How the Body is Supposed
to Work – part One
-13-
I Corinthians 12:7-11
We begin this study with verse 7:
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is invisible, but although we cannot see Him with our eyes, just like we cannot see the wind, we can see evidence of it. So we might put it in a question form, How does wind manifest (show) itself? The answer would be varied. We could say, By the rustling of leaves. Or by the dust swirling around in a miniature cyclone, or by trees bending far over in one direction … or worse, by barn roofs being torn off and sailing through the air. Manifestation of wind.
Manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the body, whether it is the gift of tongues, prophecy, healing, miracles, faith, it is all evidence of the Holy Spirit and it is for the building up of the body and to empower it to carry the gospel into all the world.
Another word coming up is the word 'edify'. Have you ever used the word 'edifice'? It simply refers to a building. A large edifice is a large building. When we use the word in relation to the church, we say that our gift is to 'edify' the body. How does the word 'building' fit? Our gift is to 'build up' the body. Far too often a gift has been used to 'edify' oneself. It is ALWAYS wrong to edify your self.
At this point I will offer several related scriptures that make this abundantly clear. Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; …. Proverbs 27:2
For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. 2Corinthians 10:12
Proverbs 6:16 These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
17 (one)A proud look, (two)A lying tongue, (three)Hands that shed innocent blood,
18 (four)A heart that devises wicked plans, (five)Feet that are swift in running to evil,
19 (six)A false witness who speaks lies, And (seven)one who sows discord among brethren.
If any of the believers in the Corinthian church were 'showing off' their spiritual gift … their spirituality,
If they were comparing themselves with others in the church, If they were displaying pride … They were in serious trouble with God. They needed teaching regarding this … that is, if they really did not know how bad it was to be showing off. They needed warning if they DID know that it was wrong to be showing off. They needed to change their attitude and humble themselves or expect to be disciplined by God.
Heb 12:8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.
Heb 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. NIV
But the Corinthians could spare the pain of discipline if they would listen to these words of Paul. The same applies to us. God puts 'a proud look' right at the very top of the things that he hates … above murder even.1
So Paul goes on now to tell us how spiritual gifts are to be viewed within the church body.
Paul lists some specific gifts:
- A word of wisdom … Wisdom is achieved in a number of ways. In the natural … that is, in your growing up experience, you learned some things by trial and error. You found out that doing a certain thing always resulted in something bad. Then you caught yourself just before you did it again … and said to yourself … “Wait a minute … noooo, don't do that” Some one looking on might conclude, “Oh, that was wise.” We learn wisdom … as we 'do' life. Whether we are building something … whether we are driving in bad conditions, whether we are mixing a couple of ingredients as we prepare a recipe for supper … we gain wisdom by trial and error.
But James tells us that we can get it from God … just for the asking.
Wow. That could save us a lot of time and frustration. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach (scolding or a negative reluctance), and it will be given to him. James 1:5
Occasion by occasion, you have this resource. You can ask God. He will give it.
But Paul lists this as a gift. And it is. A person may have been given wisdom as a gift. This means he now has it. Without having to ask when in a certain situation … he just has it. It would not take long for others around him to notice this.
By the way … here is an observation … The work of God that you are involved in would be difficult if not impossible if it were not for the right gift. And with the right gift for the right occasion, the decision, or action or ministry is easy. Because it is not your effort, other than the applying of the gift. As you serve the Lord, have you discovered that what now comes fairly easy to you … did not always come easy? But since you accepted Jesus, has this service suddenly become easy? You may be able to answer that quickly and with certainty … or you may answer, “Wow, I really don't know. I can't think of anything right now!” If you don't know, don't worry about it. Worry never helps. But there are only two things that you might need to check … (ONE) Have I truly asked the Lord Jesus to come into my heart and cleanse me from all sin? That is, have I 'died' to myself, saw myself as dead and going to hell, confessed my sin, asking to be washed by Jesus' ?
and (TWO) have I earnestly desired to serve Christ in a certain area, but keep coming up with the inability to do what He seems to be calling me to do, and in that situation pleaded for that gift? - a little more on that when we get to verse 31.
