1 Cor No.27 The Gifts No.2

For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of you, each of us, has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ, we who are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, 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. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord.

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The Lord will add his blessing to that reading of his word. Now I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians and chapter 12.

Let's just briefly read together from the 14th verse. It's a passage with which we have become familiar because of it being read during the last two or three Sunday mornings. 1 Corinthians 12 verse 14.

Now the body is not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, because I'm 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'm 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 the sense of hearing be? 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.

And 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 liked 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.

Well, I don't apologize for bringing you back once again to this chapter. I do so for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's not that often preached on in some circles, and I don't really understand why.

Apart from the fact, and this perhaps could be the second reason, that there's a lot of controversial material within it, perhaps only outclassed by the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians. But all God's Word is inspired, is profitable, for instruction, for exhortation, for doctrine, for correction. And we have no right at all to pass over those things which seem to be a little difficult.

Indeed, it's been my policy during our expositions so far, this series, to ensure that those things that seem to be a little difficult have been looked into. I have not deliberately glossed over or passed over any controversial passage of scripture, believing that I'm addressing, in the major part, a mature congregation on a Sunday morning here at the Tab. Now, you will never grasp Paul's teaching on spiritual gifts, unless you allow to come to the forefront of your mind his own understanding of the body of Christ, and the relationship that the body has to the head.

So argues Paul, Christ the head of his church has to the body which are the members. I don't know whether you have ever realized this, but possibly the first doctrine that the logical, brilliant mind of Paul ever came to grasp, ever came to grips with, was the doctrine of the body of Christ. You say, how do you argue that? Well, for this reason, on the Damascus Road, when Jesus apprehends Paul, who was then known by his Hebrew name of Saul, when he stops him, he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Now, in what sense had Paul been persecuting Jesus? Jesus was no longer around, physically.

Well, those who belong to the society of Jesus, those who follow the way, as it was called in those days, are bound into the purposes of Jesus Christ, not just as an organization, but as an organism. So when Saul is looking after the clothes of those who robbed Stephen of life, as they stone him, he, in effect, is guilty with the murderers. And not only was Stephen hurt, even more importantly, Jesus was hurt.

As Saul moves towards Damascus, hell-bent for that capital of Syria, determined to eradicate the Christian Jews from that place, Jesus is going to be hurt, if Paul is successful. And so Paul comes to grips, having been stopped by Jesus on the Damascus Road, that what the head is to the body, so Jesus Christ is to the Church. Now this is a very interesting statement, it's a very interesting idea, it's found throughout the whole of the New Testament.

The essence of the teaching is charismatic, and as I've argued now for three weeks, that is not a new term, it's as old as the day of Pentecost, and it's as vital in the 20th century as it was yesteryear. When Paul says that the Church is the body of Christ, he deliberately does not use an analogy, he makes a positive declaration. Look at verse 27, now you are the body of Christ, not you're like the body of Christ, not I can compare you with a body, but you are the body of Christ.

Christ is the head of the Church, the psoma, to give it the Greek term, the body is linked to him. Now in what sense does the head control a normal body? Well, the body owes its life and direction to the head. The body is not static, the body commences to grow at birth and it continues its progress of growing and ultimately alas for the physical body also decay.

The body is made up of multi-functioning parts, there are hundreds of parts literally in the human anatomy and they all need to be coordinated, working together. In other words, and this is another point, the body has sympathy amongst its members, if it doesn't, you're in trouble, you're in pain, you'll have to see a doctor or take some drug or have some resort to medical treatment. And what is more, the smallest part of the body is vital to the well-being of the whole.

Now I've put five propositions to you, you'll not remember them all, I doubt whether you'll grasp a couple of them, but try and get this concept deeply embedded into your mind, that what your head is to your body, what your body is to your head, so Jesus is to the church. And get hold of this tape and go through those points again and think them out yourself so that it becomes part of your own understanding of Christian theology. Now this body, speaking of the body of Christ, is multi-functional, it has many many parts, this is what Paul says in 12.4, 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 workings but the same God works all of them in all men.

