Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 14th Jan. 2024), session twelve in our series on the Holy Spirit.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with Great Power there must also come — Great Responsibility!’ —Stan Lee[i]
‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.’ —Anon[ii]
READ: 1 COR. 12:1-13:3 (MSG)
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES Vs CORPOREAL EXPRESSION
For around 4 or 5 years now, Steph and I haven’t bought each other a Christmas gift, as such. We prefer experiences.
And, in my defence, the experience of not getting anything at Christmas is an experience!
Joking aside, rather than giving objects to each other, we prefer a nice meal or a spa day; something we can do together, something we can share in. So, for Christmas just gone, we went to the Bridgewater Hall, in Manchester, to watch the Manchester Concert Orchestra performing some of the famous movie soundtracks of John Williams (Star Wars; Jurassic Park; Harry Potter) and Hans Zimmer (The Lion King; Gladiator; Inception).
It was incredible!
Of course, you could listen to this music via a CD or a streaming service. But, it’s not the same. As I was explaining to my sons on the way to this concert—who were, of course, very “excited” to be dragged along—seeing this music played, seeing how this music emerges as differing instruments play differing melodies, alongside one another, is amazing. It amazes me every time.
Thankfully, the main theme to Star Wars, is not one trumpeter playing the same note over and over. That would be awful. We wouldn’t call it the theme from Star Wars. We wouldn’t even call it music.
If that same trumpeter stood up again, after their performance of “Star Wars”, now announcing that they were about to play the theme from E. T., and commenced to the play the same note over and over, we’d rightly want our money back.
We understand that the variety, together, is needed. As this collage of chords and this symphony of differing sounds weave together, the orchestra expresses something other than itself; something no single instrument and no single note could ever express.
As we look a little more at the gifts that the Spirit gives, it would be an error to forget the purpose of all these various gifts that the one Spirit enables.
As I said, when looking at the work of the Spirit in the book of Acts, ‘the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work is where people are learning to love each other and understand each other, across all sorts of boundaries, all sorts of borders, diversity coming together as one, with the chief purpose of proclaiming and embodying Jesus in our world.’[iii]
As we play together, even as some of us, myself mainly, hit the wrong notes from time to time, a sound emerges, an image manifests, that is bigger than you and I. That we, together, and only together, express the life of Christ.
In John 16:14, Jesus tells us that the work of the Spirit is to glorify Him. ‘Glory’, in the ancient languages, carries the same sense as ‘weight’ and ‘heaviness’. I suppose, we could say, ‘to make tangible.’ In the Old Testament, as we heard last week, Bezalel (Ex. 31:3) was filled with the Spirit to construct the Tabernacle for God to dwell; a house where God’s ‘weighty-ness’ would be expressed. The purpose of the Spirit in gifting, remains the same. Except, this isn’t about tent poles and sheets, but flesh and bone communities.
This is the point Paul is controversially making as he writes this letter to the believers who live in Corinth. Of course, Paul doesn’t use the picture of an orchestra to talk about this. Paul uses the better image of a human body. One of the reasons I read from Eugene Peterson’s, The Message, was that it really helps to deliver the overall sense and impact of the point Paul is making.
That gifts are not about promoting individualism and they are not about personal experiences, they are about bodily expression. That we are gifted to be a part of something.
MUSING & MISUNDERSTANDINGS
When it comes to spiritual gifts, 1 Corinthians 12 has been a ‘go-to passage’ for a long time. Because of this, I want to spend some time in it today.
The problem with 1 Corinthians, is that Paul is not writing to inform believers about gifts. Paul doesn’t really say much in the way of explaining or defining what each of the gifts are, even though he writes, at the start of chapter 12, about correcting some misunderstandings. Rather, the misunderstandings Paul corrects appear to be with how these gifts are being used; that instead of drawing people together to reflect Jesus together, some people are using their gifts to draw attention to themselves. Instead of allowing the wild goose of the Holy Spirit to chase them into a community that loves God and each other, there’s spiritual superiority and spiritual individualism going on.
