What’s A Church To Do?
Studies in First Corinthians
30^th in the Series

Pastors often lament the state of the church today. Early on in my Christian walk, and in my ministry, I spent significant time with others who had a genuine desire to see the church be the church described in the New Testament. We wanted to see the churches of which we were a part be the living, dynamic, Spirit filled band of committed disciples of Christ that we were sure was God’s intention.

If only we could get back to the New Testament kind of pattern, we thought, we would have it right. Little did we understand, perhaps because of our relative youth, limited experience, and biblical naïveté, that the churches described on the pages of the New Testament were far from perfect. And the church in Corinth is perhaps the prime example of that. The reality of our situation was that we had New Testament churches, we just didn’t know it.

Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth reminds us of the reality that all churches are imperfect, and the simple reason for this is that they are made up of imperfect people. Where there are people, there are problems, even with Christian people. Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you sinless. Becoming a Christian ought to make you sin less–– that is true. But as long as we are in these bodies of flesh, we will continue to have problems. I remember hearing one pastor say that the problem with the church is people. If you could just get rid of the people, you could get rid of the problems. However, there is a problem with that thinking, namely that the church is people. So when you get rid of the people, you get rid of the church, because the church is not a building. It is people, born again by the Spirit of God, and placed in a local fellowship of other believers in order to be discipled and trained, encouraged and challenged, and even admonished and rebuked, until we grow to maturity into the image of Christ. And that can be messy business.

We now arrive at the 12^th chapter. Already Paul has dealt with many problems in the church. Now he turns his attention to the issue of spiritual gifts–– something that can transform a church negatively, if abused, and positively, if biblically used.

Our title for the message of this text is "Spiritual Gifts for All." It captures the essence of what God desires to do in the lives of his people. Actually, chapters 12 through 14 deal with the topic of spiritual gifts, with this section providing an introduction and general framework. It is vital that we understand this section, because the gifts are such a controversial subject, especially the gift of tongues.

So many people today claim that they have discovered the key to tapping into the power of God through the gifts of the Spirit. But not everyone is giving you a true biblical picture. There are false prophets today. Jesus himself warned of the coming of false messiahs, doing miraculous acts of power. So how can you tell what is true and what is false?

Fortunately, God has given us an infallible key. The key is the Bible itself. What does the Bible say? This should be the first question we ask when we hear some new teaching. What does the Bible say? It never ceases to amaze me how many Christians are unwilling to allow the Bible to be the final word on this topic. While we pride ourselves on being biblically based evangelicals, far too often we are willing to substitute our experiences and traditions for a plain reading of Scripture.

As he opens this section, Paul declares that he did not want them to be ignorant. Unfortunately, much of the ignorance today among Christians comes from a lack of study of God’s word. The way he uses the word ignorant is not the way that it is commonly used today, as some sort of insult. The basic meaning of ignorant is simply "without knowledge." Someone said that all of us are ignorant, just about different things. Until we have the correct knowledge about something, we are ignorant about it.

This is the reason for this section–– to give us the knowledge we need concerning spiritual gifts. As Christians, we are not to live like pagans, as we used to, and be easily influenced and led astray by either our emotions or a lack of knowledge. Paul wanted them to be grounded in their knowledge of how God works through his Spirit in the lives of believers.

These Christians in Corinth had transitioned from a pagan way of life characterized by idolatry and now had to be retrained by the transforming of their minds. Too often people live simply by following their feelings, or they place too much weight on experiences they have had or that they have heard others have had. This does not mean that feelings are not valuable or that experiences are not important. But we can never base our walk with God solely on experiences or feelings. Our walk must be grounded in the word of God.

God wants to bring us to a place of maturity. That takes training, because maturity is not instant. We must take the time to study, to be taught, and to learn. It is called discipleship and it is one of the things that the devil fights the hardest against in the church today.

Discipleship, in my view, is the real cutting edge issue in the church today. And it boils down to a question of surrender to Christ as Lord. It is easy for us to miss the point that Paul is making in verse three, when he mentions the two phrases, "Jesus be cursed" and "Jesus is Lord." He is not giving us a simple test of how to tell whether someone is speaking by the Spirit of God. Rather, he is pointing us to the issue of discipleship or allegiance to Christ. These two phrases are both confessions of faith.

William Barclay, the Scottish New Testament interpreter, gives several possible scenarios for why someone would use a phrase like "Jesus be cursed." [William Barclay, Corinthians, 106-107] One possible answer is that in their synagogues prayers, the Jews included a regular cursing of all apostates. Jesus would certainly have been considered that. Furthermore, the Jewish law laid down the following: "Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree." Jesus, of course, had been crucified. Additionally, the Jews might make those attracted by Christianity pronounce this curse or suffer excommunication. And we certainly know that by the time of the Roman persecution Christians were required to curse Christ or die. Christians were required to blaspheme the name of Christ and acknowledge that Caesar was Lord.

The point was that the battle cry for the Christian was then and is now "Jesus is Lord!" That is a statement of faith–– a statement of allegiance. It is probably the earliest confession of the church. It was a declaration of our loyalty and commitment to Christ. Unfortunately, in today’s culture, words have little meaning. But for us to say that Jesus is Lord is to take a stand.

