Spiritual
Gifts
By
Stephen Terry
Commentary
for the April 21, 2012 Sabbath School Lesson
“So
Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors
and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of
Christ may be built up.” Ephesians 4:11-12, NIV
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is full of exciting
imagery. Ephesians, chapter six, contains the wonderful verses about the armor
of God, but just as inspiring is chapter four with its panoply of powerful
gifts. They are powerful because they build up the church, the body of Christ.
Since the foundation of the church is Jesus, anything built up by these gifts
is building on that foundation. “For no one can lay any foundation other than
the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11, NIV It is important that we realize the
significance of this as we do not want to reverse the building process and
attempt to lay our understanding of Jesus Christ on the foundation of the
church. While we commonly refer to the church as the body of Christ even as the
above verse says, the church has a foundation. It is not the foundation.
Those who reverse this order tend to see the church,
rather than Christ, as the dispenser of grace and merit. We often find this
based upon the passage, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on
earth will be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:19, NIV This would make it seem
that the church on earth has complete control over everything that happens in
heaven. However, this translation and others including the King James Version
ignore or fail to emphasize that the Greek text does not use the future tense
but rather the perfect tense. The New International Version at least
acknowledgers this in the footnotes, where it gives the alternate translations “will
have been bound” or “will have been loosed.” The implication of this is that
nothing may be bound or loosed by the church on earth unless it has been bound
or loosed by God in heaven. The correct understanding of the Greek is important
to our understanding of spiritual gifts also if we are to remain consistent.
You see, the church often presents the concept of
spiritual gifts as a matter of permissions or endorsements from the church as
opposed to something imparted directly by God without regard to the wishes of
the church. To be sure, God imparts gifts according to the needs of those both
inside and outside the church, but this may or may not coincide with what the
church feels it needs or wants. Often those who want to control the
acknowledgment of spiritual gifts also want to control the dispensation of
grace. The Jews of Christ’s time were guilty of this in not wanting to extend
the benefits of grace to the Gentiles unless they first acknowledged the
supremacy of the Jewish race and then sought to become as Jewish as they could
both spiritually and physically, circumcision being a case in point.
However, God in vision and then in practice illustrated
to Peter in his encounter with the family of Cornelius, a Gentile Centurion,
that the church is not the one who grants grace and gifts. This is the
prerogative of God alone. (See Acts 10) The church’s role is not to dispense or
approve of the gifts but rather to accept the manifestation of the Spirit’s
gifts and not to hinder the grace being made manifest in those gifts. In doing
so, the church will find itself “built up” and increased as grace flows like a
river through human hearts.
We sometimes hear those who say that the church must
have order, discipline and organization in order to be successful. Those who
say this often mean that these things are to be imposed by governing organs
within the church. The paradox of this claim is that where these things are the
most in evidence, church growth tends to be the most glacial. Rural churches in
third world countries that irregularly see a pastor and even less often see a
church administrator will often experience phenomenal growth. This has occurred
not under the close supervision of the parent denominational structure but
under the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit quickening the hearts of men and
women and imparting supporting gifts to them according to need.
This same principle was illustrated in Paul’s life. God
ordained him to service through the baptism provided by Ananias in Damascus who
recognized that the Spirit was already active mightily in Paul’s life. Having
received this ordination of baptism and Spirit, Paul did not seek employment or
any form of credentials from the nascent church. Instead he immediately began
to proclaim the message of grace that had filled his own heart. The Spirit
overflowed to others from its presence within him. He did not seek permission from
the disciples in Jerusalem before he used the gifts
granted him. Not until he had been laboring in the Spirit for three years did
he finally approach those who were called before he was. When he did, it was
not to ask permission, for the Holy Spirit had already granted that. It was to
report what he had been doing that they might share in his joy.
While some in Jerusalem were troubled by this movement
of Spirit-filled ministers and the threat to their own control over the
message, they were unable to prevail and the official church position became
one of recognition and support of what God had been doing through Paul. The
results of that are evident throughout the books of Acts and the various
Epistles. The church enjoyed tremendous growth and many were empowered by the
Spirit to carry forth the message. Because that message was not tightly
controlled by a circle of clerics cloistered in Jerusalem, the gospel was able
to express itself freely in terms of culture and race wherever it spread. The
message was simple: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of
Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:38, NIV This was a call to
ordination. The expectation was that those who did so would also carry the good
news to others, empowered by that same Holy Spirit that had brought the news to
them.
The early church had a much deeper appreciation for the
power of the Holy Spirit than we do, today. Where they trusted the Holy Spirit
to change men’s hearts from stone to flesh and to write directly on human
hearts the principles of God’s kingdom, we are less willing to believe the
possibilities of that. Instead we rely on written rules and creeds to enforce
outwardly the things that we have little faith will be found inwardly. The
church can become more focused on containing the wine of spiritual gifts than facilitating
its flow. (See Luke 5:37) Fortunately, it is not possible for the church to
restrict the Holy Spirit to its ecclesiastical boundaries. Peter found this out
with Cornelius. God pours out His Spirit and grants gifts to whom He will. He
does so not according to our purposes but His.
We sometimes excuse our hindering of the new wine of the
Spirit by claiming that we are guarding the old “landmarks.” This is human
nature. As Luke wrote, “no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they
say, ‘The old is better.’” Luke 5:39, NIV
But what is pleasing to us is not the standard God works by. The Holy
Spirit is not bound by our convention. There is no “That’s the way we’ve always
done it” with God. He knows that just as that attitude prevented the Jewish leaders
from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, it can also hinder the recognition of
God’s activity around us today. It can prevent us from recognizing spiritual
gifts even as they are being poured out all around us.
As one author, Ellen White, wrote, it is possible that “we
shall not recognize the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain. It
may be falling on hearts all around us, but we shall not discern or receive it.”
Testimonies to Ministers, page 507 This is not because God closes our eyes to it.
Rather, it is because we close our own eyes by being unwilling to acknowledge
the Holy Spirit’s working. In the same vein as Nathanael and others who asked
about Jesus “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (See John 1:46), some
today ask whether or not the Holy Spirit could possibly ignore gender when
calling people to minister? They ask could the Holy Spirit possibly use music
that they do not personally find uplifting? They want to return to what they
deem a spiritually idyllic past and feel because this is what they desire, it
most certainly is what God desires as well. Fortunately, Nathanael was able to
overcome his prejudices and became one of the twelve disciples of Jesus.
No doubt, because of Nathanael’s openness, he walked
with Jesus and was eventually present on Pentecost. He, along with the others,
received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Nathanael, who was also called
Bartholomew, is reputed by the early church historian Eusebius to have used the
gifts granted him to carry the gospel to the area around Bombay (now Mumbai) in
India. Had he refused to acknowledge that God might work in unexpected ways, he
might have remained under the fig tree where Philip found him and never followed
Jesus. He discovered through personal experience that the key to the Holy
Spirit working in your own life is to be willing to accept that the Spirit is
working in the lives of others, even if it is in ways that are unfamiliar or
that we do not understand.
God does not require our permission to ordain whom He
will with the Holy Spirit. When we come in contact with those He has so gifted,
it is not to obtain our permission for what He has done through them, but so
that we might rejoice together with them and glorify God. This was the
opportunity granted by Paul’s visit to those in Jerusalem. It is the
opportunity granted to us today, if we do not hinder it by our prejudices or
desire for control. May we be as enlightened as those in Jerusalem were toward
Paul.
This Commentary is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
If you
want a paperback copy of the current Sabbath School Bible
Study Quarterly, you may purchase one by clicking here and typing the word
"quarterly" into the search box.