituality is totally different from anything else outside of charismatic circles.

In a word, he's asking how do you explain the advances of the kingdom of God in other parts of the world in other centuries if we have completely lost our understanding of the charismata? But let's turn that argument on its head. What about those people who say that the charismata concluded at the end of the first century that there were no other spiritual gifts? Well, if that is so, how do you, the reverse end of the theological spectrum, the other end, how do you understand the advance of God's word, of God's work, if without Christ we can do nothing and if that spiritual inheritance which is ours by Christ Jesus is mediated through the church by the stimulus of the head, in the body, even the Lord Jesus Christ? I come back to this assertion that I make, not in the interest of trying to engage in some tortuous argument, not trying to be clever with words, but because it's a deep-seated conviction of my own, that the church has to be, or else she withers like a twig in some very major area, charismatic, drawing from the presidency of the Holy Spirit, knowing the impulse of power which he brings in the church of Jesus Christ. In other words, I'm arguing that what we find here in 1 Corinthians 12, what you find in John's gospel, in Peter, in Paul writing to the Ephesians, in Paul writing to the Romans when he lists spiritual gifts, I'm arguing that in some degree, at any rate, and in a very generous fashion, the church of Christ is, always has been, and always must be dependent upon the charismata, the gracious enablings, that's what that word really means, the gracious enablings of the living God whereby he quickens his church.

Well, when you start to look at the lists of these gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, you find the first is from the 7th verse and down to about the 10th, and then you find some more listed along with ministries of the Spirit, particular offices from the 27th verse and onwards, and if you did me the honor of retaining the bulletin that was produced last week, you will know, and from past memory, that Paul, on two other occasions, tabulates gifts of the Spirit, and so does the Apostle Peter. So, you can work your way through the New Testament and put down the various gifts of the Spirit, and it comes to at least 21, at least 21, and some would argue that even that list is perhaps not exhaustive. Have you ever thought in terms of the gift of celibacy? You say, what is celibacy? Well, it's not a sort of successful commercial traveler.

Celibacy is the gift of being happy, though unmarried. The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7 and verse 7, makes reference to his particular state there, I wish that all men were as I am, but each man has his own gift from God. One has this gift, another has that.

Now, I say that with a tinge of humor, but there's a very real point involved. What I am arguing for is this, that when you consider the gifts of the Spirit, you are not just to be paralyzed by fear of those rather famous gifts, tongues, prophecy, and interpretation, which seems to a lot of people to be the be-all and the end-all of biblical teaching on spiritual gifts. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Spiritual gifts are wide, they are varied, and they are not just mentioned in Corinthians, there are the other passages that I have made reference to. So I'm arguing for the largeness of the list and the varieties of ministries within spiritual gifts. Well, how do we sort of bracket these together? This has been a challenge to commentators for a long time.

What I've tried to do this morning, and I'm only briefly going to run through them, is to gather together the main emphases of the spiritual gifts that are listed not only in 1 Corinthians 12 and referred to in passing in 14, but also in Romans 12, in Ephesians 4, in 1 Peter 4, and so forth. It seems to me that in the first category, this is not necessarily an order of importance, there are the gifts of proclaiming. The gifts of proclaiming.

Peter, in chapter 4 and verse 11 of his first letter, refers to speaking God's word. What is that but proclaiming? Drop back into Romans chapter 12, and there Paul, listing the gifts of the Spirit, refers to prophecy, which again, surely, is the revelation of God's word in a public fashion. Drop down to 1 Corinthians 12, and there you will find the gift of tongues and interpretation, of which we will have to comment more later, as I promised.

So, you've got these gifts. The gifts of proclaiming, if you like. The gifts of utterance.

They must be, in some degree or other, at any rate, within the church down the centuries. And then there is the gifts of comprehending. There are the gifts of comprehending.

That's how I understand the gift of discernment. The special illumination. That's what John Calvin uses as a term to describe it.

Special illumination on specific circumstances. Are we saying that that gift has got no relevance at all to the 20th century? Well, my job seems to be a difficult one. I think on some occasions, some dramatic ones, it would have been infinitely more difficult if the availability in some degree of this gift was not present.

Discernment. The word of knowledge. Paul makes reference to that in his lists in 1 Corinthians 12.

The word of wisdom. Let's bracket all these together. These gifts of comprehending.

And then, I would suggest to you, there are another compartment of gifts. The gifts of relieving. The gifts of relieving.

