Bible Study

PERSONAL SALVATION AND EVANGELISM: SESSION 9

The Holy Spirit not only convicts, assures, and transforms, but also empowers. The Spirit's empowerment comes through spiritual gifts that are designed to build up the body of Christ. We will discuss scripture passages that help us understand the spiritual gifts and their purpose.

1 THESSALONIANS 5:12-24

In this passage, Paul teaches that the church of Jesus Christ is designed to be an ordered community of mutual love and service. Church members are to follow their spiritual leaders and to build one another up through encouraging one another, helping one another, and gently but firmly holding one another accountable to the goal that we might all be transformed into the likeness of Christ. In our fellowship we are not to be vengeful, but are to seek to do good to all.

All this is to be done in a context of praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. That is to say, even as we work at treating one another with genuine caring, our focus is to be on glorifying God, on asking and trusting God to meet our genuine needs, and on giving thanks to God for doing so.

This kind of church community will work only so long as the Holy Spirit is at work in us. So, we are to welcome the spiritual gifts, not quenching the Spirit. We are not to despise prophecies, but we are to be discerning about messages claiming to be prophecies. We are to abstain from evil and to allow the Spirit to sanctify us (make us holy, make us like Jesus). We are to trust that the God who has called us will be faithful to bring all to fulfillment.

The Holy Spirit is vital to forming us into the kind of community that Paul describes. The Spirit works by confirming our faith and hope; he works by producing the fruit of the Spirit in us; and he works by distributing spiritual gifts among us.

Paul singles out the gift of prophecy for special mention here. The gift of prophecy is just one of the ways that the Spirit works to shape us. We will consider that gift in much more detail next week, but, for now, it is enough to know that prophecy is the gift of conveying God’s present, active word to God’s people.  We will soon see mention of many other spiritual gifts that are needed in the life of the church.

1 CORINTHIANS 12:4-11, 27-31; 13:1-3, 13; 14:1-4

Paul speaks of the spiritual gifts as matters calling for discernment, discipline, humility, and mutuality. There is a wide variety of gifts that must be coordinated for the common good.  There are many gifts, but only one Spirit (the Holy Spirit) and one body (the church). The exercise of the diverse gifts must not distract us from the unity of the Spirit and the body.

The Higher Gifts

All Christians ought to have faith, hope, and love in their lives. But when we speak of the spiritual gifts of faith, hope, and love, we have moved to another level.

The famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 is not about romance; it is about how the Spirit works within us to enable us to act in faithful, hopeful, and loving ways as part of the body of Christ; the basic quality of the spiritual gift of love is that it patiently seeks to call forth the best in those with whom we are in covenant. Remember that love is not always a soft quality; it is not always pleasing to the loved one; sometimes love is tough and challenging. But it seeks the best. The gift of love is the gift that makes the body of Christ work like a body, with each part contributing to the overall functioning of the body. All Christians should rightly aspire to these gifts.

Prophecy

Among the diverse spiritual gifts, there is one in addition to faith, hope, and love that Paul says should be desired by all Christians. We should at least be open to the fact that God might choose to use us to prophesy. Prophecy in the biblical sense means conveying the immediate word of God for his people. There are a number of sub-gifts related to the larger gift of prophecy: utterance of wisdom, utterance of knowledge, discerning spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues. We will talk more about this important gift next week, but I need to say a few words about one of the sub-gifts of prophecy now: speaking in tongues.

Tongues

When we mention gifts of the Spirit, the first gift that comes to many minds is speaking in tongues. For some speaking in tongues comes to mind for positive reasons (they are excited about how speaking in tongues has carried them to a new level in their relationship with God), and for some speaking in tongues comes to mind for negative reasons (they are concerned that an overemphasis on speaking in tongues will harm the body of Christ in one of several ways). The truth about speaking in tongues lies somewhere in the middle. A fair reading of the Bible would see speaking in tongues as an ongoing spiritual gift, but certainly not the definitive one.

I believe that there are three slightly different phenomena that go under the name of speaking in tongues; it helps to distinguish them, although they cannot be completely distinguished. They tend to overlap a bit.

