Different Kinds of Gifts

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

In our study of 1 Corinthians we have come across several issues where Paul has needed to correct the understanding or practices of the believers in Corinth. In the last chapter he addressed head coverings and the Lord’s Supper; in our passage for today he wants to teach the Corinthians more about the role of the Holy Spirit. Their understanding was limited to some degree. What does the Holy Spirit do? What is His job description? They probably knew God the Father as the Creator and Jesus as the Savior. It’s harder to identify the Holy Spirit with one main role.

If you look through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, you can actually find more than 50 types of things that the Holy Spirit does. He is instrumental in drawing us to God, in convicting us of sin, in regenerating us into new people, and in comforting, encouraging, directing, teaching, and empowering us day by day. In a couple of weeks we will be starting a new sermon series on worship, and one of the things we will talk about for sure is the essential role of the Holy Spirit in true worship.

In the passage before us today, Paul focuses on two aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit: first, His role in allowing and empowering us to confess Jesus as Lord, and second, the spiritual gifts that He gives us for the common good. Let’s read through the whole passage and then look at it in more detail.

Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.—1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Paul wants to teach the Corinthians more about the Holy Spirit because he does not want them to be uninformed. He wants them to grow in their knowledge and love of God. He wants them to operate in the fullness of the Spirit’s presence and power. We have this tremendous resource available to us as well, if we will simply ask for it and humbly receive it. Why does Paul mention idols here? It seems that he wants to acknowledge that there are other spiritual powers that compete for our attention and loyalty. The idols themselves are mute and powerless within themselves, but Satan, as the father of lies, uses them to deceive people and to hold people in bondage, blinding them to God’s truth. In America we don’t have many idols of wood and stone, but what substitutes for God do people worship in the same way? Money, status, security, pleasure, technology, and so on – these can just as easily turn us away from following God. Even for believers, there is a battle going on for our attention and our commitment.

There is something comfortable about having an idol – something manageable and familiar and gratifying. Truly following God means taking up our cross daily, stepping out into the risky and unknown, giving up control and complacency. This is what it means to live under the lordship of Jesus. We cannot do it without the help of the Holy Spirit.

At the beginning here, Paul wants to emphasize this strong connection between the lordship of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible for them to ever be at cross-purposes. The Spirit would never lead someone to curse Jesus. Similarly, no one can acknowledge Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Clearly someone could frivolously say, “Jesus is Lord,” and not mean it. That’s not what this means. Paul is referring to someone realizing and confessing and committing to who Jesus is as Lord of their life. This is foundational to the work of the Holy Spirit. Our words are important. When we declare the lordship of Jesus and really mean it, it can be like turning on a light in a dark room. The darkness is pushed back, confusion is calmed, and fear is replaced by hope. Jesus is Lord.

In the second section, then, Paul goes into more detail about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, what they are and what they are for. A theme here might be stated as “unity in diversity.” God loves diversity. We see so much of it in His creation. And we see so much of it in the Body of Christ, as I described in my message about the True Church. It’s unfortunate that some people are uncomfortable with diversity. They want to draw boundaries in the church that make them feel validated and in control. God keeps surprising me with new and amazing things that He is doing in the world, using people who are very different from me. We can be brothers and sisters in spite of differences in culture, doctrine, and lifestyle. The glue that holds us together is the Holy Spirit and the lordship of Jesus.

The diversity in gifting extends to calling and experience as well. The reason we need different kinds of gifts is that God calls us to different kinds of service. Perhaps God has gifted you with hospitality, so that you can welcome people into your home or into our church. Or maybe he has gifted you technically so that you can help people with computer problems or when their car breaks down. Or maybe he has given you the ability to listen and sympathize and just be a friend to someone. These can all be done in service to our Lord – one is not better than another. There are so many ways that God wants to use you – the way He has made you and grown you. His purpose is to work through you and speak through you. This is the main way that He wants to bring transformation. We are like the hands and voice and heart of Jesus to the world. God is able to work through whatever we offer to Him. And the bonus is that He works in us at the same time! It is as we serve that God forms us into the kind of people that He wants us to be. Real growth comes when we actually do something for God, not just as we sit in church and hear about how we should be. In all of these works and in everyone involved with them it is the same God seeking to accomplish His purposes.