I'm talking about people who might be in difficulty. Physical difficulty. Financial difficulty.

Psychological difficulty. Now, the apostle Paul makes reference to those who might be so gifted to help people in this situation. He specifically has something to say about this in Romans chapter 12, when he refers to the ministry of encouraging and the ministry of contributing to the needs of others.

And suggests that one should financially, when resources are available, give generously. Now, all these gifts in Romans 12, they are introduced under exactly the same formula as Paul deals with spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. So, you can't draw any distinction.

It is just impossible. Linguistically and theologically, it is just inadmissible. What about the gift of healing? Now, whether some of the modern claims for upholding this gift or having this gift are right or wrong, that's beside the point.

What I am trying to establish at the moment is that there are a category of gifts, which I would refer to as the gifts of relieving. Helping others who are in distress by the grace of the Lord. And then, there are gifts of administration.

Twice that word is used in the list that Paul makes in Romans 12, and also the list that he makes in 1 Corinthians 12. Are we saying that those, that the ministry of administration is no longer in vogue, that this is not required anymore? Of course, you cannot. In 1 Corinthians 12, incidentally, that gift is referred to right down at the bottom of the chapter in the 28th verse.

And then there are the gifts of what I would call empowering. These sometimes are translated in the NIV, and I believe in the authorized version of the Bible, as the gifts of miracles. But that word miracle, really, if you push it back into the original, it has the idea of the release of the energy of God.

And commentators are a little unsure as to how that might perhaps be best interpreted. I believe it's Calvin, again, who suggests this whole area of exorcism. You remember the demon-possessed people who you come across in the Acts of the Apostles, and how the energies of God are proven to be far more dynamic than the controlling power of the devil.

And release comes as the result of the operation of the gift of the empowering of the Lord. What about that empowering in the area of faith? Now, there's a general faith that all of us need to have, but there's also a gift of faith, where for some people faith is heightened, and they're able to do remarkable exploits in the name of God. Who would argue against the notion that George Muller of Bristol had, in a remarkable sense, the gift of faith? Not just at the average level of Christians, but he was taken to Himalayan heights as he trusted God for millions of pounds, literally, in those days.

So you imagine the value of money that was necessary for the maintenance of those orphanages. Take my brother George Verber. Who would think in terms of buying an ocean-going ship with no sponsor of any substance behind him at all, and launching it on the seven seas today? It takes incredible faith, incredible empowerings of the Lord to do things like that.

So this, generally speaking, or these, generally speaking, are the categories in which I find that the gifts slot, if not conveniently, because they overlap. And I can't bring my puny mind to the inspiration of Scripture and create neat divisions, but it's helpful to have those hooks. The gifts of proclaiming, the gifts of comprehending, the gifts of relieving, the gifts of administering, the gifts of empowering.

All these gifts, 21 at least, if not more, within the Church of Christ. Now, don't be so taken up by one or two that you feel that they are more important than others, because that's the gist of the apostle's teaching and the use of the body, and the reason why he's humorous and has this argument between, what is it, the eye and the ear, and the hand and the foot. One saying that it's more important than the other.

The apostle poses, no, that isn't the case. In the body, every little member is necessary for the well-being of the whole. So, thank God for the gifts of help, the gifts of serving, the gifts of encouragement, the gifts of healing, but don't try to tabulate them in a descending order.

Rather, recognize that what God has given is to be valued and prized in accordance with its function and its usefulness at the time of operation. For what purpose are these gifts to be employed? Well, if you're reading in the Greek version of the Bible, you would find in 1 Corinthians 12, time and time again, the word edification comes. That word is stolen from the life of the builder and the laborer at the building site.

It's got the idea of building up. If I had time, but I'm already just straining for time at the moment, I could show you in Romans 12, in Ephesians 4, and also in 1 Peter 4, that this whole concept of gifts being used for the building up of the whole body is common to each time that there is a list in Scripture given of spiritual endowments. So, these are not private things.

These are for the benefit of the church of Jesus Christ to build it up. And if some of these gifts that should be with us now are not present, and unless there is divine reasoning for this, then the body is suffering without the use of that particular or those particular gifts. So, the apostle Paul speaks in the seventh verse of 1 Corinthians 12.

Now, to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. We're back again with the parable of the pounds or the minarets. To each one, a talent is given, and it is to be employed for the common good of the Christian fellowship.

