Sermon Tone Analysis

Thesis: The gifts empower us towards unity, and when we are united, we draw closer to Christ.

Intro: Last week, as we began this series, I wanted to just dive right into the message - and after you saw the how long our service went, you may understand why.

We have so much to cover, even today, but the purpose of this series, I hope I articulated it well last week - there is so much confusion centered around the Holy Spirit.

Of the Trinity, we are quick to just let so many things happen and call it the Holy Spirit and that’s not fair to Him, and it’s certainly not fair to the church, or to us as individuals.

And last week we went headfirst into the Spiritual Gifts.

What can happen when it comes to giftings, and what did happen in the Corinthian church, is that people who operate in a certain gifting some times find themselves elevated to a higher level than others within the church.

Either this is done by others or by themselves, but it is not done by the Holy Spirit, and we’ll see why today as we go.

And, we saw last week, the Holy Spirit does not “force” a person to do something, Paul clearly states 1 Corinthians 14:32

The Spirit may “prompt” you to do something, but we don’t really see the Holy Spirit forcing an unwilling person into something in Scripture.

In Acts 2, we see the church speaking in tongues “as the Spirit gave them utterance”, not “forcing them to pray that way”.

But with that said, there are things the Holy Spirit makes us, as a church.

He makes us diverse, He makes us equal, and He makes us love, all as He unites us, the church, and draws us closer to Jesus Christ, our Savior.

The Spirit Makes Us Diverse

Paul begins to paint a picture of the church - the body of Christ - comparing the unity, or solidarity we have to that of the human body.

In verse 12, what we see Paul doing is using a brilliant literary device, switching phrases back and forth, to make his point.

“One body, many members, all the members are one body.

So it is with Christ.

Now, we already know the body of Christ is diverse, we see that as we look around the room - people from different backgrounds, different towns, different family names, different occupations.

We see the diversity of the church in the book of Acts.

Had some in the early church had their way, the Gospel would not have been brought to the Gentiles, to the Greeks.

But Peter has this vision, and he ends up going to a centurion named Cornelius’ house, and while Peter preaches to them, giving them the Gospel, something happens:

Now, in the Old Testament, God set Israel apart, but He has always made a way for the alien, the traveller, those who were not Hebrew or Jewish to come to Himself, and in the book of Acts the church becomes proactive in that mission.

Of course we have the great Commission of Mark:

and Matthew

This means the church was, from its earliest beginnings, going to be diverse.

It was going to be made up of different people from different races, different backgrounds, and so on.

Paul says that’s fine, but he goes deeper than skin color or social standing - he goes to the core of who we are, and what the Spirit does within us.

By again saying we are all part of one body, Paul is likely referencing a familiar analogy to the Corinthian Christians.

They frequently would have heard similar such messages from the Greek writer Homer who famously coined the phrase “Strength in Unity”.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the Latin “E Pluribus Unum”, or “Out of the Many, One.”

You see it on your pocket change.

Marcus Aurelius would later say: “Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life.

Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity.”

There was a famous fable from Memenius Agrippa from the 500’s BC, in which the mouth, hands, and teeth rebelled against the belly, so they refuse to give it food, which of course doesn’t go well for them.

So this would have fallen into their cultural conscience.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the Latin “E Pluribus Unum”, or “Out of the Many, One.”

You see it on your pocket change.

But Paul goes further and connects it with baptism, and not just baptism in water, but in the Spirit - “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body”.

Paul does not mean this as Spirit Baptism the way we would, at least not here, and we know this because of context.

Paul specifically says they were baptized into one body.

So at the point of conversion… not a secondary thing, not what he is referencing here at the moment.

We see it clearer within the context of this letter, Paul writes earlier:

So the way he is referencing here at the moment is the Spirit filling of a converted believer.

Paul is making the case that once we are joined with Christ we are joined IN Christ.

We see him do this in Galatians 2:20

In Romans 8:9

When we are in Christ, the Spirit dwells within us.

