We are continuing in Series 4, in our study of 1 Corinthians. Welcome to this episode. Series Four is devoted to issues that Paul found, concerning public worship in the church in Corinth. He had received information that things had gone wrong in the church, as explained in previous episodes, through a visit from a delegate from the church that came to see him, and a letter that they had sent with some particular questions. 

Recap and Background 

There were so many problems in the church in Corinth, and one of the biggest issues concerned the use of spiritual gifts in public worship. We have already seen in the last couple of episodes some other major problems in the way the meetings were run in Corinth - women's behaviour in terms of their clothing and showing disrespect for their marriage commitments through changing their clothing, and some major problems with the conduct of the Lord's Supper or Communion. Now, Paul begins to address another very important issue and this concerns spiritual gifts.  

In the Early Church, there were miraculous abilities that God gave Christians, which enabled remarkable things to happen: for example, gifts of healing and gifts of prophecy. We see these in the book of Acts. If you studied ‘The Spreading Flame’ Collection, you will have seen many examples of the remarkable gifts of the Spirit that the Early Church used. As history has gone along, many denominations have formed where these gifts are no longer active, and churches have become more traditional, more formal. There are often many good aspects of those churches, but they don't have those remarkable gifts, miraculous powers, that individual Christians possessed in the Early Church. But in recent centuries in the Church, there have been many renewal and revival movements in different countries - many Pentecostal movements, and more recently, many charismatic movements. All of them have been characterised by the return of the spiritual gifts that existed in the Early Church, and which Paul is talking about in this episode. 

As a young Christian in the 1970s, I experienced a remarkable move of the Spirit and was able to exercise and participate in a number of these spiritual gifts. For those listening, some of you will have been very much influenced by Pentecostal Christianity or by Charismatic Christianity but some of you may not have been. From whatever point of view you come, let us take a fresh look at what Paul said, because in chapters 12, 13 and 14 of 1 Corinthians, we have the most important teaching in the New Testament about the gifts of the Spirit.  

What Paul had heard was that these gifts of the Spirit were not being used in a positive way, because, as I have mentioned in the last two episodes, public meetings were chaotic, and things were not working well. In this episode, Paul takes a step back. He is going to deal with how to handle these gifts of the Spirit in the public context in chapter 14, but in the first half of chapter 12, he gives a basic list - an explanation about the function of the gifts of the Spirit in the church. Therefore, this is a very important chapter for us. 

Holy Spirit’s Presence in Our Lives 

“Now about the gifts of the spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is cursed’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them, and in everyone, it is the same God at work.” 1 Corinthians 12: 1 – 6 NIV 

What do we mean when we speak of a gift of the Spirit? A gift of the Spirit is a supernatural ability given to a Christian to build up the church and reveal the gospel to outsiders.  Before we talk about the gifts, we are going to talk about the presence of the Holy Spirit. Paul's teaching, especially in Romans and Galatians, but also here in 1 Corinthians, is very clear - God's presence on earth is through the Holy Spirit. God the Father is in heaven. Jesus, the Son of God, is seated at his right hand in heaven. But from the Day of Pentecost onwards, the Holy Spirit of God has been poured out on the church. God's presence that we feel in our lives is the Holy Spirit living within us individually and felt by us, often in a very significant way when we gather together. The Holy Spirit is not a force like electricity - an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person. It is God himself. He may be invisible, but he is personal. When you become a Christian, according to the teaching of the New Testament from Jesus onwards, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you as an individual. Every single one of you. It is the Spirit who enables us to be born again into God's Kingdom. Jesus said, in John 3: 3, when talking to a Jewish leader by the name of Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again.”  He went on to say in verse 5, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”Jesus is saying that just as we are physically born - born of the flesh, born of water - so we need to be spiritually born. To become a Christian is to become a new person, to be completely renewed, to start a new life. The energy and power, and the reality that makes this possible, is that God comes to live within us because our sins are forgiven. We are cleansed, and he comes to own us, to live within us and to empower us.This is the basic New Testament doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit. Isn't that wonderful? The Spirit is within us,  

A List of the Gifts 

According to Paul here, in 1 Corinthians 12, the Spirit gives us gifts – powers and abilities that we didn't have, that are designed to strengthen and build up the church, and to reveal the gospel to outsiders and unbelievers. You and I can become the agents of God and his supernatural power in our lives and in the world around us. Isn't that amazing? This is not just about leaders. Paul emphasises in this chapter that it is the whole church that God can use if we are willing and available. There are many gifts, but there is one Spirit.  