Tackling these misunderstandings forms everything Paul says in chapters 12, 13 and 14.[iv] But, in verses 4-7, Paul states the seeds, I suppose, of everything he is going to unfold.
‘There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all.
There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord.
God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.
A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other’
1 Cor. 12:4-7, NLT
These verses contain some valuable lessons for us.
VARIETY & SOURCE
Firstly, notice that Paul keeps hitting this phrase different kinds, or in some translations, varieties. He repeats it three times. Paul really wants us to appreciate that spiritual gifts come in all sorts—there is a diversity of gifts.
At the same time, Paul hits the word same three times. And yes, if you’re observant there’s a pattern of the Trinity in these verses (Spirit, Lord and God).
The point Paul is making is that all this rich variety comes from the one source: the Triune God.
Paul makes this same point by talking about how a body is made up of different parts, and how every single part is necessary and essential to the whole. There’s no spare bits and bobs, like you get at the end of assembling flat-pack furniture. There are no parts of the body that are more ‘body’ than the other parts.
But, Paul is also making the same point when he gives this list of various gifts in verses 8-10 (Wisdom, Knowledge, Healings, Tongues, etc.), and when Paul gives another assortment of God-given gifts in the list in verse 28.
As Rachel reminded us last week, there are numerous places in the New Testament (and the Old) listing the wide variety of gifts that God has given to people (e.g. Rom. 12:3-8; Eph. 4:7-16; 1 Pet. 4:10-12). These lists are not exhaustive, including 1 Cor. 12:8-10. They don’t list everything.
They are examples of the diversity, a sampling of the variety of gifts given: teaching, encouraging, prophecy, service, craft abilities, artistry, mending, generosity, mercy, leading, hospitality, tongues, helping, etc. And yes, you can break these down into the different categories, such as Speaking gifts, Service gifts, and Signs gifts. Or even break it down simpler into, Non-dramatic and Dramatic gifts.
It’s helpful to do so.
However, the point in all of this is that Paul wants the church to know that all this gifting, not some of it, comes from the one source—it’s the same God working in and through it all.
In other words, even though there may be dramatic gifts, like healings and tongues, and non-dramatic gifts, like helping, hospitality and creativity, there are no such thing as ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ gifts.
No gift expresses more of God than any other gift.
Of course, saying it as plain as that will rub us up. Maybe, in our thinking, a healing expresses more of God’s power than encouragement. Or someone speaking in tongues expresses the presence of God more than someone saying something that can be understood. Or a miracle speaks of God being present more than a place at a table.
This is not the case, though.
Yes, raising the dead is impressive and would certainly grab attention, and is possible—signs and wonders still take place. But the same mighty power of God, the same Spirit of God, is also expressed in that piece of wise advice that was given.
You see, what Paul is trying to tackle is the Corinthian’s, and maybe our, tendency to overvalue and prioritise certain gifts over other gifts. Unlike us, Paul is not prioritising the spectacular. At the same time, Paul’s not dismissing it, either. To prioritise or dismiss the spectacular are both wrong extremes.
Instead, Paul emphasises the diversity of the one Spirit’s gifts. Everyone has a gift in the body of Christ, and that gift, however great or small we deem it, is as important as the others and is an amazing expression of God’s power.
Paul is doing this because in Corinth, the church were ranking each other based on how gifted people were. It seems that these good gifts were being misunderstood and misused as a measure of how spiritual you were. Those who had the more spectacular, dramatic gifts, were flaunting themselves, strutting it like they were closer to God, more “anointed” by God, more “approved” by God, and were subsequently demeaning those who did not have dramatic gifts.
We can still think the same way today.
Let’s be honest: If you have a gift of healing, you are more likely to get given a TV spot than someone who washes dishes at a soup kitchen!
This isn’t right.
Paul, however, is slapping this ‘scoring system’ nonsense down. Take his list in verse 8-10, for example. Look how it’s assembled.
I’ve highlighted and colour coded a few things, to help, but there could be other ways to do so.
What do you see here?