And he goes on to lists, nine of the gifts of the spirit, and then he puts another list at the end of the chapter, and earlier in the book of Romans, earlier that is not historically, but in the way that it's set in the Bible, you come across another list. And when you come to 1 Peter 4, you discover him also tabulating a short list of the gifts, the functions of the body within the church of Christ. But it's particular Peter I want you to stay with just for a moment, 1 Peter 4.10, as you're finding that I'll re-emphasize the fact that Peter is describing and he uses the very word charismatic gifts.

1 Peter 4.10, I'll give you the page number but I'm using an American Bible and I think the pages in the NIV and the British version are different. However you should have got it by now, 1 Peter 4.10, each one, each member should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace, charisma in its various forms. I emphasize the latter word or the penultimate word, various.

God's charismatic gifts in their various forms. That's an interesting word, various in the original. It's got the idea of dappled.

It's got the idea of multicolored. Peter is not dealing so much with the analogy of a body, he's got a tapestry in front of him. Do you remember that carpet that I brought back from Pakistan and showed here, made by some of the OM fellows, at least the refugees that some of the OM fellows are looking after on the northern border of Pakistan and Kathmandu.

Many, many colors all together so that you have that glorious tapestry, that beautiful carpet which I showed. Now this is the idea in Peter's mind. These gifts, they're multifunctional, they're varied and they're absolutely necessary for the body to continue properly.

Well Paul as I say has got the same idea only he sustains the metaphor of human anatomy, the concept of the body and its various constituent parts. There are those, and it's really on the grounds of ingenuity rather than biblical accuracy, who try to argue for just nine gifts of the Spirit, presumably to correspond to the nine fruit of the Spirit, which Paul mentions elsewhere. But sometimes my dear friends, I say this humbly and lovingly, when I come across some booklets and books that are produced today on the doctrine of the Spirit, I shed theological tears.

Because sometimes assertions are made from one particular scripture with no concern at all for the whole context of the teaching of this delightful and so wonderful doctrine of the gifts of the Spirit and the body of Christ in which they function. Nine gifts you could add up to 21 gifts at least in the New Testament. And who is to say that as year follows year, century follows century, and media become more complex in the 20th century than it was in the first, that there will not be additional gifts.

What about the gift of broadcasting? Have you ever tried to preach to a studio in which you've just got a microphone in front of you? It's a completely different ball game than trying to preach in a congregation where there are a lot of people. It needs a different sort of gift. I don't have that gift.

I've tried before now. I tried producing 12 broadcasts which eventually were put out on Transworld Radio some years ago and I felt at the end of that particular assignment absolutely bereft of nervous strength. I just don't have the gift to be able to minister in terms of a studio and no audience, no congregational response at all.

What about gifts in terms of open air ministry? What about gifts in terms of musical ability and so on and so forth? Nowhere in Scripture is there any indication that Paul or Peter has exhausted the gifts of the Spirit, though in their lists they have emphasized very wonderful and in many senses very necessary endowments which Jesus Christ leaves with his church. Well, even if you don't admit to my last piece of reasoning that the gifts are not necessarily exhaustive in the New Testament, one thing does become clear if you restrict your evaluation to the epistles in particular. There are some gifts that seem to be more spectacular than others.

Some appear to be very perfunctory, very mundane. The idea of administration, the idea of hospitality, the ministry of encouragement and so on and so forth. And yet contrasted with these are those wonderful supernatural gifts of healing, of exorcism, of the release of the power of God to, quote again, the original Greek is one of these gifts is translated here, perhaps not that accurately, the gift of miracles.

There are some gifts which seem to be buried within the personality of the man or the woman who when saved they come to the surface. There are some gifts which are bestowed from above and remain always within the province of the head of the church to be able to use at his discretion. I mentioned last week, I have yet to come across a person who residually has the gift of healing.

