First Corinthians 12:1-6 Understanding Spiritual Gifts

Okay we're going to start with chapter 12 today and we'll look at the first six verses. So I've labeled this Understanding Spiritual Gifts. But I thought it'd be good, and actually, between Mike and myself, Mike's gonna go off and travel a little bit. We're gonna let him get out of the box here. We're gonna let him out of the cage for a couple, at least one Sunday. So I'm gonna do two messages on chapter 12, and Mike's gonna do two messages. We're gonna do a little bit closer, so we're gonna have to coordinate a little bit better here.

So anyway, here's a short overview of the next three chapters, which are all about spiritual gifts. So chapter 12, It's going to present the facts of spiritual gifts and their purpose. And then 13, which is often thought as a love chapter, really, if you look carefully, talks about spiritual gifts and how that really love is to be the reigning principle. And we'll get into that when we get into Chapter 12. But it does talk about gifts, how gifts will cease. And then 14 talks about some of the issues with spiritual gifts. and some of the perversions in the Corinthian church.

Okay, so as usual, I really like Macaulay's outline, so I'm gonna use it. So he starts off, the first verse of chapter 12 talks about a couple of important words, the word spiritual and the word gifts. You think, duh, Roger, that doesn't sound like you named, talking about spiritual gifts, but pneumaticus is a word for spiritual, actually it's plural, notice, and charisma is a word for for gifts, a grace gift. So we're going to see about that in verse 1.

Then we're going to kind of go back and look at their paths. What were the Corinthians' paths? Where did they come from? You know, many believers like to tell how they came to know the Lord Jesus. In a way, this is sort of the Corinthians, Paul's going to point out the Corinthians, where they came from, what happened to them before they became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and how that thinking may have influenced them in thinking about what God has to say.

And then lastly, we're going to just kind of crack the door on spiritual gifts. We're going to look at the origin of spiritual gifts And we're going to see, you know, pretty cool, as you might guess, that many of the great truths of Scripture, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all involved in that ministry. You think, well, they're Holy Spirit gifts. No, the Son and the Father are also involved in them as well.

So here's the verses, I'll just go ahead and read these verses. I'll try to do a better job, but we're thinking about reinstituting scripture reading. You know, have someone come up and read the passage. Maybe we'll get to that here in the coming weeks, we'll see.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols. However you were led, therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. And there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works in all persons. OK, pretty interesting verses, especially three. You always say, OK, Roger, how are you going to explain three?

Well, I'll give it my hand. It's actually pretty easy. It actually is pretty easy. But at first, you say, well, I can say any of those things. Like you're a kid, the dare in each other, I can say this. My dad builds mountains, or my dad flies airplanes. I'll say that, and I'll one-up you on that. Well, we'll see it's not quite that. Just saying the word is not quite it. It's a lot more than that. So we get to verse three. Hopefully we'll answer that. Okay, so verse one.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. So as usually, you know, Paul likes to, he has favorite expressions, and this now concerning, des paris, I think it is in the original, shows up in two other places. It shows up back in chapter seven where it says, now concerning things about which you wrote, is good for a man not to touch a woman. Then in chapter 8 we saw where it says, Now concerning the things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge, and knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. So Paul, you know, in discussing topics, it seems like, you know, there's an interchange of letters, if you will.

If you were a postman there on that day, you know, here's a letter to Paul, here's a letter to the Corinthians, here's a letter to Paul, here's a letter to the Corinthians. And so they went back and forth. So spiritual gifts came up as one of the topics. They wanted to know what Paul believed about them. If you think about it, I was kind of thinking about putting myself in the Corinthians viewpoint.

They didn't have a Bible. I didn't bring my Bible up, but they didn't have a Bible. So without a Bible, They had Paul's letters, so someone would read this letter we're studying today, read them to the body of believers that were assembled. And conceivably, I don't know whether they could read the Old Testament or not, they certainly couldn't go through on the computer and compare this and that with, well, what did God say in the Old Testament, what's God saying now? So they were at the mercy, if you will, of having a limited amount of input, so they, their background and their feelings about things influence them greatly.

So Paul's gonna try to correct them in that area. He says, I do not want or wish, present tense, this is continual desire of Paul, and there's a similar thing he says in Romans, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often have planned to come to you. That's kind of a little bit different topic, but I just kind of pick out the fact that he uses I do not want or wish, that was his Mindset there you Corinthians to be unaware of to be ignorant of is the word and we see that show up in other places we saw back in chapter 10 about being unaware about how our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea so he wanted them to be knowledgeable about what's going on here concerning spiritual gifts well the first thing to notice and I think you guys are all pretty good students of scripture whenever you see a word in italics that means there's no word in the original language behind that word. So the translators had to make a call here.