To one person, the Spirit gives special knowledge. Like Rachel shared last week, with the example of the prophet Samuel knowing about Saul’s donkeys (1 Samuel 9), this ‘special knowledge’ is the ability to know something not because you’ve studied it like a scientist, or worked it out like Poirot, or presumed it like a nosey neighbour, or wrongly gleaned it from gossip. Rather, it’s because God has given you a unique insight. What an ability!
There’s another wonderful example in Acts 9, where Ananias is told by God, not only go to ‘straight street, to the house of Judas’, but also told who he will encounter there and the state that person is in—a man called Saul who has just had an extraordinary vision of the Risen Christ.
Of course, knowledge like this can be misused. I’ve witnessed this and been on the receiving end of it. It’s possible to take such knowledge, twist it from its intent and not allow to be directed by love, creating harmful effects.
But the gift itself—though it can be mishandled—is extraordinary all the same.
There’s nothing to suggest that this happens all the time, by the way; like you walk through Aldi, doing your ‘big shop’, passing every customer, saying , ‘I know all about you.’ But still, when this Divine insight comes, it’s spectacular.
But notice that next to this, Paul places ‘Godly wisdom.’ Giving advice on how to go about something. In this setting, there’s no special knowledge, implied; you’re talking with people, information is being shared, it’s all on the table, and someone offers some wise advice on how to go about something.
There’s a stark contrast there, between unusual and, well, not so unusual.
Even more so, if we can remember what Paul says about God’s wisdom at the beginning of this letter (1 Cor. 1:17-2:2). Unlike the human technique that clambers after publicity, noise and renown, God’s wisdom, God’s ways, aren’t about being ‘big’, glamorous, noisy, dramatic, or illustrious. God’s wisdom, as Paul states at the start of this letter, is shown in all its glory in the suffering of the Cross of Christ.
This wisdom often points towards paths we wouldn’t deem spectacular.
Can you see the contrast between what we would value and deem more expressive of God’s power, and the reminder that it’s not always so impressive in the world’s eyes?
We would all, understandably, be amazed if someone revealed something to us that only we know. On the other hand, we’re more likely to overlook how amazing the cross is, and equally likely to ignore the person who gives us the wise advice of, ‘You want to become greater? Become a servant’ (Matt 23:11).
That’s the genius of the list by Paul. He places the gift we rate as ‘higher’ next to the gift we are likely to overlook.
He does it with Tongues. I speak in tongues, I pray in tongues. I have, on occasion, given an utterance in a tongue. Most of the time, however, it’s the language of prayer: I mutter in tongues as I go about the day-by-day.
When Paul mentions the gift here, though, he’s speaking of giving an utterance within a gathered group; the lifting of a voice, declaring something that proclaims Jesus in a language that is not your language, a language unlearnt. Again, it’s a spectacular gift.
Yet, Paul also stresses that the one who has the gift to interpret—who takes these spectacular words and puts them back into a language that is the normal every day, familiar and less phenomenal sound—is equally important. This person may not speak a tongue. But these normal everyday words are still an expression of God’s amazing power.
Paul also mentions gifts of Healing, and the ability to do miracles. I am of the firm conviction that these things are still present today, that the Spirit has not removed these gifts from the church. And yes, I would, like many of us, marvel to see them occur.
But, look what Paul does in this list, he separates out great faith.
Does that strike you as odd?
Notice that Paul does not say the following: ‘to another, the Spirt gives the great faith to perform healings or miracles.’
Surely, we would wrongly think, that the person who becomes a conduit for performing a healing must be someone who has ‘great faith’. But, Paul doesn’t say this.
By separating these things, Paul implies that a gift of healing can happen through someone who doesn’t have ‘great faith.’ This should encourage us!
More than this, the person with the gift of ‘great faith’ may not perform a healing, or a miracle. In other words, we could easily be overlooking the person who has the gift of great faith, because we expect miracles to be a sign of our great faith. And yet, miracles are not about our ‘great faith’, they are a demonstration of the power of God. God alone gets the glory! We cannot boast about our ‘great faith.’
Meanwhile, the person with the gift of great faith could be clearing away the plates after a meal, visiting the sick, giving a glass of water; persisting, over the long haul, through some trying difficulty; or continuing to graft at the rock face of a testing ministry. We should be marvelling at their expression of God’s power just as much as we would marvel at a healing.