On Pentecost, the gift of speaking in tongues came in the form of speaking living languages that the disciples had not learned, but which people who were present understood as their own first languages. This has happened in fragmentary ways at other times in Christian history, usually when a missionary is given a brief message in an unlearned language that opens the way to being delivered from danger or to bringing about a conversion. The missionary does not thereby learn the language, and still has to learn it the hard and disciplined way, by studying. Spiritual gifts are not for the purpose of doing way with work in our lives. The Spirit may give us some emergency aid from time to time, but he refuses to be used as a substitute for self-discipline.

Then there is the matter of speaking in tongues as speaking an unknown language under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with the expectation that the message will be interpreted into the language(s) of the gathered community. It is a two-part prophecy. The fact that it comes in an unknown language and is then interpreted helps confirm that the message is from God. This is not a foolproof method. Scriptural discernment and prophetic discernment are still needed.  But the two-part revelation gives one extra measure of assurance.

Far more common is what many people call “prayer language.” It is a sort of right-brained babbling, an expressing of things buried too deeply within our hearts to be expressed in rational words. The expressions may be praise or petition, a pouring out of deep agony or of deep rejoicing. We are to trust that the Spirit carries these prayers to the throne of God. It is also one of many ways that we may release our left-brained attempts to keep personal control of our lives through our use of words. It is a way of submitting to the control of God. I believe that this is the kind of speaking in tongues that Paul wanted us to handle in a disciplined manner, remaining aware of its potential to frighten, confuse, or alienate unbelievers. It is generally not a public gift of the Spirit, for it does not function to build up the body of Christ as a whole. It may build up the individual doing it, but it may make someone else feel left out.

Of course, sometimes when we are releasing our tongues from our own control and giving our minds over to God’s control, God will take over and speak prophetically in our minds. In my experience, he usually speaks in our own language then. Fortunately, we may use the prayer language silently and receive the prophecy silently, so that only when we are clear about the message do we need to speak it.  One caution: when our minds are receptive to messages from the spiritual realm, the Counterfeiter may move in on us with a message. That is why discernment is so terribly important. We will pick up this theme in Session 10. 

Ordinary, Special, and Spectacular Gifts?

There are other gifts that are more individualized. Not all Christians will exercise them. Paul writes of various spiritual gifts: there are “ordinary” gifts of service, there are special gifts of leadership, and there are spectacular gifts of revelation and supernatural miracles. One gift is not more important than the other; the church needs all the gifts working harmoniously together if it is to fulfill its reason for being. Some churches over-emphasize the spectacular gifts, and some churches over-resist the spectacular gifts. I hope that we are aiming for the healthy center where we let the Spirit lead without getting carried away with ourselves, without slighting the “ordinary” in favor of the extraordinary. Only the Spirit can get us to that point of true openness.

There are many spiritual gifts. In the Old Testament, God inspired the artisans who led the building of the Tabernacle and the Temple. In the New Testament lists of gifts, we have some gifts that we may consider to be ordinary: serving, teaching, exhorting, contributing, leading, doing deeds of mercy. Then there are other gifts that we more readily recognize as supernatural: healing, miracles, and the like. But all true spiritual gifts reflect God’s supernatural presence working in our lives. God may take our natural compassion and infuse his Spirit in us to produce deeds of mercy able to persuade others of the truth of the gospel and the value of Christ’s church. When the spiritual gift has been unleashed, the result is far more than our natural compassion.

With regard to the markedly supernatural gifts such a prophecy, miracles, and healing, I am wary of anyone who claims to have these gifts. The Holy Spirit remains in charge of the gifts, and the gifts are there only so long as it pleases the Spirit. People who claim to be a prophet, a miracle-worker, or a healer may be tempted to maintain their reputations through faking gifts when they are not there. Although what follows is not an absolute or even scripturally-suggested rule, I think it is better for a person who feels led to prophesy or pray for the healing of another person to say something like, “I have sometimes experienced the Holy Spirit working through me in this area. After I have spoken (or prayed), you will need to use your own discernment about whether this comes from God, and perhaps check the discernment of others, but would you give me permission to speak as I believe God is leading me?”

I feel different about people claiming gifts of humble service. There is not quite the same temptation to indulge in fakery there. But, even then, sin being what it is, some people play one-upsmanship with “humble” service. We need to remember that the gift is there only so long as we let the Spirit, and not our own egos, be in control.