You get exactly the same sort of reasoning in the 25th verse. There should be no division within the body of Christ, for each gift should function for the benefit of the whole. That its part should have equal concern for each other.

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it, and so on and so forth. Well, it might be said, notwithstanding all this, that it does appear that some of these gifts of the Spirit are more ordinary, and others are extraordinary by comparison. But it's interesting that the apostle Paul does not blush in refusing to draw this particular distinction.

I say that because there are commentators who suggest, well, Paul's Corinthian epistle is an early one, you see, and the more sensational aspects of the charismata died out. And even in the early church, there's this transition period, and when you get to a later letter like Romans, then the more remarkable gifts subside. Well, that would be okay, apart from the fact that in Romans 12, Paul refers to prophecy.

And in perhaps the last general letter that he wrote to the Thessalonians, he also says, despise not prophesying. So again, there are problems in trying to take that particular argument. What we can say is this, that within God's gracious provision for his church, there are some gifts in which we are directly and immediately dependent upon God.

They do not reside innate within the church in as much as one member of the church can use those gifts on any specific occasion. I give you an example, take the gift of healing. I have never yet met anyone who possesses the gift of healing.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that I have never met anyone who hasn't been used by God for the healing of someone. But I am saying that I have never yet met anybody who has the gift of healing, which can be operated in any situation as he or she might choose.

That would be a very dangerous bestowal of a spiritual gift. There are certain gifts, it seems to me, that remain directly within the sovereignty of the Lord and are manifested as he wills on specific occasion. But there are other gifts which seem to be buried within the human personality.

Listen to one theologian make comment, and he's a Catholic, if you please. God has given each of us certain attitudes that enable us to perform our service as stewards. These gifts are often buried in the natural man, and they are often misused and distorted in their application independent of God.

But when a man has committed himself to the Lord, God by his spirit will animate all the gifts and talents he has placed in us, and through them he will show his grace and spirit in a new way. So a man who has natural endowments of the abilities to administer comes to a livening experience of the Holy Spirit, is brought into the body of Christ, and that gift which is buried within him, which is latent there, is raised to new potentiality, to new heights in the service of the living God. There are these two ways, it seems, that we are to approach spiritual gifts.

Sometimes the Lord in his economy flashes forth dynamic abilities for men and women on specific occasions to do things which are normally beyond their ken. On other instances, he takes such a ministry of helps and services which might lay there within the human frame at a natural level. They're buried.

They need to be discovered. They need to be heightened. They need to be empowered, and they are lifted up, and they are used in the service of the living God.

This, it seems to me, is how the apostle Paul delights to speak of these gifts. He takes the ordinary and what we would claim to be the extraordinary, and he shows no basic distinction. He says each one of these gifts has importance.

Each person within the church is gifted with one, or two, or several, and when they are willing in the sovereignty of God, they can be used for the advance of the kingdom and the upbuilding of the fellowship of the body of Christ, as they minister faithfully in the area that God has so directed. I preach with passion this morning, and I preach with feeling. These are convictions that have been in my heart for many a long year.

I was brought up within the Pentecostal church. I was brought to accept certain things about the gifts of the Spirit, which I took uncritically until I reached years of perhaps at least moderate discretion, and then started to think some of these things through myself, and I have come to these conclusions, which I humbly offer you. Still a learner at the page of the Bible, I offer and I share with you the charismata are always available within the sovereignty of God.

There seem to be those endowments which are natural compared with those that are supernatural, but the Apostle Paul says that every endowment that is kissed by the power of the Holy Spirit is to be accepted and used, and as we deploy these gifts, then the body of Christ is built up, and the frontiers of the kingdom are pushed forward. We have a lot more to say when we move into 1 Corinthians 14, but may that have been of some help for all of us here this morning. Amen.

490 is our final hymn, O thou who camest from above. 490 Father, again we bow before the authority of your word, by the power of the Spirit, rivet upon our minds this morning all that was of you, and expunge anything that was not. Help us to be honest before your word.

Enable us never to call unclean or unwanted what you have cleansed and pronounced useful. Enable us always to be hungry, to do those things that you would have us to do, and to manifest those graces which you would have us to exhibit. And we ask that in all our striving to serve you, our greatest pursuit might be the pursuit of holiness, and the pursuit of a divine agape, which when realized overflows from one member of the body to another, and makes its own eloquent impact upon an unbelieving world.

So send us on our way rejoicing, knowing your blessing, the blessing of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and until Jesus comes or calls. Amen.