Even though I don’t have the time, here, to explore this thoroughly; Paul’s also doing the same dramatic/non-dramatic comparison with prophecy (making known the mind, will and intention of God), and discernment (the ability to know whether it is God speaking or not).
As an aside: I find it telling, that out of all the gifts, discernment is the only one Paul gives a definition, a longer explanation for. I’ll let you consider why this could be, and why he sandwiches it between prophecy and tongues (which he discusses more of in chapter 14).
But can you see what Paul is doing? It’s brilliant, if we can appreciate it.
No one holds all the cards; especially those who have the ability to do the more dramatic things. Again, Paul’s slapping all this ranking-of-gifts nonsense, and therefore the ranking of people, down.
There is a variety of gifts; they’re all amazing, whether they take our breath away or not. We miss the point if we overvalue and prioritise only one of these things, rather than prioritising the One sound, the One image, they are meant to be expressing.
God can and God does do things that startle us. But, God doesn’t do this so we will marvel at those God chooses to use in such ways, but so we will marvel at God.
If, when we gather, we don’t see the dramatic, this doesn’t mean the power of God has not been manifested. Equally, when we do see the dramatic, it doesn’t mean that a particular service was more “anointed” than any other gathering, nor that we got something right in how we went about the service.
The Holy Spirit is always present and at a work, building, embodying, the glory of God.
CHARISMATA
To jump back to verse 4-7, Paul not only slaps the ranking nonsense down by stressing the diversity of these gifts coming from the same source. Paul also does it by the terms he uses to describe these gifts, terms that illuminate each other.
In verse 4, he uses the term charis-mata.
Mata is where we get our word matter from. You know, substance, stuff, material. Charis, on the other hand, means grace.
These gifts are the materialising of grace in our lives, the substance of God’s undeserved favour. It may seem obvious to say that the gifts are gifts, but it’s worth repeating.
We don’t earn gifts. They are given. They are not rewards of recognition, or badges of merit, nor certificates or trophies marking our achievements. Neither are they endorsements of individuals or styles. If these gifts hang on anything other than God’s undeserved kindness toward us, then they do not merit the title of being called gifts of grace.
That’s good news. Be encouraged by this.
Firstly, this means that you can’t use the presence of a particular gift to support an attitude of superiority. The ability to perform healings, or speak in tongues is not the yardstick to measure how ‘spiritual’, or how ‘moral’, or how ‘mature’ someone is.
If we want to measure maturity, then, like Paul does in chapter 13, we look at fruit, not gifts.
Secondly, it’s good news, because we don’t have to have it all together before we get a gift. I read a number of books on the gifts of the Spirit when I first came to faith, and the amount of them that said something along the lines of, ‘if you want to see the gifts, you need to be more holy’, is astounding
This simply is not true.
Don’t misunderstand; to pursue holy living is a good and right thing. I want more of the Spirit’s fruit in my life, I want to honour Jesus and all He has done for me. I’m not trying to win God’s love or attention, but, in acknowledging the extents God has gone through to demonstrate such love, I want to learn how to express more of who God is, His greatness, His nature, in my life.
Holiness is a good pursuit. As we saw when we examined the Fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit’s work is to cultivate Christ-likeness in us. But don’t believe the lie that you have to attain a certain standard of maturity or even morality before a gift is given.
A gift has been given to every part of Christ’s body in order to empower you and to empower others to live in the life of the Spirit. These gifts are given so we are a part of the process of building each other in the body, not as a reward for being built up. Yes, we develop them and are to learn to exercise them rightly, but they are tools nonetheless, not trophies.
Thirdly, it’s good news that these things are charismata because, as the theologian, Kenneth Bailey, puts it, no one has the right to insist on the presence of a particular gift as a requirement of being a part of Christ’s body.[v]
In verse 5, Paul switches the term, as he describes these things as Diakoniai. Which basically means, services.