We need to know within ourselves that the gifts of the Spirit can work through all of us. Not one of us is excluded. And all of us should expect that some typical patterns of the Spirit’s working should emerge in our lives. The Holy Spirit wants us to be able to rely on him as we serve the fellowship and mission of the church.     

Refreshing Gifts

The gifts of the Spirit are given to us for the sake of the fellowship and mission of the church. I see many tired, burned-out people in churches. This comes primarily from our attempts to operate outside our giftings. When we use our spiritual gifts, we may still work hard, get physically tired, and experience anxiety, but we will not have the strain of doing it all ourselves.  The Spirit does much of the work, but we get much of the fulfillment. If we can relax in our gifts and let the Spirit flow, then we will be refreshed as often as we are tired, for that is how the Spirit works.

What Are My Gifts?

At this point in a presentation of the spiritual gifts, there are always at least a few people saying, “But I don’t have any spiritual gifts.” I would like to question that assumption. What you may mean is that you don’t have any special skills, talents, or abilities suitable for public display. You don’t have a genius IQ and so do not plan to pursue a doctorate in biblical studies. You are convinced that you would faint if you had to preach a sermon. Facing more than one child at a time is terrifying to you. No one has ever suggested to you that your voice would sound nice on the praise team. Technologically speaking, you don’t know a mouse from a modem. But, whoa! This is not what we are talking about.

A spiritual gift may make use of a skill, talent, or ability, but it isn’t the same thing at all.  A spiritual gift is God working in you to do something that you could not do on your own. God takes whatever you can do and makes it into something more significant for the kingdom.

A simple deed of mercy can be a spiritual gift if you let God work through it. A plain act of service can be a spiritual gift if people can see the faithfulness of God communicated in what you do.

How do you know if you have a spiritual gift?

If all these things are true, you should assume that spiritual gifts are in the process of emerging in your life. They should show up as you dare to exercise them.

ROMANS 12:3-8

In Romans 12-13 Paul is writing about our spiritual transformation and about the love we show in mutual relationships in the body of Christ. The spiritual gifts are part of how we show mutual love. As we exercise our own spiritual gifts, we strengthen the community of faith and its mission, thereby building others up. As they exercise their gifts, they build us up.  By this mutual flowing of gifts, we are bound together in an organic whole, the body of Christ.

Paul had already expressed this thought in his earlier First Letter to the Corinthians. But now, he gives us a shorter list of gifts than he used in the Corinthian letter: prophesying, serving/ministering, teaching, exhorting/encouraging/strengthening, contributing, leading, and doing acts of mercy.  These gifts and others like them are to be implemented with energy, enthusiasm, commitment and mutual love. Some suggest that this list supplies the broad categories and that other gifts (such as those in 1 Corinthians 12) are subsets of these, and there may be some interesting discoveries from trying to think about matters in this way, but I find no evidence that this is what Paul and the Holy Spirit intended.

EPHESIANS 4:1-16; 5:18-21

The church of Jesus Christ on earth exists for the praise of the glory of God. That is our reason for being: to recognize and gratefully lift up the glory of God that we perceive through our faith in Jesus Christ and through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The church glorifies God in three ways:

(1) We glorify God directly in words and deeds by gathering for worship.

(2) We glorify God outside the church by proclaiming and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, thereby inviting others to enter saving faith and to become members of Christ’s church.

(3) We glorify God within the church fellowship as we support one another in becoming growing and maturing disciples of Jesus Christ.

So, we may speak of the church glorifying God through gathered worship, evangelistic mission, and mutual nurture. We need all three together if we are to glorify God and thus fulfill our reason for being.

I believe that worship, mission, and nurture will happen together in healthy balance only when three conditions are met. I will mention the first two conditions briefly and concentrate on the third condition.

(1) We must have a common foundation. In Ephesians 4:4-6, Paul tells us to find our common foundation in our having one God and Father of us all, one Lord Jesus Christ, one Holy Spirit, one faith in the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, one hope in the eternal new creation we are promised in Christ, one baptism into Christ, and one body, the church. There are a few more things which we must hold in common: I have elsewhere listed a total of twelve. You could group them differently and come up with a different number. But the point is not how many stones are in the foundation, but that it is in fact one foundation, the apostolic, scriptural faith in Jesus Christ.  