Paul then moves on to the “why” of spiritual gifts in verse 7. To each believer the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. The goal is not just to make us feel good. Let’s consider that word “manifestation” for a moment. It means to make something visible. We see God at work through the gifts of the Spirit. Some gifts are more visible, more dramatic, than others. Perhaps some in the Corinthian church had been trying to use the more dramatic gifts, like speaking in tongues, for selfish ends. Paul wants to remind them that these gifts are for the common good. This term “common good” literally means “bringing together.” The gifts of the Spirit are designed to bring people together in worship and fellowship and community, not to create division or to discriminate between believers. If spiritual gifts exalt some people and not others then something is not right.

This has been a pitfall in some charismatic churches that teach that if you are filled with the Spirit then you must speak in tongues. Does everyone here know what speaking in tongues means? It means to say something in prayer or worship or prophecy in a language that you don’t know, that you have never learned. This is a very common manifestation of the Holy Spirit speaking through someone, though sometimes it can be done purely in the flesh (just meaningless babble) or even counterfeited by Satan.

Speaking in tongues is a controversial issue in the church at large. Some churches teach that it ended with the early church. God gave it for that time, but now that we have the Bible we don’t need speaking in tongues or prophecy or any other form of extra-biblical revelation. Frankly there isn’t much support in Scripture itself for this position. It appears to have been created in an effort to maintain doctrinal purity and order and to avoid emotionalism, which is making one’s spiritual experience dependent on emotion – trying to live on a spiritual “high” at all times. However, the danger is that if we reject emotion entirely and make our faith purely intellectual, we end up denying part of who we are and missing out on some of the intimacy and passion that God desires. Our spiritual walk can easily become legalistic, dry, and lifeless.

There are some churches that go to the other extreme and base almost everything on emotional experiences of the Holy Spirit, to the detriment of scriptural teaching and rational soundness. They may easily stray into extremes of behavior and flimsy doctrinal positions that actually draw people away from God and the holiness that he desires for them.

The Great Commission Churches as an association does not actually take an official position on supernatural gifts and how they should be used in the body. Many believers head for the middle ground that is open to God moving in supernatural ways through the Holy Spirit without making this the focus our relationship with him. There are several passages later on in 1 Corinthians that deal with tongues in more detail. For example, chapter 14 is almost all about tongues. Here are some selected verses:

Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but the one who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be edified.—1 Corinthians 14:4-5

I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.—1 Corinthians 14:18-19

Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”—1 Corinthians 14:22-25

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.—1 Corinthians 14:39-40

I don’t want to expound on this in detail here, since we will return to this in the future. But it would be good to summarize what Paul seems to be saying. He clearly spoke in tongues himself and desired this gift for all believers. If tongues were to be used in church they should be interpreted so that everyone can understand what is being said. However, prophecy is more important than tongues for edifying the church. Tongues are a sign for unbelievers, apparently in the case where the language being spoken is one that the unbeliever can understand, as in the situation described in Acts 2 where a variety of foreigners heard the apostles “declaring the wonders of God” in their own languages and were convicted by the message. In the same way, prophecy can lay bare the secrets of people’s hearts and open them to God. However, in church everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way, avoiding the excesses that can lead people astray. The goal is the common good, as we saw in chapter 12. Let’s return to that passage.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit,  to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit,  to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.  All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.—1 Corinthians 12: 4-11

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to give us an understanding of what the “common good” actually means. How should I “draw together” with people who are different from me? What should I give to people who may never give me something in return? This unselfish understanding of the common good is actually unknown among some cultures and fading out in some ways in American culture, too. For many people, relationships are purely transactional: If I put something in, what do I get out? There is no sense of responsibility for people outside of one’s family or clan, no conviction that I should carry my share of the load even if others are shirking theirs. People ask, “What’s in it for me?” rather than, “What can I do to help others?” To even be concerned for the common good requires the Holy Spirit reminding us of all that God has done for us. How should we respond in generosity to others, without any expectation of something in return?

