BANKERS TRUST?
Have you noticed what’s been happening in your bank? "The Banks" have been introducing change by stealth. It began over 10 years ago when the banks made some poor investment decisions during the buoyant 80’s. But with the Stock Market crash of 89, banks were struggling with extreme levels of defaulting loans. But rather than sack their Directors, or reduce dividends to the investors, they started to recoup some of their losses through the introduction of the principle of "user-pays" (we call them bank fees). The banks continue to cut costs through service rationalisation (we call them branch closures). With each release of their annual financial results, it’s unusual not to hear that each bank has "improved" on its prior year’s result.
And linked with those changes has been another shift - perhaps more subtle, yet foundational to the relationship between our banks and us. Check this out - a pamphlet entitled "Important Notice to all Bank Clients"! What do you see?
I’m sure I used to be a customer. Now I’m a client. And do you know what the difference is? You serve customers, you charge clients. The dichotomy is we need banks (or perhaps credit unions), but banks also need us. No customers, no bank. We have a mutual dependence upon each other, which used to be based on service and trust - not any more. We are clients, not customers.
We used to get service with a smile and a piggy bank, now we stand in long queues for the privilege of paying bank fees. There’s a warning in this for banks, because everyone knows you’ve got to mind your fees and queues.
What’s all this got to do with a sermon from 1 Corinthians? The church used to be about service and mutual interdependence and about love; but it, but we, are in danger of losing our sense of service and interdependence. We are in danger of losing our first love in the pursuit of programmes, effectiveness, individualism and dogma. It is love that sets the Church apart from the world - it always has, it always will because love is the mark of Christian authenticity. The Corinthians were no different. The church in Ephesus was condemned in the book of Revelation because they’d lost their first love. They’d sought truth - which they were commended for, but they forsook love in the process - and for that they were condemned. We need to regain that sense of service and interdependence. We need to hang on to our first love and rekindle it. We need to hear from God about what He says, we need to pay attention, and we need to do it.
THE CONTEXT OF 1 CORINTHIANS 12-14
For the last couple of months, we’ve been looking at 1 Corinthians. And the overriding consideration has been how the church of God in Corinth was to be the church of God in Corinth.
This morning’s sermon is something you may expect to hear at a Pentecostal wedding. We’re looking at Spiritual gifts and love. Whenever someone mentions Spiritual gifts, the Bible springs open to 1 Corinthians 12 - as if by divine intervention, and I would suggest that 1 Corinthians 13 is the standard fare for the majority of "church" weddings in between strains of "Love divine, all loves excelling".
Today’s passage is 1 Corinthians 12 to mid way through chapter 14. With two and a half chapters to cover and 20 minutes up my sleeve, you hope that I’m going to be a little selective. Some may be a little disappointed with what I don’t say today, but I’ve picked out the ideas that I see as having the most relevance for us. I’m not going to talk about tongues, or their interpretation, or about prophecy or the distinguishing of spirits. That’s the sort of stuff the Corinthians were big on, and yet Paul subordinates those things to third place behind the need for unity and the need to love.
The Corinthian church had some problems. Hey, all churches have problems. All people have problems. The key is how you deal with the problems you have. The Corinthians had written to Paul requesting his insight and wisdom. His response indicates the Corinthian church had:
- A tainted understanding of unity where they wanted to follow the gifted and not the leader.
- A preparedness to tolerate sin within their numbers.
- They had a misplaced emphasis on particular Spiritual gifts. And how some people saw it as their right to exercise those gifts whenever they chose.
- And there were some issues about the Lord’s Supper, which Roger looked at last week.
Yet throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul doesn’t spend too much time describing the negatives of Corinth, but instead details the positives of how they should live as the church of God in Corinth.
NOW ABOUT SPIRITUAL GIFTS...THEIR SOURCE, NATURE AND PURPOSE
It would be helpful to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 12. Paul starts off with some encouraging words, "Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant." Phew. That’s a relief. Paul is answering whatever questions they posed about gifts and their exercise within their public meetings. In verse 7 of chapter 12, he says, "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." That is one of the keys Paul gives to understand Spiritual gifts. If all we knew about Spiritual gifts was that sentence, we almost know enough about them because there are three very important concepts in that one short sentence.
Firstly, Paul says, "to each one". Each person in Corinth and in this room who believes in Jesus and has put his or her faith in Him has a spiritual gift. Some people have more than one, but everyone has at least one.