(2) We must have a common goal for our personal lives: transformation into increasing Christlikeness. In Ephesians 4:12-24, Paul  speaks of this goal.

(3) There is a third thing that we must have in common: the power that drives and directs us. In Greek the word for power is dynamis (doon-uh-mis), from which our English word dynamic comes. I will use that word because I don’t have to stop to explain each time I use it that I do not mean worldly power. So, I will say that the third thing we must have to go with our common foundation and our common goal is a common dynamic. Paul teaches that the common dynamic is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the dynamic at the heart of the healthy church. The dynamic quality of the Spirit’s presence in the church is most evident in the flowing of his gifts among believers.

In Ephesians 4:7-12, Paul lists five gift-based offices that exist for the purpose of building up the body and for equipping the saints for the work of ministry. The offices of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are examples of the way the gifts may come together to provide leadership for the church. But there are many other important gift-enabled functions as well. The spiritual gifts are to prepare each one of us to contribute to the well-being of the whole body of Christ as we gather for worship, as we go forth to share the gospel, and as we mutually support and nurture one another.

For this reason, Paul gives us some guidelines in 5:18-21 about how we receive and handle the Spirit’s presence in our lives. In the interest of making smooth sentences that are not too long in English, most modern translations disguise the grammar of the original. The NKJV and the ESV get this one right; here is the ESV:

“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

The basic admonition is that we be filled with the Spirit. There is then a string of participial phrases illustrating activities that Spirit-filled people carry out. The five participles are: speaking, singing, melody-making, thanks-giving, and submitting.  The first four seem to be worship-oriented, but the last (submitting) is social in nature.

We are accustomed to hearing that submitting is what wives do to husbands, but Paul is a little more even-handed than we usually give him credit for being. Before instructing wives to submit to husbands, he instructs all Christians to submit to one another. Thus he helps us re-think what submission means. If submission is to be by all church members to all other church members, what can it mean? Surely it does not mean simply obeying whatever another church member says. If it did, we would all be running around commanding and counter-commanding one another. I’ve seen a few churches that worked like that, but they were not very happy places. I don’t think that is what Paul had in mind. I suggest that submitting, in the context of mutuality, when the topic is how we are to be Spirit-filled, can only mean recognizing, respecting, welcoming and encouraging the spiritual gifts of one another.

One person may be called as the senior minister; other members are to respect that calling and gifting. But the senior minister is to carry out that calling with humble respect for the gifts and callings that others bring to church life. If the minister fails to respect the gifting of others, then the church is not being led into the most productive exercise of its gifts. Each and every one of us is called to the same perspective in relation to our fellow church members. We are called to respect the gifts that every other member brings to our life together. And we are called to use our gifts and encourage others to use their gifts for the three ways of glorifying God: gathered worship, evangelistic mission, and mutual nurture. We will be able to hold all that together when we meet the three conditions: when we have a common foundation (apostolic, scriptural faith in Jesus Christ), a common goal (becoming more Christlike), and a common dynamic (the gifts of the Spirit being welcomed and encouraged in an atmosphere of mutual submission).

1 PETER 4:7-11.

Paul is not the only apostle to write of spiritual gifts. Peter does as well. His teaching fits nicely with Paul’s. Once again in the context of discussing mutual love, the apostle tells us that we are to use our diverse spiritual gifts for the glory of God and for the good of one another. It is a basic principle that is to guide our use of the gifts.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are your spiritual gifts? If you do not know, it is possible that a spiritual gifts inventory, such as the one that may be downloaded free from the Christview Ministries Website, will help you think about this.

2. This study claims that spiritual gifts are designed to enable a spiritual community in fellowship, worship, and mission. Are your gifts more oriented toward helping the gathered church or the church in mission, or is there a balance?

3.  What has been your experience of speaking in tongues or seeing someone else speaking in tongues? Has it been positive or negative or both? What are the most positive and most negative uses of tongues of which you know? Which kinds of speaking in tongues have you experienced [communicating in unlearned living languages, prophesying (when combined with interpretation), or using a prayer language]?

4. Could you say that your church has a common foundation, a common goal, and a common dynamic?

5. Have you experienced the rest that comes from using your spiritual gift in service to Christ?

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