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one just as he determines.” 1 Corinthians 12: 7 – 11 NIV 

This list doesn't include every single gift that the New Testament describes, but it includes most of them. The Holy Spirit living within us decides that you might have a gift of miraculous powers, and another person might have the gift of prophecy. He gives us his gifts. They are not because we have achieved anything or because we are better than anyone else. He graciously gives us the spiritual gifts. It requires understanding the Scripture and faith to believe that this could be possible. Some Christians are not even open to this possibility; they don't believe that God could use them in any miraculous way. Paul wants that to change. He wants us to believe that we can be used, and to be available to God. 

What are these gifts?  

The message of wisdom - probably refers to the ability to preach and teach wisely, and to help people, with great wisdom that didn't come from our own thinking.  

The message of knowledge - people have different views of this, but it probably refers to the particular ability to teach clearly in the church.  

The gifts of faith - this is not faith for salvation. It is faith for God to intervene in difficult circumstances and bring about a miracle. That is the sort of faith that Jesus had when he came to the village of Bethany, and he saw the tomb of Lazarus, closed with a big stone in front of it. Lazarus had been in there several days, and all the people were crying and mourning for the loss of Lazarus. Yet Jesus, in his heart, had faith - the gift of faith - for a miracle of resurrection. He said, “Take the stone away” and called Lazarus out with a loud cry. That is the gift of faith. You and I can have a gift of faith and ability to believe for God to do something in the almost impossible situations that we have to face in our lives. Sometimes you may find God gives you that ability to believe that something truly impossible is going to happen: a financial miracle, a church planted, a healing miracle, a miracle of God's provision - the gift of faith. 

The gifts of healing - Paul speaks in the plural, ‘gifts’. A gift of healing is the ability to pray for the sick with such faith that they will be healed by supernatural power, rather than by the recovery of the body through its own powers or through medicine, or through the power of witchdoctors or any other occult force. The healing described here is physical healing that is not explained by medicine or any other force. It happens miraculously. 

I remember speaking some years ago to a lady who had been crippled with a severe back injury, and she was in a wheelchair. She had had many operations, and there was no possibility medically of her ever coming out of that wheelchair. She described to me the occasion when she went to a Christian meeting, and an evangelist came over to her and told her that he felt that that day was the day she would be healed. She got up from the chair on that day. I spoke to her about ten years afterwards, and she had walked ever since. There is no medical explanation for such events. It is literally a gift of healing.  

The gift of miraculous powers. God can sometimes give to Christians miraculous powers concerning areas other than physical healing. An example from the Gospels is Jesus feeding the 5000. Here is a miracle. It is not to do with physical healing. It is to do with God's provision. This is sometimes where the greatest miracles occur. Jesus believed that the five loaves and two fishes, when they were dedicated to God and broken up into pieces, would multiply and multiply and multiply. And so it was. It kept happening, and the disciples could hardly believe that the food kept increasing and increasing, and every single person had enough food in that crowd of 5000 men, plus women and children. That is a miracle of provision in the natural world. God can sometimes give us faith for financial provision, or for material provision. That is one of the greatest needs that many Christians have, especially in poorer countries. The Holy Spirit is able to give some people the confidence to pray, and trust God for divine provision and multiplication of resources. There are several times in my life and ministry when I believed things were financially impossible, and I prayed and trusted God and have seen huge amounts of money made available for the work of the Kingdom - a miracle has taken place.  

The gift of prophecy. Many of us are more familiar with this gift. Prophecy is the ability to speak God's words into a particular situation - God's message about something in the present, or something in the near future - his will for what should be done, a form of guidance for us. Our main guidance comes from the Scriptures, but prophecy can often give specific guidance to us, and we find this takes place in the New Testament through prophets. The most well-known is the prophet Agabus, who appears in the book of Acts on two different occasions. For example, once he came to a church in Antioch. This is recorded in Acts chapter 11. He said to the church that there was going to be a famine, and that they should collect money to support churches that were going to suffer the conditions of famine. Indeed, a famine did take place a few years later, and the collection raised helped poor churches in a different district. That is a prophecy - a prediction of something coming up in the future and helping people to do something to prepare for that situation.  