And I think they made a good call, because if you go through the first 11 or so verses, you'll see that he's talking about spiritual gifts. But in this particular case, the word gifts is not in the original text. So it's actually the word pneumaticon, literally it's spirituals plural that which is characterized by the Holy Spirit so he's what he wants them to be he wants them to be knowledgeable of is spirituals the characteristics by the Holy Spirit So Macaulay points out, and this is what I kind of said, the context tells us in verses 9 and 10 that these are special abilities for serving the body of Christ. And you know if you talk to people in Christianity, brothers and sisters in different churches, different places, you know in some body of believers spiritual gifts is a big thing they focus a lot on that but down at its core meaning it is basically special abilities and these special abilities are not so much For the believer's edification, they are more for the body of Christ edification. They're given abilities to serve the body of Christ.

So that's something that we need to keep focused on, that we don't get taken off and thinking, well, these spiritual gifts are special goodies I've gotten from the Lord. I got some goodies. You've got some goodies. Anyway, you can get into problems that way. Enough said about that, probably. OK. So let's keep on here. So more on spirituals, spiritual gifts.

The word spirituals is used in two ways according to Macaulay in the New Testament. First, it's used of anything that pertains to the person of the Holy Spirit. And secondly, it's used to designate the work of the Holy Spirit, He does in the life of the believer. So these are special abilities supplied by God, the Holy Spirit. But what we're going to find, as I mentioned, is that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in this. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are involved in these special abilities.

And we'll see that in the last verses here. Okay, so on to verse 2. So now he's going to do a little history review of their history. He says, you know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols. And the word for know here is the word oida, which is the idea of on the basis of facts. So it was factual.

In their life, they were involved with idols, idol worship. That was their, and I haven't really done a count, but if you go back and look at Corinth and many other places, the number of idols was kind of staggering. all over the place. So if you were a citizen there, you were probably, and you didn't know Christ, you weren't a believer, you probably were involved in some kind of idol worship. And so anyway, so he's pointing out that this idol worship, he's going to point out a characteristic of idols, which is kind of a basic thing that idols don't have.

This is on their don't have list. It reminds me of a story about our, when we first moved back, we were overseas for a while. And we came back to the States and we were talking with some neighbors and there was a little boy and we didn't have a whole lot of different things. And he said, you don't have a microwave. And we said, no, we don't have a microwave. He says, well, what else don't you have? I said, well, we don't have this. So this is something we're going to find out that the idols didn't have.

And here, in this case, it says that when you were pagans, and this is the word ethnos. It's the idea of, from the Jewish perspective, these are non-Israelites, implying idolatry and ignorance of the true God. Sometimes they're called heathen, pagan, pagan nations.

So Macaulay kind of looks at the big picture. He says, well we got two categories and we kind of see that category today. We have the pagans and we have Christianity. You're either one or the other and we would say today you're either a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ or you're not a believer. There's only two categories of people walking on this earth.

But he's going to point out, but you were led astray to mute idols. Or better, maybe the interlinear has you were carried away. I kind of like that, you were carried away. So in your, maybe in your search for God as an unbeliever, you were carried away to mute idols. And carry away is the idea to lead away. It's rendered carried. It's rendered carried in the King James and it's rendered led away in the American Standard. to mute idols. So we're going to find out. The word mute is pretty important here. The word mute is, if you look at it carefully, A is the negation. A phone. A phone A. So it's voiceless, soundless, in reference to voice.

So paganism followed the idols who could not express their will or answer questions. When I first heard, when I first read that from Macaulay, I said, answer questions, I said, and I really, it's interesting, you hear somebody make a certain phrase, and I think Andrew was alluding to something that Roy had said, when a brother or sister has an observation about something that you maybe haven't heard before, God's answering questions. Well, yes, he is answering questions. You know, he's telling us who we are and he expresses his will and he answers our questions. Well, idols do not have the faculty for speech, so good luck with that. I mean, they're not gonna be able to, what else don't you have, right? So dumb idols, dumb idols are idols who do not speak in contrast with the living God who does speak.

So this verse came to mind. And it talks about how our God is a God who speaks. And I have this little saying that I got from Macaulay. I'll hold it off just for a second. Let me read the verse here first. Hebrews 1, chapter 1, 1 through 2a. God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets, in many portions, in many ways, in these last days, has spoken to us in his Son. So what comes across from here is that God God speaks. So Macaulay had this little three-line thing.

