15.1 Gifts of the Spirit
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Christ… causes growth of the body into the construction of itself in love – That He might present her to Himself a glorious (a fulfilled) church (Ephesians 4:16 & 5:27 – JSV).
A major shift has come in our thinking. Let me quote point number 4 from the last lesson. – Extend every element of our knowing of personal symmorphy with Jesus to our koinonia together; as we put Jesus upon ourselves, so we put Him upon life together. – Just as I have called Christ as my only life, in just the same way, so I call our life together as Christ.
That’s one part of this shift of thinking; the other is the idea of the community of Christ as a living, breathing actual body.
A Living Body. A living body is two things merged together in all ways: flesh and spirit. The Holy Spirit and the Church are merged together as one body inside of whom a Person, Father, dwells. But more specifically, not just “the Church,” but rather, each local assembly.
When you gather together with other believers in Jesus, precious brethren whom you know and love, inside this word of symmorphy, the Holy Spirit is fused together in all ways with every aspect of your gathering together. “Edification” in this verse does not refer to something happening to individuals – it is the body that is growing, God’s house.
The Life Force. Consider a corpse. Then look down at your own living body. What is the primary difference, other than you in your body? The primary difference, the thing that makes your body to be “living” is the constant passage or interchange of electrical frequency, that is, life force, from one member to the next.
Electrical phenomena are more varied than we can imagine. Everything in the physical world is nothing more than a differing electrical phenomenon. Atoms are electrical charges; their connections together are electrical bonds. The coffee in your cup is one form of electrical phenomena; your gullet down which it slides is another.
Constant and Dynamic. But those things, in themselves, are inanimate. Life force is something more. Life force requires the presence of spirit. Spirit is the life force of the spiritual heavenlies, matching in every way the electrical life force of the physical. When the two forces, spirit and electricity, heaven and earth, are married, you and I are alive.
A body lives, however, not by a static dullness that just is. A body lives by the dynamic passage of electrical/spirit frequency from one cell to the next and from one organ to the next. An actual electrical charge passes across the synapse connections from one nerve cell to the next. Yet the contribution of electrical frequency from each organ/cell to the others is also constant and dynamic.
The Function of the Spirit. This picture of a living body is created by God so that we could understand the function of the Holy Spirit in the gathering together of the local community of Christ. The gifts of the Spirit are the electrical charges passing from one nerve cell to the next, and the ministries of the Spirit govern the output of frequency from each member. Your local church is a living body; your local church is alive.
More than that, rather than gathering together “to” the Lord, the gathering together includes Father and Son inside the life of Their Body – a living symmorphy through koinonia. That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3).
Windows of the Spirit. I am using the term “windows of the Spirit” to refer to those many ways by which the Spirit, that is the life of the community, passes from one member to the next causing us to KNOW the fullness of Christ as us together.
Now, just as the heart has two valves pumping life all through the body, so our life together has two primary places of communion, the worship service and the shared meals. I will talk about these in more specific detail later, especially the worship service. You see, the primary place that the gifts of the Spirit function is in the worship service, but that is not their only place.
The gifts of the Spirit flow through every part of life together.
One List of Gifts. There are many varieties of graces [spirit gifts], but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord. There are varieties of operations [effects of energeia], but the same God who energeoes all inside of all. To each one is given the appearance or disclosure of the Spirit for shared profit. To one, indeed, through the Spirit, is given a word of wisdom; to another a word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. To a different one is given faith in the same Spirit, to another the gift of healing in the same Spirit. To another is given the effects of power, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits. To a different one is given various kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of tongues. In all these things the same Spirit energeoes, distributing personally to each as He intends (1 Corinthians 12:4-11 – JSV).
Many Gifts. Romans Chapter 12 delivers us from the idea that there are “nine” gifts of the Spirit. Paul is giving us examples, not a box. In fact, as we will see, when comparing several references in the next lesson, that ministries are also gifts and that there is a sliding scale between what is a “ministry” and what is a “gift.”
More than that, 1 Corinthians 12 also includes two “ministries,” helps and administrations, that seem like natural abilities. You see, this splitting apart between the human body and the human spirit has to cease in our thinking. The human spirit, the human body, and the human mind are ALWAYS working together in everything we do and are. Paul is simply listing examples of the various abilities of the human spirit.
The Rule. This brother has a gift of fixing cars, a gift involving his spirit and mind as much as his body; this sister has a gift of prophecy, a gift involving her body and mind as much as her spirit. Here is the RULE. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32).
If my spirit is subject to me, what part of me is “in charge?” The mind. Yet it’s not that the mind is “in charge”; it is the peace of God, rather, that rules. The mind must always be the governor, directing by wisdom both body and spirit inside the peace of God. More than that, the anointing of the Spirit, something different from the gift itself, rests upon and flows through natural gifts as much as spiritual gifts (or not).
A Terrible Truth. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). This is one of the most terrible statements in the Bible. Our human compassion wishes it were not true – and the fact that it is true is the source of so much of our confusion regarding our brethren in this world.
I went to a service on Sunday in which the preacher, under a mighty anointing and out from a profound gift to minister to the church, preached a horrific message about the image of a “super Christ” and whipped the congregation into pretending with all their might to “act like” something entirely imaginary. It was a mockery of Christ and the gospel, yet it was anointed of the Spirit and I received good things from the Lord in the service.
Man Is the Master. Man is the master, and we can do anything we want with the Word, with the Spirit, and with our giftings, whether spiritual or natural.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am that God has boxed me in, hedged my way with thorns, pointed His bony finger in my forehead, and tripped me on my face into the mud all my life. My gift is to write, and through that gift flows the ministry of Christ. Yet God did not allow me to write anything (that would go forth) until He had sealed me utterly into the Lord Jesus Christ.