Secondly, Paul writes, "the manifestation of the Spirit is given". These manifestations or gifts come from God. They are given. He is the source of the gifts. He is the giver and He can be the taker-away. Whilst we can desire them, they come from God.
Thirdly, Paul writes that they are given for "the common good".
This idea of the "common good" intrigues me a little. What is the common good? It is, if you like, summed up in the motto of the Three Musketeers - "all for one, and one for all". Let me take an extreme example, say I had the gift of hospitality (I told you it was extreme). If the Spirit chose to impart the gift of hospitality to me, it would not be so I can feel good about myself. It would not be so that I could tell everyone about it and about how hospitable I could be. It would be for your good - for our good, so that the body of Christ is built up. Gifts are given for service, not for pride. They are given in the expectation that they will be used to glorify God. They are given for the good of the body of Christ, which is the common good.
ONE BODY - MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE AND MUTUAL RESPECT
And so every Christian has at least one gift. They all come from God, and they are all given for the common good. Spiritual gifts have a unity of source and a unity of purpose which Paul explains when he writes, "God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it ... Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it."
We are to be mutually interdependent - "if one part suffers, every part suffers with it". Just as we each fulfil different roles within the body of Christ, so too, we have different gifts to be used to build up that body. And with interdependence comes the necessity for us to show mutual respect and consideration - "its parts should have equal concern for each other". This is something the Corinthians failed to understand - particularly within their public meetings. It appears that some in Corinth thought they were better than others were because they possessed particular gifts. In chapter 14 (verse 26), Paul writes, "When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church." He concludes chapter 14 by saying that "everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way."
Paul does not lay down an order of service, but he does state that our gatherings are to have a balanced participation of gifted members. Equally, when we meet for teaching, fellowship and edification, we should do so in an orderly way. Does it make sense that if Spiritual gifts are given to promote unity that they are to be exercised in a unified and unifying way? I think so. Gifts must be used in a way that is consistent with the aims of the gifts. Gifts are to promote unity; thus they must be exercised in a sense of unity too.
Time for a free plug. For the last couple of months, I’ve been listening to Good News AM (1620 on the AM dial) on weekday mornings. A few weeks ago, on their excellent programme called "Back to the Bible" which is on at 8:00am, the speaker was talking about living in the grey areas of life. He said that it’s OK for a church to have differences, but it cannot tolerate division. Anything that we do that promotes disunity or division or disharmony is sin. I can see some grey areas in that statement because there are times when we need to be challenged in our Godliness or to understand another’s point of view, but I think essentially, the speaker got it right. Churches can live with differences, but anything that promotes disunity is sin.
And so we have Spiritual gifts, given to every believer, from God, for the common good to build and support the body of Christ. Within that body we are to be interdependent - showing concern and respect for each other.
THE MOST EXCELLENT WAY - WITHOUT LOVE YOU ARE NOTHING
But then Paul says something strange. In chapter 12 verse 31, he says, "And now I will show you the most excellent way." It’s a weird sentence. The most excellent way of doing what? Of using our Spiritual gifts - or more correctly of exercising the gifts that God provides.
Paul has encouraged the Corinthians to understand and use their gifts for building up the body of Christ. He has described the nature and purpose of such gifts, and he now talks about the context and motivation for exercising those gifts. "And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
Paul is not depreciating gifts, since, as Leon Morris observed, "there is something higher than the greatest of these gifts, and something that is within the reach of the humblest ... believer". Love. Paul is not saying that love is a way to attain gifts, but that love is to be pursued for its own sake not for what we can get, but for what we can give. At the Katoomba Men’s Convention earlier this year, Roy Clements emphasised that love is not a noun, it is a verb. It is not something we get, it is something we do.
Unlike the gifts of the Spirit that can be given and taken away by God as His purposes dictate, the fruit of the Spirit - evidenced primarily by love, is something that we should see continually growing in each other and ourselves. 1 Corinthians 13 provides the context or framework for the development and utilisation of gifts within the body of Christ. The most excellent way of using our gifts is where the fruit of the Spirit (which is essentially love) is evidenced. It is only in love and out of love that we are to use our gifts.
GOD IS ...