The gift of distinguishing between spirits -distinguishing between three things: one, the work of the Holy Spirit, and secondly, the work of demonic spirits, and thirdly, just human efforts and human ideas. Distinguishing between those things is very important, particularly distinguishing between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of demonic spirits. For example, this operates in the area ofhealing. Sometimes those involved in the occult and in witchcraft claim powers of healing. One such person came into my church about 20 years ago. The lady started praying for people in informal meetings, and a lot of people came to me and said that she was praying for them to be healed of this or that, but they were very uneasy about this prayer. I spoke to the lady, and I quickly discerned, using this gift of distinguishing between spirits, that she was not using the Holy Spirit. I found out that she was involved in an occult activity. In fact, she told me what the activity was by the end of the conversation. We need to distinguish between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of demonic spirits seeking to do similar things. 

Speaking in tongues. We are going to discuss this in much more detail later in this series on 1 Corinthians 14. Speaking in tongues is an amazing gift. It is a gift of prayer and worship. This gift was first manifested in the Church in a big way on the Day of Pentecost, where the early Christians suddenly found, as they were worshipping God, that they were speaking in languages they had not learned - not speaking in their own languages. They were speaking sometimes in the languages of other nations and sometimes in heavenly languages, as a means of praying to God, thanking God, and worshipping him. It became a worship and prayer language, which we call ‘speaking in tongues’.  

The gift of interpreting tongues. Again, this is something that I will speak about in much more detail later. To interpret tongues is to listen to somebody praying in a language that you don't understand, and they don't understand, and being able to explain what that person is saying to those around at the time. 
 

God’s Purpose in Giving Gifts 

This list is remarkable. It is not every single gift that God gives but Paul wants to remind the Corinthians of the sorts of gifts that God gives and why these gifts are given.  First, to strengthen the church and secondly, to reach unbelievers. For example, a healing miracle can have a great influence on unbelievers. It opens uptheir imagination to think there is a great God who did this miracle. Who is that God? That is exactly what happened in the New Testament in the book of Acts; very often evangelism followed a great healing miracle. 

The gifts of the Spirit can be very helpful in strengthening the church. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be in a church meeting, as I have been on many occasions, when you gather together, and a prophet speaks a message of encouragement and strengthening from God to that congregation at that time - to encourage them to keep going in what they are doing? We feel built up and strengthened and encouraged because God is speaking into our situation. The gifts of the Spirit have these two important functions. 

Reflections 

Are the gifts of the Spirit for today? Most certainly they are. Paul never says anything to suggest that the gifts of the Spirit will die out in the history of the church, or that the gifts of the Spirit are only for the days of the Apostles in which he lived. The gifts of the Spirit are for today. Whenever there is a renewal or revival in the Church, you will find some, or all, of these gifts starting to be manifested, and people begin to exercise these gifts again. That is a wonderful reality. This has happened many times in the last two or three centuries, in different parts of the world. When there is a renewal, it is actually the Holy Spirit coming in power - the Holy Spirit being poured out on the Church to strengthen the Church and to advance its mission. The gifts of the Spirit come alongside that outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  

The second thing is that gifts are for the common good. They are for other people's benefit, not for your benefit. If you have a spiritual gift - for example, miraculous powers or healing – it is not for you. It is not to show that you are an important person. It is not to make you feel proud. It is a gift to use to serve other people for the common good. Gifts are to be shared. Gifts of the Spirit are not for leaders only. Paul doesn't talk at all about leaders in this passage, as you probably notice. The Holy Spirit gives the gifts to different people in the body of Christ all the way through the Church. The Spirit will pour out his gifts. 

As we finish, there is more to say about speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues and prophecy. We come back to those in 1 Corinthians 14. We have been reminded in this passage that there is a supernatural dimension to the individual Christian life and the local church life that we need to keep recapturing. We need to keep seeking God for him to pour out the Spirit and we need to use the gifts of the Spirit that he has given us.  

Paul continues thinking about this area in the next episode by reminding the church that they are like a human body. Everyone fits together and everyone should be working together, just like the different parts of my body right now are working together in order to communicate with you. So, the church is a body and as we work together and collaborate, then the gifts of the Spirit can easily be used and bring great blessing to the church, and great blessing to outsiders as they find out about Christ.  

Do join us for the next episode.