Romans 12.6b-The Temporary Spiritual Gift Of Prophecy Was To Function According To The Absolute Standard, Which Is The Christian Faith
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Wednesday October 14, 2009
Romans: Romans 12:6b-The Temporary Spiritual Gift Of Prophecy Was To Function According To The Absolute Standard, Which Is The Christian Faith
Lesson # 407
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 12:1.
Yesterday we studied Romans 12:6a, which teaches that there is a diversity of spiritual gifts in the body of Christ according to God’s grace.
This evening we will complete the remainder of the verse, which presents the first of seven spiritual gifts, namely the temporary gift of prophecy.
In this passage, Paul teaches that this gift was to function according to the absolute standard, which is the Christian faith.
Romans 12:1, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”
Romans 12:4-5, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
Romans 12:6-8, “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith. If service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
The apostle Paul in Romans 12:6b-8 lists seven different spiritual gifts that are within the body of Christ.
He places them into two groups with one group containing four and the second three.
The first three gifts are introduced by the conjunction eite, “if…if.”
However, the last three have no introductory particle.
“If…if” is the conjunction eite (ei&te) (i-teh), which appears four times in Romans 12:6b-8, once in Romans 12:6, twice in Romans 12:7 and once in Romans 12:8 and is used in a copulative sense to present a list of seven spiritual gifts.
Romans 12:6, “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith.”
“Prophecy” is the accusative feminine singular form of the noun propheteia (profhteiva) (prof-ay-ti-ah), which refers to the exercise of the temporary or discontinued spiritual gift of being a prophet.
This gift is no longer existent since it existed during the pre-canon period of the church to fill the void until the New Testament canon had been completed.
The word is used for this spiritual gift in 1 Corinthians 12:10, 13:2 and 14:22.
The gift of prophecy is referred to by the word prophetes, “prophet” in Ephesians 2:20, 3:5 and 4:11.
Ephesians 2:19-20, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”
Ephesians 4:11, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers.”
The prophet communicates that which he received from direct revelation from God whereas the pastor-teacher communicates from the revelation from God in the completed canon of Scripture.
The authority of the former is based upon direct revelation from God and exercised through the communication of this revelation to the church.
On the other hand, the authority of the latter is based upon revelation already received from God, i.e. completed canon of Scripture or before the canon was closed, the revelation already received and exercised through communication of this revelation to the church.
The gift of prophecy involved not only communicating with regards to the future but also communicating messages from God to the church that were consistent with the completed canon of Scripture, which was not yet complete when this gift was extant.
As with all the spiritual gifts, the gift of prophecy was bestowed upon church age believers for the first time on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16).
Only a few Christian prophets are mentioned in the New Testament directly such as Judas and Silas (Acts 15:32), the prophets at Antioch (Acts 13:1), Agabus and the prophets from Jerusalem (Acts 11:27) and the four daughters of Philip the evangelist (Acts 11:9).
1 Corinthians reveals that there were several of them in the Corinthian church.
Some of them moved about from church to church (Acts 11:27; 21:10).
It is evident that the functions of the prophet must sometimes have crossed those of the apostle, and so we find Paul himself described as a prophet long after he had been called to the apostleship (Acts 13:1).
The gift of a prophet was designed to minister to the church (1 Corinthians 14:4, 22) and often his message was one of “edification, and exhortation, and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:3).
Sometimes, the prophet was empowered to make an authoritative announcement of the divine will in a particular case (Acts 13:1).
The first century apostolic church was not to despise prophetic utterances (1 Thessalonians 5:20) and was also given the gift to discern if a message from a so-called prophet was of God or not (1 Corinthians 14:29).
In rare instances we find him uttering a prediction of a future event (Acts 11:28; 21:10).
The gift of prophecy ranks second only to the gift of apostleship according to the lists in 1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 2:20 and 4:11.
1 Corinthians 12:28, “And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.”
Ephesians 2:19-20, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”
Ephesians 4:11, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers.”
Romans 12:6, “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith.”
“According to the proportion of his faith” is composed of the preposition kata (katav), “according to” and the articular accusative feminine singular form of the noun analogia (a)nalogiva) (an-al-og-ee-ah), “the proportion” and the articular genitive feminine singular form of the noun pistis (pivsti$) (pis-tis), “of his faith.”
In Romans 12:6, analogia means “standard” and is used with the noun pistis, “faith,” which refers to the Christian faith or in other words that body of doctrine held by the Christian church.
In Romans 12:6, the noun pistis is used in a passive sense referring to the body of Christian doctrine or the Christian faith.
The preposition kata with the accusative noun pistis, “faith” denotes conformity to a particular standard or policy.
Therefore, kata specifies that the spiritual gift of prophesy was to function in the Christian community “according to” the standard, which is the Christian faith, i.e. Christian doctrine or in other words, the Word of God.
This prepositional phrase indicates that the content of what the Christian with the spiritual gift of prophesy communicated to the Christian community was to be in agreement with Christian faith, i.e. the Word of God.
In other words it could never contradict the Word of God or the revelation already universally received by the Christian church in the first century through the apostles.
This is what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14:29-33.
1 Corinthians 14:29-33, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.”
In the first century apostolic church an inspired prophet could be identified by those who had the gift of distinguishing of spirits (1 Corinthians 12:10).
In 1 John 4:1-6, he teaches that the believer can discern the false teachers from Satan’s cosmic system by their viewpoint or attitude towards the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.