Spiritual Gifts
Welcome to 30 Minute Theology Studies, where we take a Christian doctrine and try to make sense of it, all in about 30 minutes. God’s already given us the sense in Scripture, we just need to work through the biblical data, organize it in a helpful way, and then apply it. Of course, theologians do this all the time and come to different conclusions, so we’ll have to address some of the problems along the way, before we can arrive at a solution. So, let’s see how much of that we can sort out in this short time. Let’s go ahead and get started.
In this study we’re talking about spiritual gifts, something most Christians have heard about or had some experience with. If you’ve grown up in church, maybe you took a personal inventory at some point, that was supposed to reveal your spiritual gift to you. Maybe you’re still not sure what your gift is. Hopefully, we can make a little more sense of all of this—maybe get you started figuring out your gift, so you can get to work using it in the church.
Understanding the spiritual gifts is important. Paul wrote the Corinthians, for example: “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.” So, Paul thought it was important that they had all the information they needed, that they were in-formed. But, at the same time, it’s not AS important as more primary things, things of first importance, like our understanding of the gospel. Spiritual gifts are one of those doctrines that Christians CAN disagree over, and we can still call ourselves Christians. So, the conclusions I’ll come to here are my conclusions, and I’m convinced of them, but I guess I could be wrong. Other faithful men and women have come to different conclusions.
So, while they’re important, they’re not ultimate. They’re not something that should divide the church. And honestly, they probably shouldn’t receive the attention that they do, at least not in the way that they often do. We’ve made them into something like a superpower, like we’re superheroes. And we’re on some quest to discover them, so we can save the church. Now, spiritual gifts are supernatural, and that does make them a little bit weird, but not superhero weird. And we Christians are fine with a little weird, we’re fine with the supernatural; spirituality is what we’re about. Operating within our gifting should just be another expression of our spirituality, evidence that we’re walking by the Spirit.
So, we’re not superheroes discovering our superpowers, so that we can then go save the church. No, God just wanted us to work together within the Christian community, and he gave us some tools. He apportioned gifts and he assigned jobs according to those gifts, so that we'd all operate as one body, one living organism.
Now, a lot of us are skeptical about some of the spiritual gifts, and some of that skepticism is warranted. We’ve seen the abuses. We’re all familiar with, or at least my generation is, we saw TV evangelists doing things that were suspect. They made promises of health and wealth, claiming God’s special revelation, as they greedily stole money from gullible viewers. And even now we see some charismatic congregations, seemingly out of control, speaking in tongues, falling down on the floor, claiming healings and miracles. It’s the abuses, (where they ARE abuses) that have done some damage to this doctrine.
So, let’s go to Scripture, to see if we can make some sense of this. Certainly we want to avoid any abuses. But we don’t want to be cynical either. Let’s not miss that these are of the Spirit, so we want to avoid abuses but we also want to be open to the Spirit.
Alright, so the spiritual gifts are discussed in a few places in the Bible, mostly in Paul’s letters. But we’ll first look at 1 Peter 4:11-12:
Peter writes, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies.”
So, Peter only mentions them briefly and broadly. He simply splits them into two categories. We have serving gifts and we have speaking gifts. So keep those two categories in mind. I do think they’re helpful. Also, notice that Peter says that “EACH has received a gift” so we can assume that each and every Christian gets some gift.
Now let’s go to Paul’s letter to the Romans, where we get some further divisions within those two categories:
Romans 12:6-8 reads: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
Alright, first notice that both Peter and Paul acknowledge the grace involved, that these are gifts of grace, given by the Holy Spirit. Charis is the Greek word for grace. Charismata are gifts of grace. That’s where we get the word charismatic. Charismatic churches, we know, are known for their practicing the gifts.
Let’s keep going. Verse 6 reads, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.” So, everybody gets a gift, but not everybody gets the SAME gift. Different people get different gifts.
Ok, so that passage also gave us our first real breakdown, we got a list of some gifts. We saw prophecy, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and mercy. So, if we’re counting, that’s seven different gifts.
But let’s go to another passage. 1 Corinthians 12:7-10 reads: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 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. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”
So, we see some overlap with the list from Romans. We see prophecy. We could say wisdom and knowledge here are the same as teaching, but then we get some new ones: we see faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, distinguishing between spirits, various kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. So now we’re up to 13 gifts. And we’ll also note, as we continue to add to our understanding—verse 7, that these gifts are “for the common good.”
So, these gifts aren’t for OUR OWN good, but for the good of others—for the common good.
Ok, in that same chapter, chapter 12, Paul adds a few more to the list: Verse 28 says, “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.”
Ok, so we get prophets and teachers again. We get ‘helping’ which is the same as serving from the list in Romans, and administrating which is the same as leading. Then, miracles, healing, and tongues are repeated from the Corinthians list. So, with the addition of apostles here, we now have a total of 14, and I’ll just quickly add a 15th from Ephesians 4:11, where Paul adds ‘evangelism’ to the gifts, giving us a total of 15 gifts.