I have not yet commented on some of the other gifts in this list:
A word of Knowledge is different from a word of wisdom. We need to be a little careful about this one. Remember that these people had no new testament available yet. The Knowledge we are referring to would be information directly from God. That is what the Bible is. That is what we have in the New Testament; I repeat, information directly from God.
Remember this … gifts are given to the church to enable us to go through a barrier. The early church, without the aid of a new testament … would be faces with 'lack of information barriers' constantly. And these 'lack of information' barriers, today, are answered in scripture … specifically the New Testament. So with the New Testament now in our hands, with a command to 'Study to show yourselves approved to God (2 Timothy 2:15) and Paul's statement that scripture is to be used for 'teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness … making us complete and equipped for EVERY good work; we might just conclude that the GIFT of knowledge is not given presently, as long as that barrier has already been dealt with.
The gift of faith – This one is so precious. God has given to every man (person) a measure of faith2. This enables a person to get saved. And then he says your faith should increase. One way is to get familiar with the Word of God3.
But the gift of faith is something else. The person having this gift finds it easy to believe that a certain thing will take place … he or she claims it, or verbalizes it or simply knows it in their heart … and it happens. It is easy and expected and normal … because it is a gift. Wouldn't we all like that gift?
The gift of healing. Like the other gifts I begin with the 'generality'. All gifts by their very nature 'tap into' the power of God. So, like the gifts of wisdom, knowledge and faith … which come directly from God, healing also is tapping into the power of God. Generally speaking, healing of the sick began in the old Testament. Prophets, such as Elijah or Elisha had the ability to heal. We remember the story of Namaan. He was healed by a rather unusual instruction … Tell him to go to the Jordan river, dip in it seven times ...and his leprosy will disappear. He was healed,how? God did that. There are a lot of Old Testament accounts of the healing power of God. Remember, these all occurred before the empowering of the church at Pentecost. How did the healing happen? By the power of God.
Then we come to the New Testament. Very early in the Gospel accounts, Jesus includes healing in His ministry. His ministry served a number of purposes all at the same time. First, He was establishing the fact that He was Messiah, He was God, come in the flesh. Miracles and healing helped with this. Second, He exhibited compassion. Third, He was here to let us 'see' God. And Fourth, He was training 12 people to be able to take over the world-wide commission.
During the training of the 12 people, on two different occasions he made the training into more than just listening and observing. He gave them some 'hands - on' responsibility. On the first occasion he sent the 12 on a limited mission. He said: "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Matthew 10:5-8
The second time it appears that Jesus added 70 more trainees for a total of 82. (unless our wording is a bit fuzzy and he actually added new people, bringing the total to a total of 70)
These were sent, two by two ahead of him into every city and place, where he was about to come.
Their instructions are written in Luke 10:1-16.
After a short while ...
The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!"
He said to them, "I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you. Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Luke 10:17 -20
These early trainees were learning how to spread the Gospel. They preached that the Kingdom of God was near. They proved that they were in fact, authorized representatives, they proved that their message was more than words by backing it up with the demonstration of the power of God. They healed diseases. They cast out demons.
In a miniature sense the 12 and then the 70 were commissioned much like the church. Jesus said to the church , "As My Father has sent me, even so, I send you. Go into all the world and …."
Mr 16:20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
Back to our chapter in Corinthians …
the next gift mentioned is miracles. That differs only slightly from the gift of healing, because healing is also a miracle. Raising the dead could be called a healing but perhaps we would think more of the word miracle. For Peter to predict that Ananias and later his wife, Sapphira would drop dead4 was in a sense a miracle. Paul told Elymas the sorcerer that he would be struck blind for a while5, that could be called a miracle. Paul was bitten by a poisonous snake6 after surviving a ship wreck. It had no effect on him. That would be considered a miracle.
Included in this list of gifts is prophecy. A common conception is that prophesy has to do with predicting the future and it is easy to see how we might come to that understanding. But at its most basic definition it means to speak God's word. In the Old Testament prophetic book, Isaiah for example, you will read a statement, “Thus says the Lord ...” The prophet would then go on to quote God. Very often the message from God would have something to do with the future. But whether it did or not, the prophecy was a matter of repeating what God said. We will mention more about this a later study.