Paul was attempting to educate them concerning what God was up to in giving the gifts of the Spirit. The Christians in Corinth were having the same kind of problem that often occurs when someone has something that someone else does not have. And the problem of God gifting his people with various kinds of gifts was that some wanted to compare their gifts with others to determine whether they had the better gifts.

Notice how Paul emphasizes the different and the same in these verses. He says that there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit, different kinds of service, but the same Lord, different kinds of working, but the same God. Do you see what he is doing? He is making the point that the same triune God distributes these differing gifts based on his purpose, not to reward us. The focus is on God, not on the gifts, and not on us.

He further goes on to say that each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit. In other words, every Christian has been given at least one gift, or manifestation of the Spirit’s working. And the reason for this? It is for the common good. We have not been given a gift so that we could become prideful over the gift or compare our gift with another person’s gift. We have been given the gift to benefit someone other than ourselves. It is for the common good, to benefit the entire church.

The antidote for ignorance is information. But information alone is not enough. Many people have information, yet never act on the information they have. Don’t be ignorant. Do be informed. And finally, do be involved.

Paul begins to list the various gifts of the Spirit individually. As we look at this section of Scripture, we must remember that this is not an exhaustive list of every gift that it is possible for a Christian to receive. There are other gift lists in Scripture that also need to be considered. But that is a little beyond the scope of our study in this text.

We will take a look at these gifts briefly. The first mentioned is the message of wisdom. Remember, when we’re talking about the gifts of the Spirit, we are not referring to merely human abilities, but rather to supernatural abilities. The message of wisdom is the God-given ability to know what to do in a specific situation. It is similar to, but slightly different than the next gift he mentions–– the message of knowledge. Here we are talking about a supernatural ability to know something that could otherwise not be known by you, given your present circumstances. Some people confuse knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom knows what to do with the knowledge. We need both.

He goes on to mention faith as a gift. All of us have faith, but the faith given here seems to be a powerful ability to believe God for extraordinary things. The Bible teaches us that without faith it is impossible to please God, so every Christian must exercise faith. But the gift of faith seems to be of a higher level of intensity.

Gifts of healing and miraculous powers are mentioned next. Some people have problems believing that God still works in miraculous ways today. They would consign these gifts to a category of "sign gifts" that were only intended for the time of the apostles, when the early church first came into existence. But while they build an elaborate case for their theory, it is difficult to do it from a plain reading of the Bible. It seems to reflect more of a rationalistic approach to the practice of Christianity than they would probably be willing to admit. Does God still heal today? Does God still do miracles today? I believe the answer is yes. Can he use individuals in that process? Again, I believe he can. Why does he not do more of that in our midst? I must admit that I do not have the answer. I have certain theories. Perhaps it is because our culture is so steeped in rationalism and anti-supernaturalism that we literally don’t believe that he can.

He goes on to mention prophecy. Here again, there is a lot of misinterpretation. Exactly what is prophecy? Many people believe that it is a foretelling of the future. And there is some warrant for that in the Old Testament. Some of those prophets did predict future events in their prophecies. But mostly, prophecy is a forth telling of the message of God. You see that both in the Old and New Testaments. And in the New Testament, it seems to refer to the speaking forth of God’s message to the current situation.

The next gift mentioned is the distinguishing between spirits. What is this? Quite simply, it is the supernatural power of discernment–– and ability to recognize what may appear to be from God but is not. And with the abuse of the spiritual gifts that we see in the contemporary church, this gift seems to be needed now more than ever. Far too many people let almost anything pass for the working of God Spirit. Sometimes the more far out something is, the more they claim that it is a new and fresh move of the Spirit of God. It may be otherwise, but to suggest so opens one up to accusations of quenching the Spirit.

The final two gifts he mentions are tongues and interpretation of tongues. We will see more about these two gifts in chapter 14. Speaking in tongues is the supernatural ability to speak to God in a language the speaker does not know. We will see in a future message that it is always directed to God in the form of prayer or praise. Consequently, the spiritual gift of the interpretation of tongues is the ability to reveal to those present what is being said to God in prayer or praise. This is not a translation, but an interpretation. But it is also not prophecy either. Prophecy is directed to people. Tongues are directed to God, and the interpretation of tongues is directed also to God for the people’s benefit. Remember, all of the gifts are given for the common good.

This section closes with the important truth that the spiritual gifts are given by the same Spirit, who gives to each of us what he wants us to have to accomplish his purposes, just as he determines. As a Christian, you have at least one gift, given by the Spirit, who lives in you, to manifest God’s activity for the benefit of other people.

Here is the challenge! Unwrap your gift! Don’t be ignorant. Be informed. But also be involved in the life of the Spirit. The only way that will happen is if you make it a priority to discover your gift and use it. How, you say? The first step is to pray. Ask God to show you the gifts you have been given. Then look around for something to do. Do you see something that you are passionate about? Step out in faith. Take the risk. So what if it doesn’t work out? That is not a failure. It is simply a step in the right direction, leading you closer to the place of ministry God has for you. It may take a process of trial and error for you to discover exactly where you fit best in the work of God. But when you find it, everything will fall into place. You will begin to embark upon an adventure that God uniquely shaped you for. And it will be a delight.

Copyright © 2004 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.

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