I believe that there are people who have been used by God for the relief of sick bodies, but I do not know one person who has the gift of healing so that at any time, at any given moment, he can pray for an individual and release that individual in the name of Jesus of their sickness. But as I say, there are occasions when God uses a particular man or a particular woman in these rather sensational supernatural gifts and to that we can only thank God that in his discretion as he seeks to distribute his gifts sovereignly around the body, he brings about his purposes. So there are those gifts which seem to be extraordinary and those not so extraordinary, but Paul intermingles the one with the other in Corinthians and also in Romans and in no way will he be preoccupied with one over against the other.

In no way will he ignore one over against the other. Listen to the Puritan John Owen, those of you who think that the gifts of the Spirit have only been preached and written about in the 20th century. John Owen, a mighty theologian of Reformation times or centuries just following, he says there are two classes of gifts.

There are those such as exceed all the powers and faculties of the mind and such as consist in the extraordinary improvements of the faculties of the mind. Those that are bestowed and those that are buried. If you want it from an Anglican man who seems to be more charismatic these days in his theology and his books are excellent.

His book on the Spirit, the best one I've read produced this century. Michael Green, he says they include the heightening of qualities already present or latent within us. But whether these gifts seem to our poor evaluation to be spectacular or mundane.

The apostle Paul says they all have the stamp of God upon them. Indeed he doesn't just say that the imprimatur of the sun is upon them. He says that all these gifts are traceable back to the Trinity.

Verse 4 and 5, there are different kinds of gifts. The same Spirit. There are different kinds of service.

The same Lord. There are different kinds of working. But the same God works to all of them in all men.

The Triune God you see is at work within the church releasing the ministries and the functions that are necessary for the body of Christ. Those who follow the Lord Jesus to achieve his objective in centuries gone by and also obviously in the 20th century. Well these things perhaps are now becoming I hope I pray in God's grace a little more clear and a little more familiar in our own understanding.

We are the body of Christ and within the body there are gifts bestowed or buried and they are to be used. Well let's sustain the analogy even more and follow by implication the challenge of the apostle Paul. Let's think about what happens to the human body.

Well as I've already conceded my memory seems to be decaying at a rapid rate of knots every week. There is decay in the human body. There are tensions in the human body.

Our bodies are exposed to disease, to virus and so forth. Well it seems to me that the apostle Paul is reckoning that also the body of Christ, the individual member is vulnerable to a certain degree. There is a possibility of discord, of disharmony within the body.

If that wasn't the case then the apostle would not have pleaded in the 25th verse that his reasoning prior to that is argued so that there should be no discord, no schism, no division within the body. Well what sort of things can go wrong within a local church or within the whole community of Christ around the world? Thinking in terms of the illustration from the body. Well what about elephantiasis? What does that mean? Well the hardening of the skin and the swelling of one member of the body so that it has a size that is disproportionate to the rest of the body.

You get that in human nature it's a condition which doctors and nurses will be far far more aware of and familiar with than I am. The idea of one member of the body swelling to the extent that it's in disproportion to the rest of the body. Now it seems that the apostle has this very much in mind because he talks about one big eye.

Can you imagine if you were just one big eye on legs walking around? It would be quite an abhorrent sight wouldn't it? Well it's this idea of the swelling of the body you see. Paul does have this by implication as I'm trying to teach it to you and bring these hidden principles that perhaps are not so obvious on first reading of his argument here. Now does that happen? Indeed it does.

I think that Protestantism particularly since the turn of the century since the reformation has still to attend to Paul's teaching in concept of each member of the body having a specific function and not blowing up so to speak. Not allowing to swell one body, one part of the body more than another. Now I know that in Victorian times and spilling over to the turn of the century and into the twenties and the thirties there were gigantic congregations in London.

There still are in the United States of America and I know that God in his infinite sovereign grace can push aside if he wants certain structural principles of his word for exceptional situations. I think of the ministry of Charles Spurgeon, think of the ministry of Dr. Campbell Morgan, if you please also of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, ministering to thousands of people in one church. Very very difficult to involve that sort of congregation in the concept that's basic to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14.

But God is sovereign, he can do as he wills. But generally speaking this is the structure by which most Christian assemblies and congregations shall function from the Acts of the Apostles, the day of Pentecost until the Parousia, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what does that mean? Well that every part of the body shall do its own particular task.