God is, God speaks, and God inscripturates. There's a $24 word. He inscripturates. So what does that mean, inscripturates? He puts what he speaks into words, right? Isn't that cool? And I was thinking, boy, without that, we'd be in a world of hurt. Imagine you're a Corinthian strolling around, you're a new believer, and you're saying, What does God mean? You know about the Lord Jesus Christ, but you're confused. You don't have something you can read. Well, you read Paul's letters. Well, God in his grace. God is, God speaks, God inscripturates. He puts his mind and his thoughts into words that we can read, that we can study.

And I guess it was said by Martin Luther, you have to be a good student of grammar. I said, ah, I don't like grammar. I have to be a good student of grammar? Grammar and I didn't, you wouldn't like to see my scores on English in high school. I didn't do too well. I got through it, but I didn't do too well. Anyway, okay, so God is, God speaks, and that's kind of the tenor of this. He's saying that these dumb idols, they were speechless.

They couldn't speak to you, but the living God does speak to you. He speaks to you through his, and in his last days, he's speaking to you through his son, and his son, the Lord Jesus said a lot of things, right? He said that, and we have that record of that in the New Testament. He said a tremendous amount, and it's recorded for us. however you were led.

It seems like an attack on idea at first. I said, however you were led. So, however you're being led. I had a couple of points from Macaulay here. First, you were led by many means. This was kind of the idea that there are many different idols out there. However, with reference to the multitude of pagan teachers who influenced them in their former life, But the bottom line, his second point is they were led to one end.

They didn't discover God through idols. They didn't come to a knowledge of God through idols. They came to a knowledge of God when Paul told them, revealed to them the person of Christ and they believed on him. So there was no path to God through idols. And there is no path to God through idols. So that's kind of the rest of it, however you were led in those two ways. So now, let's go on to my favorite verse here. Not my favorite verse. Like, ever listen to Jay Vernon McGee? Every verse is his favorite verse. Hey, that's pretty good. Okay. Okay, so let's just go back and read it here first.

Therefore, I make known to you Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed, and no one can say, Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." So what we're going to see here is that he's gonna give us a test, a way to evaluate when we hear, we're talking about, we're talking about the dumb idols couldn't speak, right? Whereas the living God could speak. Well now you come to the question, how do I know, you're thinking you're a Corinthian, how do I know they're listening mostly not, I don't know if they could read or not. My knowledge of that is poor. But anyway, how do they know when someone says something whether it's coming from God or not?

Well, this is a test. And at first you're going to say, well, Roger, I can say anything. I can say white is black and black is white. And today in our world, people say all kinds of things. You can't believe half of it. And then you find the next day that's wrong and what they said is wrong. The fact checkers, and you fact check the fact checkers, and they're wrong. So what's right? So here's the test that he's proposing. Therefore, a criteria or test he's proposing here, I make known to you He's reasserting things already they knew. He wants them to understand.

So the first thing is, no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed. That word by, or the preposition by, is really critical in this. Because you're gonna say, well anybody can say that. I can say that whimsically, but the by is really key. By is by means of.

So if I insert that meaning of that Greek word in there, I have no one is speaking by means of the Spirit of God can say Jesus is accursed. And that makes a lot more sense because it's saying, would the Spirit of God curse the Lord Jesus? And it doesn't make any sense.

They're one. They're one and the same. And the mission of the Holy Spirit was to glorify Christ. You go to the Gospel of John 14 or 16, somewhere in there. His mission is to glorify Christ. So no one being led by the Spirit of God, by the means of the Spirit of God, can say Jesus Christ is the curse.

So a couple points about that. So actually, only a believer can speak by the means of the Holy Spirit. He's the only one that has the capacity. That's point one. Point two, no one that the Holy Spirit motivates would curse Jesus Christ. That's just what I said.

A believer's speech should agree with Scripture, right? I mean, that's what we all, when we talk with someone, we want to speak God's word to them. We want to speak our words. We want to speak God's words. If it does not agree with that, then he's not speaking by the Spirit.

And I was thinking, I listened to different things and preparing and actually someone pointed back to when Paul, before Paul was a believer, it's interesting what he was trying to do. So he's, Paul is out hunting down Christians, actually they were Jewish Christians, hunting down these people. If they professed Jesus Christ as their Lord, he would go after them. Well one of his tactics was this, if you look at Acts 26, 11 it says, And this is Paul speaking.

