Our study this week examines spiritual gifts within 1 Cor 12:1–31a. As churches take varying positions on the use of spiritual gifts, what questions do you have on this familiar passage? What are some ways we need to apply this passage?
- Thanks for sharing, Nathan. You are absolutely right. There is no true, exegetical support for cessationism and neither is there any support for a "name it and claim" it approach to a particular gift. We are more than welcome to pray for certain gifts and God may choose to give them to us but he may also choose not to do so. He gives the gifts as he determines. In the New Testament the term "baptism/baptize" is used with the "Spirit" only to refer to the Spirit initially coming to live in a person when they first accept Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:13 is very telling because Paul says all the Corinthian Christians have this baptism and yet we know from the whole letter how immature, sin-filled and theologically misguided many of them are on so many issues. What charismatics call the baptism of the Spirit is what the New Testament calls the filling of the Holy Spirit. On three occasions in Acts it results in tongues; in all instances in the New Testament it yield bold witness and proclamation of the gospel, which, of course, can't be effective unless there is interpretation of tongues. D. A. Carson in his wonderful little book, Showing the Spirit, makes two very simple statements that if followed would prevent most of the abuse, excess, and wrongheadedness in this area. If those who have not experienced certain gifts would stop ruling any of them as out of bounds for our age, and if those who have experienced certain more so-called charismatic gifts would stop requiring them as criteria for anything, the two sides would come a lot closer together. That's probably part of exactly what Paul had in mind in 1 Corinthians 14:39-40: be eager to prophesy and stop forbidding tongues (the one side) but do everything decently and in order, i.e., in line with all the other instructions Paul gives in these three chapters (12-14) (the other side).
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