The Gifts

Into

Story

It’s Christmas soon… and Christmas is all about the presents… not the presents we get but the ones we give.

how many of you have seen the look on a person’s face when they receive a gift from someone that is particularly meaningful?

My family does this thing occasionally where we would draw names and everyone would end up with one person to buy a Christmas present for at Christmas time. Honestly it’s a great idea, especially if you’re trying to save some money during the Christmas season. For me though, doing it that way takes a substantial amount of fun out of Christmas for me because I like to give presents to all my family members.

If you don’t know, one of my love languages is gift giving. I love giving gifts and seeing the joy it can bring people or the difference it can make in their day to day activities. I don’t have a lot of money so the gifts aren’t usually big but I try to make them special in some way.

When I said that Christmas is all about the presents, I wasn’t only talking about physical gifts. Just because something isn’t a physical thing doesn’t mean that it can’t be a gift to someone.

One such thing is love. Love is the greatest gift we could give anyone and Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 13, a passage which we are going to explore a little bit later.

The purpose behind why we give and the way we give, is so important. Today we’re starting a series on the gifts that God gives us through the Holy Spirit called the Spiritual Gifts. What is really interesting about these gifts is that they are not for us, they are for us to be equipped to help others.

so...

What are Spiritual Gifts?

Spiritual gifts are gifting’s which the spirit of God imparts to us in order to be better equipped to minister to those around us.

There is quite a bit of dialogue amongst biblical scholars over what constitutes a spiritual gift and where we see those things in the bible. I don’t really want to get into that too much with this, so I’ve settled on an idea that there is perhaps 2 categories of spiritual gifts.

The first category being Miraculous or Spectacular gifts which are found in 1 Corinthians 12 such as the gift of tongues and the gift of healing. The second category would be normal spiritual gifts such as serving with the strength that God provides, this found in 1 peter 4:11.

For the sake of simplicity during our series on The Spiritual Gifts, we’re going to stick with the list of nine miraculous or spectacular gifts that Paul goes through in 1 Corinthians 12.

Pray

The Gifts

If everyone could turn in your bibles to 1 Corinthians 12, we’re going to read our main passage together before we jump into discussing the spiritual gifts.

1 Corinthians 12:1–11 ESV

1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Now, I’m only human and the most I can do is try my best to be God’s voice when I preach so as we continue, open your ears and your minds to hear what God is saying through me, not what I am saying to you because I want you to hear God first.

Okay, the fist gift that is mentioned is in v7. it is the

Manifestation of the Spirit for the common good

This gift, the manifestation of the spirit is given to everyone. This spiritual gift is a bit of an outlier from the others in that it is given to everyone, all people have the manifestation of the spirit which isn’t necessarily true of the other spiritual gifts.

The word manifestation means a perceptible, outward, or visible expression. Perhaps this gift is not as spectacular as the others in this list, but it is significant. It shows that everyone has a gift from God that is public and open for others to see and benefit from.

The whole idea behind addressing the manifestation of the spirit is to say this. Everyone has a gift from the spirit, it might not be much but they are all important. Not only are they important but they are for the good of others. The manifestation of the spirit is not for ourselves to benefit, but for us to better the lives of the people around us

The rest of the gifts that Paul talks about in this list are not all completely unrelated. In fact, many biblical scholars place them into three groups because of their similar properties.

Each spiritual gift that we talk about today we are going to discus more in depth later in this series. So today we’re just going to do a brief overview of what they are, they’re purpose and how to use them.

let’s start with the first grouping of gifts found in 1 Corinthians 12:8 which contains an utterance or word of wisdom and a word of knowledge.

Utterance of Wisdom

It is really important to note that the gifts are not simply wisdom and knowledge but a word of wisdom, and a word of knowledge. The gift of a word of wisdom could be understood as a wise saying or speaking wisely in a certain situation.

Imagine you and your friends are in a particularly tricky situation and there are multiple options in which you might proceed but the best course of action is unclear. A word of wisdom would suggest a solution based on wise thinking.

We also have to remember it is a word of wisdom, not wisdom in general. A word of wisdom as a gift of the spirit is for the betterment of others and does not transform an unwise person into a wise one.

Utterance of Knowledge

The gift of a word of Knowledge is very similar to the word of wisdom in that it presents information. But again, like the word of wisdom, it isn’t a gift to make someone generally more knowledgeable, but for someone to have a word to be used for the edification of others. American theologian Gordon Fee suggests that the gift of knowledge is most likely a special utterance of a revelatory nature. In other words, a word of from God to bring some sort of revelation to the hearer.

The gift of a word of Knowledge could be understood as receiving knowledge of facts or events that we wouldn’t be able to gain access to except by divine revelation, being inspired by God.

That’s the first group, wisdom and knowledge.

The second group consists of the gift of faith, gifts of healing, and the working of miracles. Again these gifts are all related to each other. Some people would call these power gifts.

Faith

The gift of faith is not a gift unto itself, it is a means to an end. It’s different than the standard concept of faith that we all have in God. This is a faith that is an absolute conviction that God will show up and reveal his power.

That moment where most would have a little bit of doubt creep into their thought process and say, that won’t actually happen, doesn’t ever cross the mind of someone who is acting in the gift of faith.