And as I punished them, talking about these unbelievers, often in all the synagogues, so they were Jewish Christians, here's what he tried to do. I tried to force them to blaspheme. So he tried to do exactly what, if the Spirit of God is leading you, you would not do this. But if you are pushed into the corner, Maybe he can get you to blaspheme. So Paul's intent before he was a believer was to have them say something like this. There's not scripture that says that, but it's that concept.

Force them to say something against the Lord Jesus. So, just to set your minds at rest, if you happen to say that by accident, or maybe you're under, somebody points a gun at your head. And you say that, are you going to lose your salvation? We know you're not. The point is, this is being led by the Spirit of God. And that is to be the lifestyle of a believer, to be led by the Spirit of God.

The second point, the positive point, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So we have the same word, by means of, so you can say no one can say Jesus is Lord except by means of the Holy Spirit. Only a believer can truly say Jesus is Lord.

So this verse just, I had done the resurrection day, and just think about our brother Doubting Thomas. An example of this is Thomas' declaration when he said, my Lord and my God. And you could think about, some people make a big deal about saying Jesus is Lord, and he is Lord, there's no question.

But that is a fact, he is Lord, he is Lord The day you believe until the day you go to be with Him, He'll always be our Lord. So it's not so much a point of, well, you gotta say Jesus is Lord. That's gotta be part of your doctrinal statement. No, He is your Lord, and you thank Him for that, and you address Him as that.

And I find I do that just without thinking. Nobody taught me to do that. I just think that way. I think, Lord, what's happening here? I'm sure Roy, when he was at the hospital, was saying, Lord, why am I here? I guess you're going to have to take care of this, because I can't. They're doing all kinds of things to me here.

And we're all that way. I think all believe it that way. He's our Lord. And I think that's really cool. My Lord and my God. The Holy Spirit's function is to glorify the person of Christ. The McCauley comment, the last statement from McCauley here is, the recognition of Jesus as Lord indicates that the Holy Spirit had now worked in the former pagan Corinthians. So that was kind of like a benchmark of what had happened in their lives.

So now this section starting here, we're going to look at the, first we're going to look at the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. Kind of Kind of reverse order, we usually say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but Paul's going to show us the ministry of the Spirit, the ministry of the Son, and the ministry of the Father. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. So there are, as Amy, the state in which something continuously exists, present tense, varieties.

This is an interesting word. He's going to use this word three times for each of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's the idea of distributions or apportionments. I like that one. That was Kamakali's favorite, apportionments. We have variety of apportionments of the gifts. Different kinds is good, too.

So in Romans we see kind of a parallel idea, since we have gifts that differ, the same word, according to the grace that is given to us. These are grace gifts we're gonna be talking about. And gifts is charisma, a gift of grace, a gift involving grace on the part of God as the donor.

So we see in Hebrews 2.4 it says, God also testified with them that by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will. So these are gifts of God according to His will. And that's kind of a key thing here. They're gifts and it's according to His will and His purpose. but the same spirit. So I think at this point, and he has this in the next couple verses too, he has the same spirit, the same Lord, the same God, something like that. So he's pointing out that it's the Trinity involved here, it's one God and three persons, they're involved in this grace gift.

The Holy Spirit gives many different abilities to different people. I was able to listen to Merriman on this from back in the 70s, Kind of cool. Gifts are abilities that enable a person to glorify God and serve God. And that's, back to this thing, you know, we gotta be careful when we look at spiritual gifts that we don't, view this as something that I can make a big deal about in my Christian life.

It's there to serve the body of Christ. God the Holy Spirit appoints these gifts. It is God the Holy Spirit will, not our will, And the unity of the Trinity is shown in verses, these last three verses, 4, 5, and 6. Okay, so now to verse 5. There are a variety of ministries and the same Lord. So same there are, Amy again, varieties is the same word.

This is a typo that I didn't tell Bonnie about. Anyway, I changed from classifications to apportionments, but I didn't catch it in both places. I noticed it this morning. I said, well, I don't want to change this. Anyway, I like apportionments. It's good.

There are varieties of ministries. So he said there are varieties of gifts. Now there's variety of ministries. We find that the word ministries is the word for service, serving, service in the body of Christ. And actually you see that service is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So it's kind of, and I haven't quite sorted this all out. We've got gifts, we've got ministries, and he's going to say effects.

And actually that's going to be an interesting word we'll see shortly here. But they're all kind of interrelated to the whole idea of the Holy Spirit gifting believers to do functions for Him. If you think back to the Old Testament, you know, in terms of gifts, what do you think about? You go back to the Old Testament and you look like in Exodus and they're building the tabernacle. And how did God proceed with building the tabernacle?