But what is love? You know that I had to ask the question! Just to put a different emphasis on that oft-read passage about love from 1 Corinthians 13, follow with me a bit of logic. We know from 1 Corinthians 13 that love is patient, kind, etc, and from 1 John 4:16 that God is love. Does it not follow that: "God is patient, God is kind. He does not envy, He does not boast, He is not proud. He is not rude, He is not self-seeking, He is not easily angered, He keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails."
That’s the kind of God we have, and that’s the kind of love we experience through Jesus. And because of that, we read in John 15:12, "My command is this; Love each other as I have loved you." This love is not our love; it is God’s love because God is love. He is the origin of that love, and it is only in and through His Son that we can aspire to know and to give the type of love Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians 13.
Paul extols Spiritual gifts. He tells the Corinthians in the beginning of chapter 14, "eagerly desire spiritual gifts", but he prefaces that by saying, "follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts". He elevates gifts, but emphasises that it must be within the context of orderly worship, and in love. Spiritual gifts are to be used, but they are to be used in and through love. Love is, if you like, the certificate of authenticity of gifts. Paul values Spiritual gifts - absolutely, but he values love more.
A SUMMARY OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS
If I were asked to sum up Spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians, I’d say:
- Every believer has at least one Spiritual gift.
- All of those gifts come from God for His purposes, not ours.
- These gifts and our lives are to be used and lived in the context of the body of Christ - of mutual interdependence.
- Gifts are given for the common good to present us mature in Christ.
- Love is the basis for our gifts. It is the rationale. It is the reason, the context, and the framework. Without love, we are nothing.
TWO QUESTIONS
And so as we conclude our look at 1 Corinthians 12 to 14, there are two questions I need to ask each of us:
1. What sort of a church would this be if everyone used his or her gifts to the same extent that you do?
2. What sort of a church would this be if everyone loved to the same extent that you do?
In some cases, this church would be a vibrant, growing church where the Holy Spirit is active and the members are faithful. In some other cases, this church would be a cold, heartless, dying place. In yet others, the place would be boarded up and deserted with broken windows and long grass.
The challenge of 1 Corinthians is to be the church of God in this and surrounding suburbs such that people are brought into maturity in Christ. We do that by exercising Spiritual gifts in and because of God’s love.
TWO ANSWERS
Back to those two questions "What sort of a church would this be if everyone used his or her gifts to the same extent that you do?" and "What sort of a church would this be if everyone loved to the same extent that you do?" What happens if you don’t like the answers that you come up with? Could I suggest a few ways forward?
With regard to Spiritual gifts:
- Find out what your gifts are (the Network book is reasonable)
- Talk to people around here to see if they confirm your understanding of your gifts.
- Look for opportunities to use them. Ask one of our leaders, or your Bible study leader, or pastoral carer if you have one. But ask someone.
- And use them for God’s glory and the common good.
- And yet there is a proviso - just because you have a particular gift doesn’t mean you need to exercise it continually. That was on of the problems in Corinth. There are times to use our gifts, are there are times not to. We need to exercise wisdom and have a sense of order. Equally, we can and should be expected to work outside of our areas of giftedness if the occasion and circumstances dictate. Knowing what your gifts are and are not can give a deal of freedom - freedom to say "yes", or to say "no" to the many demands upon us. But, at all times, and in all circumstances, we must use our gifts only motivated from love.
With regard to love, there are a number of things we can do. These ideas have been borrowed from something I was reading last week.
1. Look to Jesus. Keep our eyes fixed on Him. See Him in the Gospels; spend time with Him in prayer.
2. This one’s a bit scary. Do an inventory of your life. Be honest and brutal. Get a piece of paper and begin to list your character traits, your actions, your thoughts, and your words that are an offence to God. Look at that list - it is for those things that Jesus came. It is for those things that Jesus died. In spite of those things you are loved by God. Then look at others, remembering that list tucked in your pocket or in your mind - and act accordingly. When the woman poured perfume on Jesus’ feet, he said, "I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven ... for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
3. We need to continue to meet together - to take time to have fellowship - to make the effort to meet together. "Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another." It is primarily within this context of meeting together that the fruit of the Spirit can and will grow. Someone once said, "You can meet without loving, but you can’t love without meeting."
4. We need to remember that we love because God first loved us, and that love is a key factor that has always attracted people to the Gospel.
Let me finish by restating some of Paul’s thoughts: Spiritual gifts are given for the common good. But love is given for the common best.
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© Gary Bennett September, 1999
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission.