You see this condition of the swelling up of one over against the other, it can be caused by the assertiveness of one person or it can be caused by an inability or a feigned inability of others to use their God given function and task. Now these are things that perhaps we need to think through a little bit more carefully. God has placed in his body certain gifts and every part of the body is so gifted and one is not to swell up over against the other and as a result to cause another problem in the body.

The problem of what? Well of atrophy. You know what that is? When the hand withers. Here is our Saviour and he deals with this wretched man, this poor man whose hand has withered.

He can't use it. Maybe it's withered simply because there was paralysis and as a result of the paralysis the muscles have gone soft, the tissue has started to decay. Atrophy.

Now not only do you get that in the physical body I argue, you get it in the body that is the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has gifted everyone in some degree of that you cannot argue. I brought to you the parable if you please of the charismatic gifts, the parable of the pounds, the minners, the nobleman distributes a pound, a talent to everyone of his household.

So the Lord Jesus Christ, twice Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians 12, again in Romans 12 and then again in Ephesians 4 and Peter the fisherman in 1 Peter 4. So we are all gifted but there is the acute possibility of atrophy within the body of Christ not using the gift that was granted to you. Do you remember what the Chinese used to do in past centuries to their infant girls when they were born? They would bind their feet and as a result the foot would never develop to its normal size and those poor Chinese ladies were handicapped for the rest of their lives. A sort of forced atrophy set in.

It's possible within the body of Christ. But what else sometimes causes the human body to malfunction? What about arthritis? Arthritis is no joking matter if you suffer from it. What is the condition of arthritis? Do you know by implication Paul makes reference to it in 1 Corinthians 12? Arthritis is caused when one bone rubs against another bone.

The gristle, the fatty tissue is no longer there and you find that poor old lady as she tries to do her shopping, as she crosses the road, that poor man and not necessarily old because arthritis can cripple anyone of any years. My cousin suffered from it at the age of 9 if you will believe that. It means that their body is full of pain.

Bone upon bone. Bone wasn't meant to rub against bone. Remember Ezekiel's vision in the valley of death when this exceedingly great army arose from the dead? Bone came upon bone.

You've got skeletons but no skeletons can form an army. Why? Because even if it was possible for them to live they would be crippled with pain. So Ezekiel goes on to say that the sinew came upon the bone, muscle, fatty tissue, flesh came upon them, skin came upon them and ultimately they are a mighty army that goes forth to conquer and to conquest.

Well what was the prevailing spiritual sickness in the church in Corinth in the day when Paul was writing? It was the condition of spiritual arthritis. Oh yes most definitely I'm not straining the point. I can bring you many examples but you've stayed with me for 26 weeks or some of you and you've heard these expositions.

They had problems in the church. One faction against another faction. One person against another person.

Bone against bone. Pain against pain. Until Paul has to write to them and say look I can congratulate you for certain things but don't you think it's time that you had your arthritis dealt with? Don't you think it's time for you to dwell upon the concept of love which in my analogy stands for the gristle and the fatty tissue? And that exactly prevails today as the teaching of scripture.

We are to coordinate the body of Christ. It's sectioned here in the tab. So it's not bone against bone but there's love, there's gristle, there's fat.

So there's no pain in relationships. So that there's perfect harmony in the utilizing of gifts which God grants to us. A compound condition of danger in the body is fracture.

When something is completely out of joint. There's only one condition more severe and that's amputation. And there is a possibility says Paul as he's writing these instructions and using the analogy of the body that some of these parts are just about to amputate themselves.

Be cut off from the rest of the body. Like in Jesus' teaching on the vine. He speaks of part of the branch being lopped off and then it's no longer got life because the branch doesn't have life in itself.

Outside of the vine there is no life. Outside of Christ there is no life. Unless you draw your sap from Christ then you can't possibly function and serve him.

Well all these things the apostle Paul teaches and warns us of. And just in case you think that I'm straining the language then let me give you other scriptural proof to show you that my treatment of it is permitted by scripture. When the apostle Paul in Ephesians 4 and that particular passage makes reference to the gifts of the spirit.

