CORINTHIANS on SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Brian GC Huggett

      

The so-called spiritual gifts that many Christians are claiming to themselves today are no longer available to believers.  The Charismatic movement of today is further out of line than the Church in Corinth at the time of Paul's letters. 

The Corinthian church abused the spiritual gifts in their worship; especially the gift of tongues and Paul wrote his letters to correct this.  He laid down the proper attitude believers were to have toward the gifts and each other, (1Corinthians12); and also the control needed for their true spiritual function, chapter 14. 

Believers were not to think of themselves as greater because of a supposed superiority in spiritual gifts, for God the Holy Spirit bestowed those as He willed, they were not the results of human merit.  Nor were they for individual aggrandisement or pleasure but were for the edification of the church.  If the church was not edified then the gifts were misused.  

The believers in the church in Corinth were inflated with pride and treated with contempt those with presumed lesser gifts, their attitude was, "I am greater, and therefore I have no need of you" (1Corinthians 12:15-21).  God the Holy Spirit had given the gifts; therefore no divisions of pride or arrogance should be permitted.  Chapter 13 reveals the more excellent way, the only way to Christian unity.

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing...”

If I have the gift of tongues, even of angels; if I have the gift of forth telling, even of foretelling; if I have the gift of knowledge, even of omniscience; if I have the gift of faith so as to move mountains; if I have all these gifts but do not have love, I am nothing.  Love, that ingredient of personality so necessary to fulfil all the Law and the prophets, is one of and encompasses all the fruits of the Spirit.

Galatians 5: 22,23 "...But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such things there is no law..."

Compare with 1Corinthians 13:4-7. "...Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..."

There are two words in the New Testament that define love.

1.   The Gk. agape is used for the love that initiates beneficial action toward others (God so loved the world).  Christians are told to so love the brethren and their neighbour.

2.   The Gk. phileo is a love of response.  It is an emotional love that is stimulated by the attractiveness of another being.  We are never commanded to phileo anyone, but it is a fact that we do phileo many.

To love - agape the brethren as commanded by God requires something more than human capacity.  Any unbeliever can love - phileo another human being; all it needs is something attractive, something appealing, and something admirable in the object.  This love is an emotional response to the attractive, the appealing, the admirable, and therefore a love of response; it is subject to external stimulation and can therefore be called ‘subjective’ love.

The vital difference in the two words can best be seen in Ephesians 5:22, 25.  A husband and wife may have phileo love (affection) for each other but it is not obligatory.  Being subject to the leadership and authority of the man (on the woman’s part) is necessary, but the husband, in all fairness, cannot expect that submission if he does not love (agape) his wife.

Agape love does not come easily, especially in men; it is the ultimate virtue and not easily attained.  It cannot be counterfeited nor can it be stimulated; it is the slow and often painful attainment of all the personality attributes delineated in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  

Love is patient, is kind; love is not envious; love is not vain, is not puffed up;

Love does not behave indecently, does not pursue its own things, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;

Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.

Love quietly covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

Love never fails. 

Christ Jesus lived his life according to the principle of agape love, and believers are commanded so to do.  Works will follow agape love; they will be the result of love, toward the brethren and our neighbour. 

To offer ones works as proof of love, without the inner assurances that such love engenders (joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) is like putting the cart before the horse, they will not be productive, and we will be seen as no more than a noisy gong or a discordant cymbal.

All human beings, believers and unbelievers alike are capable of subjective love and as nothing the unbeliever does can be classed as the Christian way of life it is obvious then, this ‘subjective’ love is not the love commanded of the Christian.

The mature Christian’s love of the brethren and his neighbour is a supernatural love, a love that requires him to love the unlovely and the ungodly.  This Christian love is beyond the unbelievers capacity, for it can only be fulfilled by the filling of the Spirit, therefore it is not a love from the emotions but a love engendered by God himself in the depths of the human soul; a love brought into being as the soul is conformed to the image of God the Son, Jesus Christ.  As we come to know God we grow to love him, and as we have the word of God instilled in our thinking in all its fullness, we become conformed to his image; we replace human viewpoint with divine viewpoint and we learn to love as God loves.

Ephesians 4:23-24. “...be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

1John 4:16-17 “...and we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.  God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, so also are we in this world..."

It is this conformity to Christ’s image that forms in us an ‘objective’ love, a love that depends on the inner resources of integrity, justice and truth; characteristics of God that have become ours.  This business of turning to strangers in the adjacent pew and telling them that you love them is emotional lunacy and not in tune with the scriptural admonition of loving the brethren whatsoever.  You can love strangers, but only when you love as God loves. 

To know God is to love him, for God is attractive, appealing and admirable to an infinite degree.  To have God’s love perfected in us however requires more than knowledge, more than a gift to speak God’s word, more than the gift of tongues.  To have God’s love perfected in us requires obedience to his commands and adherence to his will and way.  Knowing God is to love him; loving God and observance of his commands is essential to loving the brethren.

1John 4:20 - 5:2. "...If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brothers, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen, and this commandment we have from Him, that the one who Loves God, should love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments..."