I just completed a Jesus Secret translation/paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 12-14. Paul’s entire point is that we use our gifts, of whatever kind, to bless and to build up one another in faith.
Developing any Gift. A spiritual gift is no different than a physical gift or a mental gift. As I said, all three are always together. Consider two individuals. Both have a wondrous gift for playing the piano. One practices that gift from early childhood into adulthood and becomes very proficient. When she plays, the anointing of the Spirit flows all through her fingers. The other has never touched a piano and has no knowledge of the gift he does possess.
To develop any gift requires practice, and the person’s entire being, spirit, mind, and body, are all involved in the practice and expression of that gift, including all spiritual gifts. And every one of us has more than one gift, BUT every one of us lacks many things given to others.
“Of the Flesh.” What, then, makes something “of the flesh” in the negative sense? The brother who preached on Sunday, was, by the anointing of the Holy Ghost, entirely of the flesh. The only fruit of his words would be a whole lot of pretending.
The human spirit is as involved in “the works of the flesh” as the human mind and body. What makes the difference? Two things. First purpose, and second faith. If my use of my gift is for the purpose of dominating or manipulating you in any way, then it is of the flesh, even if I am moving in spiritual things. But it is our faith, Jesus through us to others, in which we rest.
How a Body Works. And if my gift is to make people laugh, or maybe to decorate a room, and I give of myself to bless and benefit others in the confidence that it is Jesus through me in tenderness and joy, then my gift is as MIGHTY as any prophet or apostle. And if I have an apostolic gifting, that gifting is confined to its purpose. Apart from that purpose, I’m nothing more than one of many, as foolish as any and just as wrong as the next.
I will not include the text here, but read all of 1 Corinthians 12:15-26. Paul’s whole point is that every one of us have gifts and every one of us have lacks. That’s how a body works. No part is “more important” than any other part. And every part contributes to the life of the body, regardless of what kind of gift it might be.
Gifts in Community. Out from this framework of thinking about the gifts of the Spirit, let’s look, now, at how they operate as God intends among any community of Christ. Let’s list the particular gifts Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12. A word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, faith, healing, the effects of power (miracles), prophecy, discerning of spirits, various kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues.
Besides being subject to the wisdom of the mind in the peace of God, here is the other rule over the operation of everything inside of Church. Let all be done in good form [by good design] and according to order (1 Corinthians 14:40 – JSV).
By Good Design. What does “by good design” and “according to order” mean? If I have the gift of decorating rooms, I do not just barge into your house and decorate your bedroom because I feel like it. If I have the gift of prophecy, I do not stand up in the middle of supper and belt out a prophecy. On the other hand, when the Holy Spirit is the life force of the community by our faith, good order includes spontaneous and unexpected departures from the norm.
I have experienced coming to a normal devotions at the beginning of a school day. Suddenly, the knowledge of the Spirit of the Lord came upon us and everyone KNEW – this day was holy to the Lord. All thought of normal activity ceased, and we spent the day in the power of the Spirit, in praises and in prayer.
Placing the Gifts. Now, my purpose in this lesson is not to delineate each of these spirit giftings, how it works and where it fits. I have penciled into the outline of the Bible School program a course entirely on the Holy Spirit in our lives. In that course, time would be devoted to the specifics of these things.
My purpose here is two things, first to place these spirit giftings into the normal fabric of everyday life inside of community, and second, to show the primary purpose of these things. Throughout 1 Corinthians 14, Paul used the word “edify” many times, both for building up the church and for building up the individual believer. What, exactly, does that mean?
Knowing What Is. God is utterly with us, in us, through us, sharing our lives in every moment. But we do not know that. It’s not what IS that counts; it’s knowing what IS. It’s not God that counts; it’s knowing God.
Thus Jesus is the becoming known of God in every heart where God is becoming known. And Christ lives in our hearts through faith. That is, the words God speaks, entering all the way through our faith into our hearts, become the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ who causes us to know the Father.
Let me put in front of you an ABSOLUTE. Your present knowledge of God is tiny and in its infancy. Your knowledge of God will increase daily forever.
God Among Us. You might imagine that Daniel Yordy is a man of “great faith.” Daniel Yordy is no such thing. It is because I lived for eighteen years in a constant bath of the Holy Spirit inside of Church, with the gifts and ministries of the Spirit as part of our normal everyday experience, that I know God among His people. God among us was normal as well as dramatic.
There is a knowledge of God-among-us inside a Spirit-filled Christian community that does NOT exist anywhere else. And a significant channel through which that knowledge of God-here-and-now came was through the normal everyday operation of the gifts of the Spirit.
Purpose. The primary purpose of any spiritual gifting, in this list or any other, is to widen our faith so that we might know God ever more deeply and in two ways. The first way our knowledge of God increases is to know Jesus Sent living now as us and the second is to know God among us as His House.
These gifts of the Spirit operate freely, though in good order, all through life together. But their primary place is in the worship service. Let’s place them there briefly. A true worship service inside of the knowledge of Christ our life has no relationship with a stage and an audience. Rather, everyone participates in some way.
In the Power of God. When you come together, each one has a psalm, or a teaching, or a revelation, or a [prayer in] tongues, or an interpretation. Let all be done for edification (1 Corinthians 14:26 – JSV).
There is no such thing as a bulletin in such a service. “Good order” cannot mean “figured out beforehand.” It means the free flowing of the Spirit from one to the other, governed by respect and honor, that is, full reciprocity.
And it is this free-flowing of Spirit gifts and ministries among us that enlarges our faith to KNOW, “God is among us, revealing His Person through our gathering together.”
And my speech and my preaching were… in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should be… in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5 – condensed).