THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
THE HOLY SPIRIT
INTRODUCTION
Because of some recent comments made by Milton, several people have asked about the importance of spiritual gifts. First, I feel like you need to know that Milton serves as a type of corrective to the extreme positions and postures people take in church life. When he says that spiritual gifts are unimportant and that he doesn't even know which one he has, he means that it is wrong to obsess about spiritual gifts and to use spiritual gifts as a means of avoiding doing what Christ would have you do. For example, it is now in vogue in Christian circles to say that you don't have to witness if you don't have the gift of evangelism. That is pure hogwash. Christ commands us to share Him with others regardless whether or not we have the gift of evangelism. The truth is that I may not have a certain spiritual gift for a certain task; however, if the Spirit wants me to perform a certain task, I need to obey Him and let Him worry about whether or not I have the gift to perform that task.
Moreover, Milton is trying to undermine the belief that if I exercise spiritual gifts, then I am spiritual. MILTON IS RIGHT; THAT IS NOT TRUE. EXERCISING YOUR SPIRITUAL GIFT DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPIRITUAL. Remember that the Corinthian church which used the charismatic gifts the most was the most unspiritual of Paul's churches. They were engaged in dividing the church, sleeping with stepmothers, engaging in religious prostitution, eating meat sacrificed to idols, profaning the Lord's Supper, and even denying the resurrection of the body. On the one hand, exercising a spiritual gift IS evidence the HS lives in you; on the other hand, obeying the HS is the essence of spirituality. The obedient Christian is the spiritual Christian. The person who is like Jesus is the spiritual person.
Paul reenforces just this very idea when he compares the gifts to love. "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a noisy ___________ and a clanging _____________. And if I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am ______________" (1 Cor. 13:1-2). In other words, love and character are paramount. Yet spiritual gifts while not as important as love and character are still important. What does Paul command us to do in addition to loving others (1 Cor. 14:1)?
DEFINITION OF A SPIRITUAL GIFT
Before looking at the spiritual gifts, we need to define exactly what a spiritual gift is. It is a supernatural ability the HS has placed within the Christian in order to develop the body of Christ and to lead people into a deeper relationship with Christ.
First, it is a supernatural ability. It is an ability which only the HS can give to you. Since only Christians have the HS living in them, only Christians can have spiritual gifts. This distinguishes spiritual gifts from talents and skills. A non-Christian can have a talent or skill, whereas only a Christian can have a spiritual gift. Some spiritual gifts are going to resemble natural talents and skills. The difference though is that you sense the presence of Jesus as a spiritually-gifted person uses his spiritual gift and don't sense the presence of Jesus whenever a non-Christian uses his talent or skill. For example, people hear Jesus when Christi Tekell teaches God's Word on Sunday mornings but do not hear Jesus whenever they hear a school teacher teach algebra. They may both be good teachers, but the first is able to communicate the presence of the Lord and lead you into a deeper relationship with Christ, while the second cannot.
(Note that a talent is a natural ability a person is born with. Some people are just talented in the area of sports, while others are more musically talented and others more talented with tools. Skills are acquired abilities which even non-Christians can acquire.)
Some believe that a spiritual gift is nothing more than the HS operating through you to perform some task. It appears though that spiritual gifts are an ability the HS gives you and are not necessarily the HS Himself operating through you. When I do use the gift of teaching, I pray that the HS fill me with Himself; yet apparently you don't HAVE to be filled with the HS in order to be able to use your spiritual gift. When you are not filled with the HS, you're not using your gift properly; however, you ARE using your gift. Once more the classic example is the church at Corinth which was using spiritual gifts but not under the leadership of and in the power of the HS.
I think it is important that we search our hearts at this point. Too often Christians use their spiritual gifts, talents, and skills yet not under the leadership of the HS. Whenever you attend a committee meeting or ministry team meeting, do you come away impressed that you sensed the love and presence of Christ in that meeting? Have you conducted yourself like Christ during times of critical decision making? If not, you'd make a good member of the church at Corinth.
As a church we need to face this issue. Whenever we look for somebody to fill a place of leadership, do we look for somebody who is competent or spiritual? Do we look for somebody who is fashionable or pure in heart? Do we look for somebody who is financially rich or spiritually rich? Hopefully, our leaders will be both competent and Christ-like in character. Yet if we have to choose between the 2, we go with the person who is Christ-like in character.
