Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
In the middle of the apostle Paul’s extensive discussion of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14, he inserts a chapter on love. As you read the entire letter to the church at Corinth, the need for such a chapter becomes painfully obvious. The church was not a very loving church. In fact, early in the letter he scolded the believers there for being carnal or fleshly instead of spiritual. As you read through the entire letter you discover divisions in the church, jealousies, pride, quarrels, taking one another to court, open immorality, and the use of spiritual gifts for personal gratification to establish a “spiritual pecking order” within the church. The good news is that they were still loved by God and were still the church of God at Corinth. They did, however, need to grow significantly in their spiritual lives.
In this letter, we discover some very interesting realities about imperfect believers and spiritual gifts that are worth considering. First of all, spiritual giftedness is not always a sign of maturity. In the opening to his letter, Paul asserts, “You do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed” (1 Cor.1:7). In chapters 12-14 he lists a plethora of spiritual gifts including healings, miracles, tongues, prophecy, interpretation, discerning of spirits, words of knowledge, and so forth. That is an impressive list of gifts that we may assume were being exercised in the church there. And yet, Paul admonished them by saying, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly-mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly” (1 Cor.3:1-3). In Corinth, their “giftedness” ran far ahead of their spiritual maturity.
It makes you wonder why God would entrust such impressive spiritual gifts to the spiritually immature. I have two thoughts on that. One is that our gifts have the capacity to help us mature as we experience the Lord himself through the exercise of gifts. For instance, praying in tongues has the side effect of building us up spiritually as the Holy Spirit prays through us ( Jude 20). Prophecy is intended to build up the body of Christ and is expressed primarily to strengthen, encourage, and comfort people (1 Cor.14:3). Speaking the love and destiny of God over other people should also establish those things in our own hearts which produces spiritual growth.
Spiritual gifts are also God’s tools for building up the body of Christ, in general, so that a brand new church, planted in one of the most pagan cities in the world, would still need those gifts to grow even though there would be very few mature believers in that church. Perhaps, the immature expression of gifts is still less damaging than the absence of gifts altogether.
I also have another thought about Corinth. If you read the book of Acts, you discover that Paul experience a great disappointment in Athens just before he arrived at Corinth. He had gone to Mars Hill, the place where all the Greek and Roman philosophers gathered to discuss ideas. Paul presented his best, most rational, and most compelling arguments for the truth of the gospel. To his dismay, only a few responded. He left there feeling as if he had failed and he recalibrated his approach to evangelism.
We Paul arrived at Corinth, he preached only Jesus Christ and him crucified and then demonstrated the kingdom through displays of the power of the Spirit. It is possible, that Paul imparted many of the gifts to a young church as a tool for evangelism only to learn another lesson about when to impart those gifts. Later, he would tell Timothy to refrain from laying hands on any man quickly (1 Tim.5:22). The idea was not to appoint a man to leadership or to impart a spiritual gift until he had a read on the man’s maturity and character.
The issue of free will always comes into play in God’s dealing with man. God gives good gifts with the opportunity to use them well, but man always has the option to use them for selfish purposes. At any rate, there were many believers at Corinth who exercised impressive gifts that were not always Spirit-led. That is why Paul told them to test all prophecies to see if they were from God (consistent with his will and confirmed by the Spirit in the hearts of other believers).
An important take away from this letter is that because some believers abuse spiritual gifts, it does not mean that the gifts are invalid or that they do not bring tremendous value to the church.
Ultimately, the safe guard against abuse is not forbidding the exercise of gifts but using them in the context of love. Spiritual gifts are an expression of God’s love for his body delivered through his people. When someone is healed by a gift of healing, it is simply God’s love being delivered through the hands or commands of one of his children. When a gift of encouragement is exercised, it is the encouragement of God flowing through a believer. When hospitality is exercised, it is God making strangers feel warm and welcome.
Every gift reflects a facet of the nature and character of God and should be governed by love. Even with the extreme abuse of spiritual gifts in Corinth, Paul did not shut down their exercise but taught them how to use the gifts as they were intended. The church should respond to any abuses or misrepresentations of spiritual gifts in the same way today. (More from I Corinthians 13 in my next blog).