Gifts of Healing

This one is pretty self explanatory, it’s healing miracles. But one thing to note is that it is Gifts plural, not singular. This brings to attention that every healing miracle is a gift. When someone has the gift of healing, they in turn are giving the gift of healing to those who the Holy Spirit chooses, which is a really cool because it takes the focus off of the gift bearer and puts it on the person being healed.

Working of Miracles

what’s the difference between this gift and the gifts of healing?” Healing is a miracle isn’t it?

After doing some reading, the working of Miracles is for those instances of divine interventions other than healing for example, casting out demons. One thought on this gift that I found particularly interesting was that some would say this gift would be given to someone for power encounters against the forces of satan. Essentially spiritual warfare, which is super integral to our walk as Christians because we face spiritual battles every day whether we realize it or not.

The third group has the last four spectacular gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12. This group is divided into two sub groups. The gift of prophecy, the ability to distinguish between spirits forms the first related pair and then various kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues forms the second.

Prophecy

Sometimes the gift of prophesy can be mistaken for the kind of prophecy that the old testament prophets engaged in. It is still prophecy and has similarity to what the OT prophets did, but rather than a foretelling of the future, a word of prophecy would tell of God’s message to an assembly of believers for their edification. Not to say that God’s message might not be future minded, but future telling isn’t the primary focus of this gift.

Distinguishing between Spirits or, Discernment

The gift of discernment or distinguishing between spirits is used to assess prophetic utterances and discern between human, divine or demonic influences. This particular gift is talked about in 1 John 4:1 which says “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world.”

John’s readers were tending to accept every teaching that claimed to be inspired by God. This is also happening in faith communities even today so this is still relevant to us. These people needed to be shown that identifying between the supernatural and the divine is very important and the gift of discernment is used for this very purpose.

Various Kinds of Tongues

Now we get into the gift of tongues. Often this is a polarizing topic for those in the faith community. Some are so uncomfortable with the very idea of tongues that they don’t even talk about it and others are so comfortable with it that they speak in tongues at the top of their lungs in church.

First, various kinds of tongues is referring to exactly what it sounds like… speaking. Now the word “kinds” would most likely be referring to two types of languages, identifiable human languages, and spiritual, or heavenly languages which we would be unable to interpret.

I don’t know if this is entirely true but I believe there are 3 different styles of speaking in tongues. The first is a private prayer language to be used only with you and God. The second is an utterance to be interpreted for others to be edified. And the third I believe is to do spiritual warfare with.

Speaking in tongues is an incredible gift, but it is one that comes with an expectation that it be used appropriately… specifically when it is okay to speak in tongues and when it is not. But that is a whole other conversation so we’ll leave that for when we discuss tongues later in this series. If you want to get a head start on that, read 1 Corinthians 14.

Interpretation of Tongues

The gift of interpretation of Tongues. Another pretty self explanatory Spiritual gift in terms of what it is… The person who is given this gift will interpret the various tongues either for the speaker of the tongue or to others.

1 Corinthians 14:13 says that one who speaks in a tongues should pray that he may interpret.

Interpretation of tongues is super important because often the Holy Spirit will have something to say via tongues which will need to be interpreted and translated to a language we can understand as human beings.

Okay so we’ve done a brief overview of what these gifts are… now why are we given them?

What is the purpose of Spiritual Gifts

The purpose of spiritual gifts is to provide service to the community of God’s people, or for the common good as we read in v.7

The spiritual gifts are not for the good of the person who receives them, they are for the edification of others. When a spiritual gift is used for self edification, that use is going against the intended purpose of that spiritual gift.

The gifts are an equipping. Being given a spiritual gift is not like receiving a Christmas present as we talked about earlier, it’s about being given a tool to be able to help and lead others to a place where they might see God more clearly or understand what he might be doing in their life.

All of the gifts we talked about, never once was mentioned this is for the betterment of the person who has this gift. Always, they are for others.

We’ll talk more about each specific gift and also the proper way to use them later in the series… so today I want to end by stressing the theme surrounding 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 8-13.

Conclusion

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 ESV

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:8–13 ESV

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Paul goes on to start chapter 14 by saying that we should pursue love, and desire the spiritual gifts. Both are are good but notice that love comes first.

The character of our heavenly father is deeply dependent on love… it is a core aspect of who God is. If God’s character is love and He loves us deeply, when He gives us a spiritual gift that is for the edification of others, would it not be crucial that we use that gift with an extension of the Fathers love to those others.

Without love, tongues of men and of angels are useless. Without love, prophetic powers and knowledge and faith are worth nothing…

If we prophesy in anger, how is that prophesy going to do anyone any good? How is it ever going to be for someone’s edification? It won’t be, the person being prophesied to would most likely just disregard that prophesy. But if we we prophesied in love, that same prophesy would be much more likely to be received and thus be edifying to the person receiving it.

These spiritual gifts, when used in love you can see that same look of gratefulness on someone’s face when they receive a present they know has been given in love. Our core mandate as a christian people is to love as Christ first loved us. As you discover what spiritual gifts you have been blessed with, remember that they are there to help you love better. They aren’t given to make you look more spiritual than you are, they are given to help others come into a more spiritual and personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.

What would Jesus do...