In other words, they are gifts given for serving others, not for indulging ourselves. ‘There are no “rights” in this list, only gifts, no privileges, only responsibilities.’[vi] Neither are gifts given so we can hold our gifting at ransom over others. Gifts are not for bargaining with or bribery. For example, if someone withholds praying for your healing until you’ve paid some fee, this is a horrible, immoral, inappropriate use of the gifts the Spirit freely distributed.
As Scot McKnight describes them, ‘The big idea is that we are given a gift, but we are not given a gift so we can hoard it or become famous for it. Rather, we are given a gift to exercise for the sake of other people… the gifts are for the common good. We are not given gifts so we can be known for our gifts.’[vii]
They are for humble servanthood. Not hype. Not entertainment. Not manipulation.
Jesus never manipulated people through miracles, and he refused to entertain with them, too. Jesus often asked people to keep quiet about them and He never demanded tribute before performing a healing. Some people didn’t even come back to thank him! Jesus just poured out, generously, his life—God’s life—for others, wherever He was to be found.
In this broader context, it’s worth saying that these giftings aren’t solely for gatherings on Sundays. They are for 24-7 living, wherever we find ourselves.
As Paul expresses it again, in verse 7, ‘A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.’
To use a phrase from Spider-man, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility.’
The more we recognise that our abilities, skills, talents—whether natural or supernatural—are gifts and not possessions, or baubles, the more willing we will be use them for the good of others.
Finally, in verse 6, Paul changes the term again, and uses the phrase energe-mata.
We’ve already seen what mata means and we can probably guess at what energe describes.
These gifts are the manifestations of God’s energy, the substance of God’s power; God’s expressions in the material world.
Again, to repeat the point I have said too many times already, Paul uses this term because all these gifts, in all their wonderful variety, not solely the ones that take our breath away, are expressions of God’s power. We shouldn’t overlook or devalue any of them, and neither should we prioritise or overvalue any of them.
Yes, marvel when a healing happens. Also learn to marvel when someone encourages you. Praise God in it all and through it all.
The goal is not us worshipping particular gifts, or worshipping the people who exercise certain gifts. All of this is about us worshipping God and being an expression of the one God.
All of us our gifted. All of us are needed. There are no spare parts, no redundant gifts, no second-class citizens in the body of Christ. Don’t overvalue certain gifts. Do not undervalue the gift you have.
To echo Rachel’s closing words from last week, let’s make it a resolution to find out, through prayer and wise counsel, what gifts of the Spirit God wants to manifest through us, no matter how great or small, and then put them into practice with humility, peace, and grace to bless each other.
Above all, love one another (1 Cor. 14:1).
Our goal is not to make a noise, but to make a sound that proclaims and embodies the lordship of Jesus Christ.
‘We all have different gifts, each of which came because of the grace God gave us.’
Romans 12:6 (NCV)
‘For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of.’
1 Cor. 12:19b (MSG)
[i] Stan Lee, from the final panel of Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy 15 (1962), the comic debuting Spider-Man. Decades before Peter Parker’s uncle, Ben, became synonymous with muttering these words, they were the closing words of the comic’s narrator and creator, Stan Lee.
[ii] This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, despite there being no evidence that Einstein ever said such a thing, nor anything like it. Whether Einstein could have said it, or whether such a sentiment aligns with Einstein’s expressed views, I haven’t a clue. I’ll let the ‘Einsteinians’ debate that. Regardless of who said it, I like the quote because it gets you asking questions, such as, ‘Is that choice true? Is it an oversimplification?’ Mainly, I like the quote because it challenges me to look at everything with awe-inspired wonder.
[iii] See THE GOOSE CHASE | ACTS OF THE SPIRIT
[iv] Most commentaries make this point, and it is worth picking them up to wrestle with everything within these three, complex at times, chapters of 1 Corinthians. In 2018, I did an overview of these chapters as part of a teaching series on 1 Corinthians. You can read that here: Corinth: Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 2
[v] Kenneth Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (SPCK, London, 2011), p. 336
[vi] Ibid, p. 348
[vii] Scot McKnight, Open to the Spirit: God in Us, God with Us, God Transforming US (WaterBrook, Penguin Random House, New York, 2018), pp. 116-117
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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