Discerning of spirits is another one. I may comment later on this one as well, but for now I will say it is similar to, but not exactly like someone who says, “I sensed something was a little off there”, or “Yes, I sensed that had a ring of truth to it.” Those statements only reflect the natural. They do not represent the gift of the Spirit called Discerning of Spirits.
A verse that I referred to earlier is an example. But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? Acts 5:3
Peter seems to have had the gift of discernment. Perhaps more on this later, but whether one has this gift or not, we are all told … do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1John 4:1 In this case we are not using the 'gift' but we are using God's word to compare what we are hearing, and measuring it against God's complete7, holy and inerrant word.
Two final gifts are mentioned in verse 10:
Tongues and the interpretation of tongues. We have already seen the gift in tongues 'in action' on the day of Pentecost. Interpretation also took place, but in this case the interpreter was not a human with the gift, but it was simply God, Himself, changing ordinary words spoken in Greek into specific languages of the foreigners that were present. Could the majority of the people have understood Peter's sermon if the sermon had not been translated into eighteen different languages? The answer is yes. They could have understood it in Greek. So then, why was it translated into specific languages? For two reasons: One, For them to hear the message in their 'heart' language was not only something special and appreciated … it was evidence of something miraculous. It was evidence of God! And when people looked around at others … who did NOT know their specific heart language … and they TOO were hearing it in their heart language, that was just too much. It was amazing. They knew for sure that this was a work of God. They knew they had better pay attention to what was being preached. They had better respond to what was being preached.
What about tongues as a prayer language? That comes up in a later chapter. Some further instruction regarding the gift of interpretation in also coming up.
The emphasis at this point? The gifts of the Spirit are numerous. They were given to enable the church to advance into the far corners of the world. They were given to confirm the gospel message. One Spirit - many gifts.
1Think about the evils of Adolf Hitler. What did God see when He looked at him? Was Hitler a man of pride? Definitely. He would not have done all the evil things that he did, had he been a humble person.
2Romans 12:3
3Romans 10:17
4Acts 5:1-10
5 Acts 13:8-11
6Acts 28:1-6
72Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is invisible, but although we cannot see Him with our eyes, just like we cannot see the wind, we can see evidence of it. So we might put it in a question form, How does wind manifest (show) itself? The answer would be varied. We could say, By the rustling of leaves. Or by the dust swirling around in a miniature cyclone, or by trees bending far over in one direction … or worse, by barn roofs being torn off and sailing through the air. Manifestation of wind.
Manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the body, whether it is the gift of tongues, prophecy, healing, miracles, faith, it is all evidence of the Holy Spirit and it is for the building up of the body and to empower it to carry the gospel into all the world.
Another word coming up is the word 'edify'. Have you ever used the word 'edifice'? It simply refers to a building. A large edifice is a large building. When we use the word in relation to the church, we say that our gift is to 'edify' the body. How does the word 'building' fit? Our gift is to 'build up' the body. Far too often a gift has been used to 'edify' oneself. It is ALWAYS wrong to edify your self.
At this point I will offer several related scriptures that make this abundantly clear. Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; …. Proverbs 27:2
For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. 2Corinthians 10:12
Proverbs 6:16 These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
17 (one)A proud look, (two)A lying tongue, (three)Hands that shed innocent blood,
18 (four)A heart that devises wicked plans, (five)Feet that are swift in running to evil,
19 (six)A false witness who speaks lies, And (seven)one who sows discord among brethren.
If any of the believers in the Corinthian church were 'showing off' their spiritual gift … their spirituality,
If they were comparing themselves with others in the church, If they were displaying pride … They were in serious trouble with God. They needed teaching regarding this … that is, if they really did not know how bad it was to be showing off. They needed warning if they DID know that it was wrong to be showing off. They needed to change their attitude and humble themselves or expect to be disciplined by God.
Heb 12:8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.
Heb 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. NIV
But the Corinthians could spare the pain of discipline if they would listen to these words of Paul. The same applies to us. God puts 'a proud look' right at the very top of the things that he hates … above murder even.1
So Paul goes on now to tell us how spiritual gifts are to be viewed within the church body.