Let’s look at the specific gifts of the Spirit that Paul is listing here. He starts out with messages of wisdom and knowledge – also known as a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge. There is no consensus, it seems, on what the distinction between these two might be. In general, knowledge means to know the facts about something; wisdom is about knowing how to apply knowledge and experience in useful ways. Some charismatic churches place a lot of emphasis on these gifts. Have you ever had someone tell you that they have a “word from the Lord” for you? It can be intimidating sometimes and no doubt has been misused. But it seems clear that the Holy Spirit can give supernatural understanding at times that goes beyond what a person could come up with on their own. As an example, Jesus made this promise in Luke 12:

“When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, ¹² for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”—Luke 12:11

So this isn’t a substitute for study or preparation – we should always be ready to give an account of the hope within us – but it is reassuring to know that the Holy Spirit can give us a supernatural message of wisdom in such situations to say just the right thing. I know in my own experience that there have been times when someone has said something to me that was just what I needed to hear at the time, a word of exhortation or encouragement. It was clearly the Holy Spirit giving them a word of wisdom for me.

I am reminded of one of the stories from The Insanity of God movie that some of us went to see recently. It was about a Russian pastor who was jailed and tortured for his faith. He remained strong, even standing up each morning in his cell to sing a certain praise song to God, despite the other prisoners shouting at him and throwing garbage to try to get him to stop. The guards kept trying to break his spirit, finally coming up with a plan to deceive him into thinking that they had tortured his wife to death. That was too much, and he finally said that he would give up and sign their document renouncing his faith. So they brought the document to him the next morning. But he refused to sign it, saying that God had told him in the night that his wife was actually still alive (a supernatural word of knowledge) and that he would also live. The guards were so angry that they began to drag him outside then and there to execute him. But as they did so, all the other 1500 hardened prisoners in his cell block stood up and began singing his praise song, the one that he had sung so faithfully every day. The guards were dumbstruck. Who is this man? They let go of him – and shortly thereafter he was released and was able to go back to his family. It was an amazing story of the power of the Holy Spirit, revealed not just in the word of knowledge, but in the gift of faith that kept him believing despite everything and everyone being against him.

The gift of faith is a wonderful thing. I recognized it several times in Emma, when we lived in far western Nepal, traveling in on a long and difficult road. We would come across landslides or deep streams to ford or have car trouble, and it would be easy to start doubting that we would be able to carry on. Her response was to pray. And the amazing thing was that after she prayed she would have perfect confidence that God would see us through whatever challenge lay before us. Many times I felt that her faith was stronger than mine. A gift of faith can be a great contribution to the body.

Healing and other miracles have played a huge role in the growth of the church in Nepal. As I have said before, people see healing as the victory of Jesus over the spirits that torment them. So it is much more common to see gifts of supernatural healing there than here. It may also have something to do with the quality of medical care available here versus there. In more developed countries people generally look for miracles only when all medical options have been exhausted. People turn to God more quickly when he is the only option.

Some people do have healing ministries here in America. Many have been used by God in powerful ways, although faith healing has certainly been abused and exploited at times, too. God can certainly call certain people to focus on praying for healing. However, the Holy Spirit is available to all believers. We can all call on him in faith and receive his gifts. Actually, it’s that way with all of the gifts listed here. They are not just for certain people. They can be for anyone at any time, distributed by the Spirit as he determines, as it says here at the end.

Prophecy is the next on the list in verse 10. That refers to “speaking forth” the will of God. It may or may not include a prediction of the future. God can certainly reveal such things when he chooses to. In any case, any prophecy needs to be compared with what the Bible teaches to make sure it is compatible. The Holy Spirit will not lead anyone to contradict the scriptures. This applies to the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge, too. Those need to be confirmed by Biblical truth as well.

The distinguishing between spirits is often referred to as discernment. This is a very useful gift from the Holy Spirit. How do we know what is true? How do we know if someone is trustworthy? Sometimes discernment comes in the form of a feeling of disquiet. Something just doesn’t seem right; something doesn’t ring true. This can be very important in evaluating prophecy or tongues or words of wisdom and knowledge. Pray for the gift of discernment. Have things confirmed by other believers. Search the scriptures to see if everything lines up the way it should.

We all need more the Holy Spirit. Look at all these good things that he wants to give us! Are you open to whatever the Holy Spirit might desire to give you? Let’s ask God to remove whatever might hinder the full manifestation of his spirit and to bless our body in this way. We have the promise of Jesus from Luke 11:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”—Luke 11:11-13