And again I’ll point out that here in verse 28 of 1 Corinthians 12, that these are “appointed in the church” so the gifts are not just for the good of others, but specifically for the good of the church.
Alright, so from Scripture we can say that spiritual gifts are gifts graciously given by God, by his Spirit. They are gifts. So we don’t complain. We don’t secretly wish we had a different gift. We don’t try to trade up with someone else for a better one. We show gratitude; we thank God for these gifts.
There’s this great verse in Ephesians, where Paul quotes Psalm 68, he says that these are Christ’s gifts to us, gifts that he bought with his blood. The Psalm says, “When he [Christ] ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” So, on the cross, Jesus won this great battle for us. He was victorious over Satan, sin, and death, and he came away as a conquering King with the spoils of war. These spoils of war, these rewards—these are our gifts. So we should treat them that way. We should be grateful. It must really frustrate Christ when we fuss about our gifts, when we neglect them or when we abuse them. Or, honestly, when we spend way too much time trying to figure them out, rather than just getting out there and being obedient. He paid a great price to give us these gifts; he brought them back from war, they are spoils, rewards. We’re obligated to use them. And not for our selves—although we do get much out of them, but we use them for the church.
Alright, so we all have a gift and our gifts differ (we don’t all have the same gift). And these gifts correspond to an assignment or appointment within the church.
Ok, so we have that biblical data. Now, let’s do some organizing of the data. So we have a list of 15 gifts, and we can organize them into two categories—we have serving gifts and we have speaking gifts. Let’s talk about serving gifts first. And I’ll move fast through these. Under serving gifts we could list: leadership (also called administrating), serving (also called helping), mercy, faith, healing, and miracles.
So first is leadership or administrating. These may be those who officially lead the church, like elders, or they may be lay leaders over other church ministries. These people set direction and then facilitate or delegate—they get stuff done. Then there are those with the serving or helping gifts. These people are behind the scenes; these are the workers—selflessly giving of themselves so that ministry can happen. We also know of others, with big hearts, who seem to be supernaturally compassionate; these people may have the gift of mercy. Like the serving gift, those with the mercy gift are always looking to help those in need. Then there’s the giving gift. Some people are always giving money, almost like a reflex. Faith. Some have the gift of faith. Certainly all Christians have faith, we all trust in Christ. But some, again, like with the gifts of mercy or giving, some just seem to have a supernatural faith—faith that can move mountains. The last two, healing and miracles, we’ll talk more about those in a minute. Alright, so those are the serving gifts.
Next are the speaking gifts. They are apostleship, prophecy, teaching, evangelism, exhortation, the discerning of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Let’s quickly talk about these. Again, let’s hold off on apostleship, prophecy, tongues and interpretation of tongues for a few minutes. That leaves teaching, and I’ve included knowledge and wisdom with teaching. This is the exposition of Scripture that is usually done by pastors and elders. We read in the qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3:2 that pastors and elders must be ‘able to teach.’ But again there are other lay teaching functions for both men and women. Next is exhortation, which is encouragement. The Greek is paraklesis [para-klay-sis] which means to come alongside someone, to offer comfort. You’ve heard the word Paraclete. Who’s the Paraclete, the comforter? It’s the Holy Spirit. So, those with the gift of exhortation, they are those who walk alongside people, encouraging them, helping them, counseling them. Then there’s the gift of evangelism. Again, something we all should do, but then there are those who are just fearless, they’ll share the gospel with anyone, anytime. Next is the discerning of spirits. Christians are constantly distinguishing good from evil. That’s a mark of spiritual maturity. But there’s also a gift of discerning the spirits. 1 John 4:1 says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Some, with the gift, easily expose false prophets in the church.
Alright, now to the more controversial gifts. I mentioned a couple of them from the serving category: healing and miracles, and a few from the speaking category—apostleship, prophecy, tongues and interpretation of tongues. These gifts are controversial in that they seem exceptional, so much so that some feel they’re no longer available to Christians; that they no longer function like they once did. Those people who believe that these gifts have ceased are sometimes called cessationists. And I’ll go ahead and say upfront that I would consider myself something of a cessationists.
First, let’s talk about the serving gifts of healing and miracles. I tend to think that these gifts have ceased, but what I’m not saying [and I want to be clear on this], I’m not saying that God doesn’t heal people or do miracles today. Absolutely he does. He heals and he does miracles all the time. And we’re actually supposed to ask God to do just that. James 5:13-15 tells us to pray for healing. So God does heal, and he uses our prayers, BUT I remain cautious when someone claims to be healed by someone with the gift of healing. A lot of times those so-called healings involve things that are somewhat subjective like headaches or backaches—things that can’t really be verified. And I do think it’s okay to be suspicious of some healing practices. There’s nothing lacking-in-faith about wanting some proof.