Paul lists some specific gifts:
- a word of wisdom
- a word of knowledge
- faith
- healing
- working of miracles
- prophecy
- discerning of spirits
- kinds of languages
- interpretation of kinds of languages
- A word of wisdom … Wisdom is achieved in a number of ways. In the natural … that is, in your growing up experience, you learned some things by trial and error. You found out that doing a certain thing always resulted in something bad. Then you caught yourself just before you did it again … and said to yourself … “Wait a minute … noooo, don't do that” Some one looking on might conclude, “Oh, that was wise.” We learn wisdom … as we 'do' life. Whether we are building something … whether we are driving in bad conditions, whether we are mixing a couple of ingredients as we prepare a recipe for supper … we gain wisdom by trial and error.
But James tells us that we can get it from God … just for the asking.
Wow. That could save us a lot of time and frustration. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach (scolding or a negative reluctance), and it will be given to him. James 1:5
Occasion by occasion, you have this resource. You can ask God. He will give it.
But Paul lists this as a gift. And it is. A person may have been given wisdom as a gift. This means he now has it. Without having to ask when in a certain situation … he just has it. It would not take long for others around him to notice this.
By the way … here is an observation … The work of God that you are involved in would be difficult if not impossible if it were not for the right gift. And with the right gift for the right occasion, the decision, or action or ministry is easy. Because it is not your effort, other than the applying of the gift. As you serve the Lord, have you discovered that what now comes fairly easy to you … did not always come easy? But since you accepted Jesus, has this service suddenly become easy? You may be able to answer that quickly and with certainty … or you may answer, “Wow, I really don't know. I can't think of anything right now!” If you don't know, don't worry about it. Worry never helps. But there are only two things that you might need to check … (ONE) Have I truly asked the Lord Jesus to come into my heart and cleanse me from all sin? That is, have I 'died' to myself, saw myself as dead and going to hell, confessed my sin, asking to be washed by Jesus' ?
and (TWO) have I earnestly desired to serve Christ in a certain area, but keep coming up with the inability to do what He seems to be calling me to do, and in that situation pleaded for that gift? - a little more on that when we get to verse 31.
I have not yet commented on some of the other gifts in this list:
A word of Knowledge is different from a word of wisdom. We need to be a little careful about this one. Remember that these people had no new testament available yet. The Knowledge we are referring to would be information directly from God. That is what the Bible is. That is what we have in the New Testament; I repeat, information directly from God.
Remember this … gifts are given to the church to enable us to go through a barrier. The early church, without the aid of a new testament … would be faces with 'lack of information barriers' constantly. And these 'lack of information' barriers, today, are answered in scripture … specifically the New Testament. So with the New Testament now in our hands, with a command to 'Study to show yourselves approved to God (2 Timothy 2:15) and Paul's statement that scripture is to be used for 'teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness … making us complete and equipped for EVERY good work; we might just conclude that the GIFT of knowledge is not given presently, as long as that barrier has already been dealt with.
The gift of faith – This one is so precious. God has given to every man (person) a measure of faith2. This enables a person to get saved. And then he says your faith should increase. One way is to get familiar with the Word of God3.
But the gift of faith is something else. The person having this gift finds it easy to believe that a certain thing will take place … he or she claims it, or verbalizes it or simply knows it in their heart … and it happens. It is easy and expected and normal … because it is a gift. Wouldn't we all like that gift?
The gift of healing. Like the other gifts I begin with the 'generality'. All gifts by their very nature 'tap into' the power of God. So, like the gifts of wisdom, knowledge and faith … which come directly from God, healing also is tapping into the power of God. Generally speaking, healing of the sick began in the old Testament. Prophets, such as Elijah or Elisha had the ability to heal. We remember the story of Namaan. He was healed by a rather unusual instruction … Tell him to go to the Jordan river, dip in it seven times ...and his leprosy will disappear. He was healed,how? God did that. There are a lot of Old Testament accounts of the healing power of God. Remember, these all occurred before the empowering of the church at Pentecost. How did the healing happen? By the power of God.
Then we come to the New Testament. Very early in the Gospel accounts, Jesus includes healing in His ministry. His ministry served a number of purposes all at the same time. First, He was establishing the fact that He was Messiah, He was God, come in the flesh. Miracles and healing helped with this. Second, He exhibited compassion. Third, He was here to let us 'see' God. And Fourth, He was training 12 people to be able to take over the world-wide commission.