Certain lists that he puts there in the 16th verse. Maintaining the analogy of the body. Ephesians 4.16. He argues for coordination, for the lack of arthritis, for smoothness in serving the living Christ.

From him, Ephesians 4.16. From him, Jesus Christ, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Ephesians 4.16 is the summary. It has brilliantly encapsulated within the verse all that Paul is referring to in his extended analogy of the church to the human body in 1 Corinthians 12.

From Jesus, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Now here's the punch. To what extent are you functioning in the body here in the tabernacle? To what sense are you an arthritic limb? To what sense are you fractured or almost amputated? To what sense do you cop out of certain aspects of our activity? Or to what degree are you suspicious of other people's talents and inclinations? It needs you to do exactly what I did and it was a painful process during this week to ask myself to what degree is the body in the tabernacle healthy or unhealthy because of my contribution.

You say, well that's putting it quite boldly, you're the pastor. So, who said that the pastor's ministry and function has any more importance in the sight of God is the little lady who cleaned out brasses for the last twenty years and whose life in the hospital in Worthing here in testimony during the last week has virtually won someone else to the Saviour, although she could never preach an address from this pulpit. The eyes of God and when we reach heaven and discover what his evaluation is we're going to be in for some very, very big surprises as to what God considers to be a prime ministry and the functioning of an important gift in the concept of a local assembly.

So I ask you, are you amputated or are you bound in? Are you part of us but arthritic? Are you suspicious of other people? Have we got an ultra-conservative group on one hand and an ultra-charismatic group on the other as though we're not part of the body? I went to the University of London some five years ago and took some lectures on how to run churches. I failed miserably but that's beside the point. One of the things the lecturer said was it's impossible for Christian people of one persuasion to live alongside Christian people of another persuasion and they're all evangelical that he's referring to.

And I thought if I feel that that is the case I shall quit the preaching ministry. Do you know that you're going to share heaven with every member of the body of Christ? And it's good to get a sort of pre-run down here on earth as to how you're going to relate for eternity because that by definition is a pretty long period of time. Here the Apostle Paul speaks about the gifts.

You can't understand the gifts outside of the body. I remember one lady saying to me, you know I've been a Christian for, I forget how old she was, probably in the seventies, I've been a Christian for fifty odd years. She said, I don't have a spiritual gift.

And I was amazed to listen to what she had to say. She'd been under the ministry of Bible expositors that made me blush to think that she came along here to listen at the tabernacle. What she was really saying is that she didn't understand what a gift was.

And that's a different matter. God en-gifts all who come within the body of his Son, the mystical body. And he tells us to encourage one another in the exercise of gifts.

As for supernatural gifts, those are more dramatic. Well perhaps we'll go into them more particularly when dealing with 1 Corinthians and chapter 14, that trio that are infamous, loved by some and disliked by others of Tongues interpretation and prophecy. But that's for a future time.

Let me say this, just for the moment, that God is sovereign. I believe God can do anything, whenever he wants, within his body. It's his sovereignty, it's his body, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, Father, Son and Holy Spirit operating within the body, bringing about what they want.

And it is impossible for us to function for Christ, when will we realize this, unless we're in the body, unless we're in the vine, unless we're drawing sap if you please, or the energies of the Spirit if you prefer. Day by day this concept of charismatic as a new novel 20th century idea is ridiculous. But what is to be applauded is anything that brings the evangelical church back to scripture to consider how does the body function and what are the capabilities of the body and the fact that the body is not to be filled with an arthritic condition, an atrophy, but it's to be a living, healthy, renewed body, moving out in the name of Jesus Christ, achieving his purposes, bringing the glorious gospel to men and women who so desperately need it.

This is how I understand Paul speaking in 1 Corinthians 12 and I submit what I'm saying for your assessment from the rest of scripture and if what I say seems to have the witness of God's Spirit in your heart, then let's together try and work out some of the implications of all this as the weeks and months roll by. Amen. Amen.