But really what needs to be proved is that the gift is still around in the way that it was in the New Testament. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of blind people given sight today, the deaf hearing, the lame walking. I feel like if the gift were still in operation today then there would be a pattern of healing and miracles from those who have the gift. But we just don’t see that. I mean to have the gift, to say that you actually have it, then that person should be healing and doing miracles all the time. It would be the pattern of their life. And I just don’t really see that.
It seems like healings and miracles aren’t really a normal part of the Christian life anyway. I’m not even sure that we should expect them. More often Scripture says we should expect to suffer—sorry to report. Peter writes, “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” Suffering is normal to the Christian life. It’s healing and miracles that are strange—they’re unexpected, they’re exceptions.
Alright, so the gifts of healings and miracles have probably ceased, and the reason why is likely because the speaking gifts of apostleship and prophecy have ceased. Typically, in Scripture, we see signs and wonders accompanying apostles and prophets in order to authenticate them and what they’re saying. So it makes sense that no more apostles and prophets would mean no more healings and miracles.
In fact, if those first two dominoes fall, it seems like all those others would too.
Ephesians 2:20-21 says the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord . . . built together into a dwelling place for God.”
The picture we get is this: God’s church is like a building being built on top of a solid foundation that is the authoritative words of the apostles and prophets, preserved in Scripture. Christ is there; he’s the cornerstone. He sets the direction, and then the apostles and prophets are the supporting foundation. And the church is then built on top of it.
Ok, so back to apostleship in the list. Why is it even there? Paul puts it there because at the time of Paul’s writing, the authoritative words of Scripture were still being compiled, still being pieced together. The foundation was still being laid. So we have apostles in the church—the twelve apostles of course, but then the other James, Jesus’ brother, was also considered an apostle. Barnabas was called an apostle, and of course Paul, and some have suggested there were others. To be an apostle, you had to have been commissioned by the others, but you also had to have seen the risen Christ.
So, when Paul was first putting together his list of gifts, there were still apostles in the church. But even then that function seemed to be winding down then. For example, with the twelve apostles, at first, when Judas betrayed Jesus, he was quickly replaced by Matthias, but then later when James (one of the original twelve), when he was killed by Herod, he DIDN'T get replaced. The role was already fading away as things were falling into place. As that foundation was being laid.
Now, interestingly, many of those who believe that the more controversial gifts are still in use today, they WILL at the same time say that there are no more apostles. But, and here’s where the problems start, many of them still want to hold on to the gift of prophecy. So what is prophecy? Some try to solve the problem by simply making it ‘preaching from the Bible.’ Buy we already have the gift of teaching. This is something different. So, we know about Old Testament prophets. They didn’t teach from the Bible, but they DID speak God’s words. They were God’s mouthpieces. God would give them a spontaneous dream or vision, and they would repeat that revelation to the people. And, it would be the same with New Testament prophets. So prophecy is a spontaneous revelation from God, delivered by prophets, or by people who have the gift of prophecy.
So it’s spontaneous; it comes upon the person unexpectedly, and it’s a revelation—it’s a mystery that was once hidden but is now revealed. And some people, the prophets, had this gift. There were still mysteries to be revealed then. Now, you can imagine why Paul had to put some guardrails in place in Corinth, for example. 1 Corinthians 14:29-30 says, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged” and then he explains why, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” So, spontaneous revelations could be chaotic, if they weren’t communicated in this orderly way.
And it could even be that some of them, maybe some of them not necessarily having the gift, they might get an impression and want to share it. Which might add to the confusion. Now, we’ll talk more about impressions in a minute. But they’re not revelations, they’re just impressions.
But, now if New Testament prophets, the ones with the gift of prophecy, were like the Old Testament prophets who spoke God’s words, then those New Testament prophets, their spontaneous revelations, would also serve, along with the apostles, as the foundation for the church. Again, the church is built, Ephesians 2:20, on the apostles and prophets.
So, again, if we’re trying to knock down this idea that these gifts are still around today, then you can see these dominoes starting to fall. If there’s no more apostles, then there’s no more prophets, and no more apostles and prophets, then no more gifts of healing and miracles, since those signs and wonders were primarily there to authenticate those people.
And we can keep going. No more apostles and prophets, means no more gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues. Why is that? What ARE tongues? Well the best answer from the Bible is that they’re simply other languages. Languages that other people from other places would speak. Languages that you wouldn’t understand without a translator.
We saw it at Pentecost. Jesus had gone up to heaven and the Holy Spirit came down to empower the church, and Acts 2:4 says: “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Some versions say, ‘they began to speak in other languages’ and I think it’s helpful if we just start plugging in ‘other languages’ when you see the word ‘tongues.’ The gift of tongues is just the gift of other languages.