During the training of the 12 people, on two different occasions he made the training into more than just listening and observing. He gave them some 'hands - on' responsibility. On the first occasion he sent the 12 on a limited mission. He said: "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Matthew 10:5-8
The second time it appears that Jesus added 70 more trainees for a total of 82. (unless our wording is a bit fuzzy and he actually added new people, bringing the total to a total of 70)
These were sent, two by two ahead of him into every city and place, where he was about to come.
Their instructions are written in Luke 10:1-16.
After a short while ...
The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!"
He said to them, "I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you. Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Luke 10:17 -20
These early trainees were learning how to spread the Gospel. They preached that the Kingdom of God was near. They proved that they were in fact, authorized representatives, they proved that their message was more than words by backing it up with the demonstration of the power of God. They healed diseases. They cast out demons.
In a miniature sense the 12 and then the 70 were commissioned much like the church. Jesus said to the church , "As My Father has sent me, even so, I send you. Go into all the world and …."
Mr 16:20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
Back to our chapter in Corinthians …
the next gift mentioned is miracles. That differs only slightly from the gift of healing, because healing is also a miracle. Raising the dead could be called a healing but perhaps we would think more of the word miracle. For Peter to predict that Ananias and later his wife, Sapphira would drop dead4 was in a sense a miracle. Paul told Elymas the sorcerer that he would be struck blind for a while5, that could be called a miracle. Paul was bitten by a poisonous snake6 after surviving a ship wreck. It had no effect on him. That would be considered a miracle.
Included in this list of gifts is prophecy. A common conception is that prophesy has to do with predicting the future and it is easy to see how we might come to that understanding. But at its most basic definition it means to speak God's word. In the Old Testament prophetic book, Isaiah for example, you will read a statement, “Thus says the Lord ...” The prophet would then go on to quote God. Very often the message from God would have something to do with the future. But whether it did or not, the prophecy was a matter of repeating what God said. We will mention more about this a later study.
Discerning of spirits is another one. I may comment later on this one as well, but for now I will say it is similar to, but not exactly like someone who says, “I sensed something was a little off there”, or “Yes, I sensed that had a ring of truth to it.” Those statements only reflect the natural. They do not represent the gift of the Spirit called Discerning of Spirits.
A verse that I referred to earlier is an example. But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? Acts 5:3
Peter seems to have had the gift of discernment. Perhaps more on this later, but whether one has this gift or not, we are all told … do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1John 4:1 In this case we are not using the 'gift' but we are using God's word to compare what we are hearing, and measuring it against God's complete7, holy and inerrant word.
Two final gifts are mentioned in verse 10:
Tongues and the interpretation of tongues. We have already seen the gift in tongues 'in action' on the day of Pentecost. Interpretation also took place, but in this case the interpreter was not a human with the gift, but it was simply God, Himself, changing ordinary words spoken in Greek into specific languages of the foreigners that were present. Could the majority of the people have understood Peter's sermon if the sermon had not been translated into eighteen different languages? The answer is yes. They could have understood it in Greek. So then, why was it translated into specific languages? For two reasons: One, For them to hear the message in their 'heart' language was not only something special and appreciated … it was evidence of something miraculous. It was evidence of God! And when people looked around at others … who did NOT know their specific heart language … and they TOO were hearing it in their heart language, that was just too much. It was amazing. They knew for sure that this was a work of God. They knew they had better pay attention to what was being preached. They had better respond to what was being preached.
What about tongues as a prayer language? That comes up in a later chapter. Some further instruction regarding the gift of interpretation in also coming up.
The emphasis at this point? The gifts of the Spirit are numerous. They were given to enable the church to advance into the far corners of the world. They were given to confirm the gospel message. One Spirit - many gifts.
1Think about the evils of Adolf Hitler. What did God see when He looked at him? Was Hitler a man of pride? Definitely. He would not have done all the evil things that he did, had he been a humble person.
2Romans 12:3
3Romans 10:17
4Acts 5:1-10
5 Acts 13:8-11
6Acts 28:1-6
72Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,