This happens to ALL believers.

Whether we are Jewish, or Greek, Free or slave - the Spirit does not care.

We are all taken in and the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

Again, Paul speaks of this in Galatians

That is not to say the idea of baptism in the Holy Spirit is moot here, or pointless to Paul.

The idea of God’s Holy Spirit baptizing believers as a secondary thing, for the early church, was foundational.

We see it in Acts 2,

They were already believers and followers of Christ when this happened.

But Peter gets up, and he explains this event, quoting Joel 2:28

Joel 2:28 (ESV)

“And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh...

Again, all flesh - it’s not limited to a select, elite group of people.

For Paul, the idea of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as we refer to it, as a secondary event in the believer’s life, was likely assumed for them to have the manifestation of gifts which they were writing to him about.

Especially in light of the events of the book of Acts, where there is always an external event giving evidence of the internal Spirit Baptism, the action of speaking in tongues.

But as I point out last week, the Spirit doesn’t stop with just the gift of a personal prayer language, there’s a variety of gifts.

And those gifts are given to different people at different times for different reasons, but their ultimate purpose, is to bring unity.

“For the body does not consist of one member but of many.”

Now, we don’t catch this because there’s quite a few years of history that separates us from what Paul is doing, but he’s actually using humor here to prove his point.

The hand, the ear, the eye, none of them even have the ability to speak, yet they may say they don’t belong to the body?

Paul’s making a joke here - he’s saying, “Look how silly that sounds!”

And yet, Paul reminds us of God’s sovereignty.

As the Holy Spirit works within the church, He does so in a way to arrange the members of the body, each and every one of them, as He sees fit - to unity the body.

The church is meant to be diverse, but from our diversity, the Holy Spirit draws us towards unity, and in that unity, we draw closer to Christ our Savior.

The Spirit Makes us Equal

While we are all different, as individuals, we are all to be one body.

There is not to be any sort of hierarchy within the church - we’re not all doing this on our own.

A couple of weeks ago, as we saw Jesus send the disciples out two by two in Mark 6, you may remember I said we are not meant to be “loner Christians”.

We are the sheep of his pasture, to be a “lone wolf” is never a good thing, church.

The body needs its members.

Church attendance matters.

Yes, if you can not get out of your house because of your health, or the weather is bad, yes that’s an obvious exemption.

But we are commanded to meet together.

To come together as one body - different but equal, not the same but together.

If you are Spirit-filled, if you are a believer, your spiritual health is at stake when you do not meet with other believers, when you are not part of a church.

And, those who are faithful, we’re to be trying to gather them up and get them on their feet, not lording our faithfulness over them.

Jesus also addresses this, in Matthew 20:25-26

I was speaking with someone the other day, and I was talking about pastoral correction.

If I, as your pastor, come to you and try to correct you, or persuade you on your theology - it’s not so that I can be right.

It’s not so that I can have everyone say, “Oh look how smart pastor Jeff is.”

Absolutely not.

Peter gives strict instructions to pastors when he says, 1 Peter 5:2-4

If, as your pastor, I am trying to correct, edify, or even rebuke, I try to do it in love and in a way that brings you to Christ.

That’s how I’m to operate in my gifting.

It does not make me better than you.

It does not make me higher than you.

It does not make me “more spiritual” or “more special” than you.

But if, as your pastor, I see you heading down a path that’s a little too slippery of a slope, it’s my calling and my gifting to try and Shepherd you back to solid footing.

The same goes for those whose gifting is discernment of spirits, or knowledge, or wisdom like we saw last week.

It is not to be a tool for placing us higher than one another.

In Ephesians, Paul will instruct the church that they are to be...

No one is to be higher than anyone else within the church body.

Aesop has a fable where he tells the story of an eye that gets so jealous of the mouth, because the mouth gets to enjoy the taste of honey, even after the eye gets to see it.