Agape love (objective love) therefore, is the very foundation of Christianity; for it embodies all the Law and the Prophets in the fruit of the Spirit.  Objective love was to be the motivating power and the witness of the Christian, not the interim gifts of tongues, miracles, healing etc.; for, love will never fail; though there have been gifts of prophecy, they have been done away; though there have been gifts of tongues, they have ceased; though there were gifts of knowledge, they have been superseded.  The Christians of the interim knew in part, and prophesied in part; but when the perfect came, that which was partial was done away."

This past tense rendition of 1Corinthians 13: 8-10 is based upon the word ‘perfect’; taken from the Greek teleion and denoting fulfilment, completion, perfection; its significance lies in its gender.  In the Greek we have the masculine, feminine or neuter gender, depicting whether the subject matter is male, female or neither.  In the case of this word teleion it is neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter; leaving us with no other conclusion but that the ‘perfect’ which was to come was not the Lord Jesus Christ at His second coming, but an object.  The ‘perfect’ is not to be ascribed to the event of Christ’s coming; an event is nothing in itself for it relies on a subject or an object to give it substance.

Another aspect to this point, which disproves the assertion that ‘the perfect’ refers to the event of the Lord’s return, is the fact of the abiding gifts of faith, hope and charity (1Corinthians 13:13).   These gifts abide even after the putting aside of the interim gifts of tongues etc., yet Romans 8:24-25 and Hebrews 11:1 show that both hope and faith are done away with when the substance of our hope and our faith is seen.  This confirms that the interim gifts are removed sometime prior to the return of Christ.   

Now, if the ‘perfect’ were in the masculine then there would be no other application, for the Lord Jesus Christ (the living word), would be the fulfilment of the partial.  The word in question however, is in the neuter gender, therefore must be an object and must have the power and authority of God to fulfil and do away with the ‘partial’ which God the Holy Spirit put in place. 

   

The ‘perfect’ can only be the written word of God, the Bible.  The canon of scripture was not completed until A.D. 95 when John wrote the book of Revelation; Paul wrote his Corinthian letter in 56 A.D. forty years before and for the particular purpose of straightening out the abuse of the gifts, which were designed by God to fill the void between the Testaments.  The gift of tongues in God’s design was to catch the attention of and preach the gospel to Jewish people who spoke other languages (Acts 2:4-11).  It was not to be abused in the Church services, as was the Corinthian custom. 

1Corinthians 14 laid down the rules for its use, there was to be no use of tongues if there was no interpretation, vs. 28; there was to be no more than three speakers, vs.27; and women were to keep silent in the church, vss. 34, 35.  This last was not an injunction against women chattering during the meeting but a command to be silent in the Church; the position of teacher was not for women.  Every use of the verb speak 'laleo' in this passage, is as an authoritative utterance for the edification of the church and women were not to make such utterances.

   

The most definitive reason for the use of the gift of tongues is to be found in vs. 22 and all use of it was subject to this statement. "...So then (a conclusion drawn from vs. 21) tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers..."

      

If the gift was abused and all or many spoke in tongues the reason for the gift was destroyed and the people for whom it was designed would say, “...you are mad” vs.23.

The reason for the gifts was as stated, to fill a void, the void between the Old and the New Testament writings.  The death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ prepared the way for an age of grace to be ushered in by the coming of God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  In Romans 10:3-4, the age of Law and the age of Grace are clearly distinguished, with the Old Testament revealing a covenant of law made by God to the children of Israel.  It was handed to them at Sinai through Moses, was set in written form by him and is a major portion of Old Testament theology.  The New Testament is a covenant made by means of the blood of Christ, made possible by the atoning work of Christ on the cross and is a covenant of grace (Matthew 26: 28; Hebrews 9:14,15; Ephesians 2:5).

At this time the Old Testament had been committed to writing for many centuries; this new covenant also needed to be committed to writing and over some sixty years by several writers the canon of scripture was finally completed.  The academically brilliant Paul was the main instrument God used for setting New Testament doctrines, and John closed the canon of scriptures with the book of Revelation.  There were some twenty years between Pentecost and Paul's letter to the Galatians and a further forty years to the completion of Revelation.  All this time the infant church was without God’s word on new covenant doctrine, so God in His grace and by the power of God the Holy Spirit, carried the church through these dangerous times by means of the gifts enumerated in 1Corinthians 12.  The church only vaguely understood the truths revealed in this manner, as if seen in a burnished metal mirror, ‘dimly’.  Consequently, the means of this revelation was partial and would be done away when that which was ‘perfect’ was come.

Jesus Christ is the Word of God come in the flesh; He has ascended and is with the Father in heaven.  The Bible is the Word of God written - we have it with us today. They are individually and together the complete revelation of God to man and because they reveal God to man, He has magnified that word beside His name (Psalm 138:2).   The Word of God in both aspects is a marvellous manifestation of God’s love and grace.  So also were His interim gifts; for the void was filled, the partial accomplishing its purpose in spite of human abuse(1Corinthians chapters 12, & 14) with the church surviving to go on into the world to preach the good news, the Word of God, to every creature.

The charismatic movement today is unscriptural in its claims; the gifts claimed are no longer available and all the emotional activity, all the experiences had are at best wood, hay, stubble.  What the worst of it is can only be guessed at.

brianhuggett@bigpond.com