Spiritual gifts and abilities
12
📚Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant.12:1 Here begins three chapters on the same subject – “spiritual gifts”. These gifts are abilities to do things believers could not do otherwise. We should understand that possessing spiritual gifts does not in itself make believers spiritual. Believers at Corinth had spiritual gifts but they were behaving like unspiritual people and acting like people of the world (1 Cor 3:1-4). What an empty thing it is to boast of having some spiritual gift or gifts while living in a carnal, worldly way! In chapters 12–14 Paul teaches the following eleven things about these gifts.
They are given and should be used under the Lordship of Christ (1 Cor 12:3, 5).
Each believer has some gift or other (1 Cor 12:7, 11).
No particular gift is possessed by all believers (1 Cor 12:29-30).
All the gifts are for the good of all, not for personal benefit (1 Cor 12:7; 1 Cor 14:3-12, 19; 1 Cor 10:33—11:1).
God gives the gifts to promote unity, not to divide believers (1 Cor 12:25).
God’s love working in believers is greater than any gift or all of them together (1 Cor 13:1-13).
Believers should desire spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:31; 1 Cor 14:1).
Prophecy is the greatest of the gifts (1 Cor 14:1).
No one should think himself superior to others because he has some gift or other (1 Cor 4:7; 13:4; 12:21, 25).
In using the gifts believers must behave in a fitting and orderly way (1 Cor 14:40).
If every believer had always taken all these truths to heart, there would not have been all the quarreling and divisions over spiritual gifts that have afflicted the churches.⚜
2 📚You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to dumb idols 📖, being led somehow.
12:2 Before they became Christians they went after idols in a blind, unreasoning way. They themselves hardly knew what they were doing, or why. There were influences and powers at work they did not know or resist.⚜
3 📚Therefore I give you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed 📖, and that no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
4 📚Now there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 📚And there are various kinds of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 📚And there are various kinds of working, but it is the same God who works all in all.
12:4-6 Paul emphasizes the one source of all that believers have and can do in God’s work (compare Eph 4:3-7). The three persons of the Trinity are here (notes on the Trinity at Matt 3:16-17).⚜
7 📚 But the manifestation 📖 of the Spirit is given to each one for the benefit of all.
12:7 The common good of all believers is a constant theme of Paul (1 Cor 10:24, 33; 1 Cor 14:5, 26; Rom 14:19; 2 Cor 8:13-14).⚜
8 📚For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom 📖; to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit; 9 📚to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
12:9 The faith that any believer has is a gift of God (Eph 2:8-9; Phil 1:29). But the Holy Spirit gives special faith, or a larger measure of faith to some believers (compare Rom 12:3). This enables them to serve in ways not possible to those without it. “Gifts of healing” are abilities to heal people by God’s power. Notice the plural – “gifts”. It would seem that not all diseases can be healed by using the same “gift”.⚜
10 📚to another the working of miracles 📖; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another various kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues 📖.
12:8-10 Not all spiritual gifts are in this list. Paul mentions some others in v 28 and Rom 12:6-8.⚜
11 📚But one and the same Spirit works all of these, distributing to each one individually as he wills.
12:7-11 Observe that any spiritual gift (and not just one, such as miraculous powers or tongues) is proof that God’s Spirit is working in a person.⚜
12:11 Verse 7. God’s Spirit fully knows each person and what spiritual gift or gifts each should have. He gives these gifts (or withholds them) according to His own wise and loving will. We cannot force Him to give any particular gift to us. We may try to do so, and even persuade ourselves that He has given it. But this does not mean we actually have it. We should earnestly desire the best gifts (v 31), but accept without complaint what He decides to give us.⚜
One body of Christ, many spiritual gifts
12 📚For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 📚For with one Spirit we were all baptized 📖 into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slave or free, and have all been given to drink 📖 into one Spirit.
12:12-13 John 17:21-23; Eph 1:22-23; 4:4; 5:28-30. Here Paul speaks of the true church made up of all believers wherever or whatever they may be, and whatever spiritual gift they may or may not have. “We” in v 13 means believers in Christ, born of God’s Spirit (John 1:12-13; 3:3-8).⚜
14 📚For the body is not one member, but many. 15 📚If the foot should say, “Because I am not the hand, I do not belong to the body”, does it therefore not belong to the body? 16 📚And if the ear should say, “Because I am not the eye, I do not belong to the body”, does it therefore not belong to the body? 17 📚If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be? 18 📚But now God has set each member in the body as it pleased him.
12:18 Here is a truth applicable both to the human body and to Christ’s body the Church. Let each believer be content in the place God put him or her and in being the “part” God wanted him or her to be. If he is an “eye” let him function as an eye; if a “tongue” as a tongue; if a “foot” as a foot.⚜
19 And if they were all one member, where would the body be? 20 📚But now they are many members, yet but one body.
21 📚And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; again, the head cannot say to the feet, “I have no need of you”.
12:21 He is speaking of believers with different spiritual gifts. No one should try to exclude another believer from fellowship in the body. No one should exalt himself over others. No one should be arrogant and conceited enough to think others are not needed in Christ’s body.⚜
22 📚Not at all. Those members of the body which seem to be weaker are much more necessary, 23 📚And those members of the body which we think are less honourable, to them we give more honour, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty. 24 📚For our presentable parts have no need of it. But God has joined the body together, giving the greater honour to that part which lacked it, 25 📚so that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care 📖 for one another, 26 📚and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it.
12:14-26 Paul uses this illustration of a literal human body to teach two principal lessons to those at Corinth. We today need very much to learn these same lessons.
First, just as there is much variety and diversity in the human body so there is also in Christ’s body the Church (vs 14-20). Not all parts are the same and God never intended they should be. Remember Paul is speaking about spiritual gifts (v 1). He has said that not everyone has the same gift or gifts (vs 7-11). He emphasizes this truth by this illustration of the body. If some in Christ’s body cannot prophesy are they then not a part of the body? If they cannot do miracles or speak in tongues are they not a part of the body? Paul is saying that no one should think they are not. Neither the tongue, nor any other body part, is the whole body.
Second, just as the human body is one body in spite of the variety in its many parts, so is Christ’s body one body. There is a dependence of each part on the others (vs 21-26).⚜
27 📚Now you are the body of Christ, individual members of it. 28 📚And God has placed 📖 these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps 📖, administrations, different kinds of tongues. 29 📚Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? 30 📚Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?
12:27-30 Paul now applies the illustration of vs 14-26 to the matter of spiritual gifts.⚜
12:29-30 It is perfectly clear that the answer to each of these questions is “no”. All he has said in this chapter demands this answer. God will give spiritual gifts to His people, or not give them, as He pleases, and when He pleases, and it is wrong for anyone to insist that every believer have any one of these particular gifts or any other particular gift or manifestation of God’s Spirit. If anyone insists that everyone who has received Spirit baptism must receive any one particular gift he is going contrary to the teaching of the Word of God and is being divisive.⚜
31 📚But earnestly desire the best gifts 📖. And yet I show you a more excellent way 📖.
12:31 See 1 Cor 14:1. Why should a believer want spiritual gifts? Not for his personal satisfaction, not so others will accept him, not to make a name for himself, but to fulfill the words of 1 Cor 14:12. Each believer should be thinking of the good of others, not his own (1 Cor 10:24). What are the greater gifts? Those that enable us to do the most good to others (1 Cor 14:3, 5, 12).⚜