Let’s keep reading in Acts 2: “And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia [FRU-gia] and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
So these were other languages. And what was being communicated? Spontaneous revelations from God—so we’re back to the gift of prophesying. So, the gift of tongues, or languages, is really just the gift of prophecy, BUT the spontaneous revelation in this case is communicated in other languages, in languages that some people might not understand, and need translated.
Now, there is more. And it does get a little bit more complicated. And clearly, the Corinthians were confused by all this. So, we have the spontaneous revelations in other languages in Acts, BUT the gift of tongues SEEMS different in 1 Corinthians 13 and 14. Chapter 13, verse 1 says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” What are these tongues of angels? And then in 14:2, it reads, “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God” and “he utters mysteries in the Spirit.” So, what is this speaking to God, uttering mysteries in the Spirit?
The Corinthians, remember, had come out of pagan idol worship, and they would’ve been familiar with ecstatic speech from their former religious practices. Ecstatic speech is when someone kind of goes into a trance. Their eyes might roll back, and they start speaking gibberish. In the rituals there might even be hallucinogenic drugs or alcohol to help in the process. But the idea is to have some kind of out of body experience, and this would supposedly connect them to the spiritual realm.
So Paul is warning against these ecstatic religious experiences, first saying if you speak in some spiritual, angelic language, then first, it’d better be done in love, and second it’d better be a prophecy for the church, one that the church can understand and be encouraged.
1 Cor 14:3-5 says, “the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.”
So, Paul is saying, ‘I do want you to speak in tongues, but just prove they are actually prophecies, that they are spontaneous revelations of God in other languages. Make sure there’s someone there to translate.
So what then is this private language that only builds up the individual? Paul seems to say that it’s okay to have some kind of private prayer language.
1 Corinthians 14:14-18 reads. “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays.” It says I’ll “sing praise with my spirit.” Then he says, “Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.” It seems like Paul is saying, ‘fine, have your prayer language, go ahead and sing praises with your spirit, but keep it to yourself.’ Don’t do it at church; it’ll only confuse people.
And honestly we just don’t really know what this is all about. Paul’s not all that interested in it, he wants to talk about prophecy—spontaneous revelation from God in other languages. The gift of tongues, Paul wants to tell them, is not ecstatic speech, it’s prophecy; don’t do ecstatic speech anymore—this isn’t the pagan idol worship you’re used to. Christians don’t do out of body experiences.
Alright, let’s move on to some application. We’ve already gone too long. But in summary, my case for some of the gifts ceasing is simply this. If no more apostles (and most would agree), then no more prophets and if no more apostles and prophets, then no more gift of healings and miracles (although like I said that doesn’t mean God doesn’t heal or do miracles), just no more GIFTS of healings and miracles, because, like I mentioned those signs and wonders were mostly used to authenticate the apostles and prophets. So no more apostles and prophets, means no more gifts of healings and miracles, and no more apostles and prophets, means no more gift of prophecy or tongues (which are really just prophecies in other languages). And of course, no gift of languages means no need for the gift of interpretation.
And I guess I should reiterate, the reason why it’s important that these controversial gifts have ceased is because we can’t have any new revelations. Nobody gets to add to Scripture. No one today has the authority of the apostles and prophets.
But I will say, before we move on. I mentioned earlier that some people do get impressions. And they are somewhat spontaenous. The Spirit sometimes spontaneously impresses something on someone’s heart. And there are times when it’s appropriate to share those impressions in church. But remember these are not prophecies, they’re not new revelationns.. They’re not ‘thus saith the Lord’—they don’t have apostolic or prophetic authority. Most of the time, impressions are simply the Spirit bringing to mind some Scripture to apply to some situation. Which is great; I think that’s an important part of life in the church.
Ok. So now that we’ve removed some of the mystery, and now that we can NOT be so focused on figuring out some superpower, we can now go about using our gifts in the church.
So how do we do that? Well, honestly, I think we just go for it. If you think you have a certain gift—and you probably have some idea, then just try it out and see how it goes. Ask what others think about the performance. And as you’re considering their feedback, remember to take any criticism seriously. I don’t have to tell you that there's a good chance that we’ll overestimate our giftedness. Remember our Romans passage. Paul has to remind us to “not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” So try things out, but then spend some time in sober reflection.
But then once you’ve found the right fit, focus on that gift. Paul finishes that passage with this: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, [then prophesy] . . . if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching.” If that’s your gift, focus on it, hone that skill, and then perform it to the glory of God.
Alright. So much more to say on this topic, but we gotta go. Thanks for listening to this 30 minute theology study. Hope to see you at the next one.
SOURCES:
Schreiner, Thomas R. Spiritual Gifts. B&H Publishing, 2018.