PURPOSE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS
Regarding the Church
According to 1 Cor. 12:7 a spiritual gift is the manifestation of the Spirit (evidence the HS lives in you) which is to be used for the "______________ good." In other words, is the gift primarily to be used for your development or for the development of the church?
All the gifts can be abused, as proved by the church at Corinth. For a church/Christian to be able to use spiritual gifts properly, it must operate under the leadership of and in the power of the HS. The gift which has the greatest danger of being used improperly is that of tongues. Unless an interpreter is present, the person who uses this gift is making the gift all about him. It becomes totally self-serving. Whereas Paul will OK this use of the gift without the gift of interpretation if done in private, he outlaws it for corporate worship if the gift of interpretation is not present. Corporate worship is not about the individual. It is about the whole church.
According to 1 Cor. 12:7 if spiritual gifts are to be used for the development of the church, is there a problem when a Christian is irregular in attending church or not being a part of a local church? If so, what would be some problems?
To stress this Paul claims that whenever the HS comes into a person, He places/baptizes that person into the ___________ of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). Being a part of this entity means that you need it and it needs you. Paul points this out when he says, "If one member ___________, all the members ___________ with it; if one member is ____________, all the members __________ with it" (1 Cor. 12:26).
You may think that you are not harming the body of Christ because you are not involved in the local church, but the truth is that inactivity/apathy can kill a body just as easily as an evil act. For example, suppose God has made you the foot in the body of Christ and somebody puts a bullet in the chest of that body. Suppose you then say, "I didn't get hurt in the accident. My part of the body is OK. Therefore, I am not going to do anything to help the rest of the body." The foot refuses to help and so the rest of the body cannot get to a phone or to a car to call for help. Guess what? The rest of the body is not all that dies. The entire body dies, including the foot. Apathy and inactivity have destroyed more churches than sexual immorality, drinking, smoking, and dancing ever have.
I can't tell you what your spiritual gift is and I can't tell you how God wants you to use it. I can present opportunities and help instruct you on the use of your spiritual gift, but when it is all said and done, this is strictly a matter between you and God.
Regarding Your Personal Walk with the Lord
Although the Bible does not stress this, I have found it personally to be true that my spiritual gift informs me of my purpose in life, or how I fit into God's overall plan. Another way of putting it is that my spiritual gift helps me understand my relationship to the body of Christ and my role in developing that body. God gives us natural talents to develop creation; He gives us spiritual gifts to develop His new creation which is now seen in the church. The first creation is passing away, while the second is eternal. Knowing what my spiritual gift is helps me understand to a large degree my purpose in life, in helping develop this new creation.
Moreover, using my spiritual gift under the leadership of and in the power of the HS provides me with adventure. As I look back upon my life with the Lord, it's been neat to see the different avenues God has provided for me to use my spiritual gift in the local church: teaching youth in SS and in mid-week Wednesday night youth services, in teaching adults in January Bible Study and in SS, in teaching college kids on Monday nights in a non-college town, in teaching men in men's groups at different times of the week (esp. Monday mornings at 5:00 a.m.), etc. It's been a trip, and until He takes me to be with Him, Jesus wants me to follow Him still in using the spiritual gift He has entrusted to me.
It is sad that most of us have missed out on the adventure God has for you and me. C. S. Lewis concludes The Chronicles of Narnia with the second coming of Christ (Aslan). They actually leave this world and enter the new world which is like the old one but much better. The greens are greener and the blues bluer. He then writes that all the adventures the children had with Jesus (Aslan) in this world were merely the cover and title page of the Great Story. It can be most truthfully said that they all lived happily every after. In this new life every chapter is better than the one before it.
What is wonderful about Lewis' description of the new world is that to a real degree it continues the great adventure with Jesus begun in this life. For many of us the adventure will only begin when Christ returns. That's sad because the adventures with Jesus in the future should really be a continuation of the adventure in this life--only to a much higher level. Jesus did not say, "I came that they might grind out a life here on earth"; rather He said, "I came that they might have life and might have it abundantly."
A word of caution here. Be careful of forcing your adventure upon other people. Too often when we get excited about our spiritual gift, we feel that everybody should have the same spiritual gift which should lead to the same spiritual adventure we're embarked on. It used to be that people felt you were not spiritual if you were not a part of the WMU. The WMU is a wonderful organization. It's just that you don't have to be a part of it to have a relationship with Jesus. God has a particular adventure for you which is not necessarily to be copied by others.