Did he put a message out, it's kind of ludicrous, put an email out, a text message saying all the carpenters with 10 years of experience be here in the morning at 10 a.m. And all the plumbers, and this is ridiculous, plumbers, but whatever. So he didn't do that. What did God do?

Here's a verse that talks about how did God proceed with the building of the tabernacle? To build it the way he wanted it to be built, for his glory. Here's what he did. And he's speaking to Moses here in Exodus, Exodus 31. He says, I have filled him with my spirit. So he's speaking to Moses. He's talking about these craftsmen. I have filled him with the spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, in all kinds of craftsmanship to make artistic design for work in gold and silver and bronze. And it actually goes on.

So we see all through the Old Testament, God specifically gifted individuals to do what he desired to do in building his tabernacle. So it's not a surprise in a way that he would do a similar thing in the New Testament. He would gift his body of believers to do functions that would help the body of Christ. And that's what spiritual gifts are all about.

Okay, that's the part I had forgotten earlier. So now, let's go back to where I was. Okay, talking about these ministry, these service, it kind of goes along. So in Romans 12, six through seven, it says, each of us is to exercise them, gifts, accordingly, if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith, if service, that's a word here, if service and his serving. and the same Lord.

So again, this is the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus, and the idea is gifts, and service is kind of in view here. So the third one of these, and varieties of effects, but the same God who works all in all, in all persons. Varieties of effects. And effects is an interesting word.

And if you guys, most of you guys were here, you remember Verne's Energizer Bunny? He liked that. He had the Energizer Bunny bouncing all over the place. And it's this word, energeo. Well, this word, energeo, the root word shows up in this word here, and it shows up later in this same passage. So it's this idea of effects or works energizing. It is the results of energy of God in the believer. The results are energized by God's grace. But it's the same God. So now the first person of the Trinity is in view here, energizing the believer. Who works? We have the same energizes all things and all persons.

So here, before I, this is Constable's statement. So Vonnie usually reviews my charts, so I wanna read this passage here. And afterwards, she had a comment about this passage. It's good to have your wife, it's really cool. So Constable says about this passage, in verse six, he says, it is God who is responsible for our abilities, our opportunities for service, the individual ways in which we minister, including the results. Well, Vonnie said, nothing for me to do. He's done it all. Well, he has. And that's the whole idea. He has done it all. So what, you know, he prepares the works in pass and he wants to perform it. So he has it all covered.

So what is our part in this? Our part is to walk by faith, to be available. And we have a story at our house when we have a big meal coming up You know, Ronnie's just scurrying around, and Ryan's helping out with doing stuff. And Ronnie says, well, Roger, you just show up. I just want you to show up. Talk to the guest and just show up.

Be there. So, in a similar way, not exactly, in a similar way, the Lord has done it all. He's prepared the good works for us. He's gifted us for those good works. He wants us just to show up, to be there. Wake up in the morning, get dressed, and go there. If it's going to Holly Hills, go there. If it's going wherever it is, go there and be available for the Lord to use you. Because he's got it covered. You don't have to invent this. You don't have to make him up. Anyway, I thought that was really good. She really helped me there. Really cool. Okay, so in summary. So this is from Merriman.

All members of the Trinity are involved in the functioning of spiritual gifts. There is unity among the members of the Trinity. there is to be the same unity in the local body of believers. And we're going to see that a lot, because later on, as Mike and I go through this, we're going to see the body of Christ is compared to a physical body, and the gifts that we have are to intertwine with one another.

We all can't have the same gift. I mean, some people, you know, I'd like to have this gift, or I'd like to have that gift. Well, we can't all have them, sorry, you know. But, and I have some ideas about, you know, anyway, when we get to the idea of what gifts and this and that, we'll talk more about that.

Okay. But the key result of spiritual gift in the local body is for unity for the common good. And this verse came to mind. In fact, we're going to start next week. This will be the first verse of next week. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit, a spiritual gift. What is it for? For the common good. you know it's not to be flat this is not flashy stuff it's not to be well I got this guy you know and some bodies of believers make a big deal about this they make it they're focusing on the gift and not what what is the key what is it given for why is it given for just like in building the tabernacle there was a need the need in our body believers need for God's Word to be taught a need to for all you know all kinds of things let's close in prayer then dear father we thank you so much Lord for your your word we thank you for our time today Thank you for your care for this body. In Christ's name, amen.