SPIRITUAL GIFTS AND THE SUPREMACY OF THE SCRIPTURES

How should we respond to present-day prophecy? For one thing, we shouldn’t live in expectation that prophetic utterance (and other miraculous signs) will be a regular part of our diet:

 For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV ; Romans 8:24; Hebrews 11:1)

However, prophecies were not to be rejected but tested:

• Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things. (I Thessalonians 5:19-21; 1 Corinthians 14:1, 31)
  

But how are we to “test all things?” The Scriptures must judge everything, even prophecies. They make us complete unto every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). How else could prophesies be judged? By other prophecies? This would simply result in a standoff. For example, what if five prophesied that Jesus would return in a week and one prophesied that He wouldn’t? Should the five carry more weight than the one? Certainly not! The five might have been influenced by political correctness or some other form of group-think.

 Instead, the Scriptures must be the supreme judge of all things (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). And nothing could be added to them (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32):

 Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other. (I Corinthians 4:6)

Everything has to conform to the Scriptures, even prophesies. This is why the Book of Acts praised the Bereans for weighing everything that Paul had been preaching by the light of the Hebrew Scriptures:

• These [Bereans] were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. (Acts 17:11-12)
  

Paul consistently taught that the Word of God had to reign supreme over every other alleged revelation from God:

• If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions. (I Timothy 6:3-4)
  

No one was at liberty to present a revelation that contradicted or added to what the Apostles were teaching. The Word had to take precedence over all forms of supernatural revelation:

• And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:19-20)
  

The Bible was always to be the ultimate judge. Israel was required to test prophets and their prophecies according to the Word:

• “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-4)

This prohibition also pertained to new teachings, which contradicted the Hebrew Scriptures. Prophets had to prove themselves, not only by prophesying according to what had already been written, but also by being 100% correct:

• “But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken.” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)

These teachings put the kibosh on the practice-makes-perfect prophetic training of some churches. Instead, prophecy was either given by God or it wasn’t. Wrongly claiming to speak for God deserved death (Deuteronomy 13:5). By this threat, the Scriptures were protected.

 

DISCOVERING AND USING OUR SPIRITUAL GIFTS

First of all, we all have spiritual gifts:

·       To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:7)

We are commanded to use these gifts:

·       As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)

But how do we discover our gifts? I think that there are several ways. Most importantly, we must commit ourselves fully to God. As we commit ourselves to Him in obedience – and this includes meditating on His Word day and night (Psalm 1) - He will begin to make things clear to us:

·       Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

When our Lord is #1 in our lives, He grants us discernment and wisdom through His Word. When He is not #1, we inevitably harden our heart against His pleadings, and when we do this, we also harden our hearts against His illumination and wisdom.

Here is another way that we can discern His calling. If we are performing labors for the Lord that are drudgerous, these are probably not our giftings. Instead, God wants us to be cheerful in our service to Him and therefore gives us gifts that are pleasing:

·       Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:7-8)

These verses suggest that God will give us gifts that we can perform cheerfully. If instead God gives us gifts that are displeasing, we will not be able to persist long in them. Instead, God gifts us in a way so that we can joyfully persist and perfect our gift.

Others can also help direct us in discovering our gifting. We are to seek godly counsel. Their counsel should be able to direct us to discover and use our gifts.

Most importantly, we need not worry about discovering our gifts. Why not? Because our Lord has a blessed plan for our lives:

·       For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

We need not worry. The doors He opens for us, no one can close

·       “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.” (Revelation 3:7)

We need to remember that God is in charge. He has even ordained the number of hairs we have on our heads, as Jesus had explained to His agitated Apostles:

·       And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:28-30)

Our God cares even about the little things in our lives. How much more our using the gifts He has given us for the edifying of His Church!

Therefore, we need not worry about discovering and using His gifts. We should be concerned about only one thing – that He is #1 in our lives:

·       Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ [or even ‘What are my gifts?’] For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:31-33)

When our Lord is #1, everything that we need will be given to us!

Are We Missing Out on the Gifts of God?

Many are disappointed by the church and claim that we need to re-pattern ourselves on the 1st century church, which had experienced the power of the Spirit along with astounding growth. One pastor put it like this:

·       We should be experiencing the power of God on the daily basis just like the 1^st century church. We are not experiencing this power or the excitement of the presence of the Spirit because we are not asking for it. Instead, we have rejected it.

In support of this, he quoted from the Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church:

• Now eagerly desire the greater gifts…Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy. (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1)
• Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. (1 Cor. 14:39)

According to this pastor, we are missing out because we refuse to seek the greater supernatural gifts. However, there are some other considerations:

There are more important gifts to seek. In order to put the supernatural gifts into the right perspective, Paul inserts a teaching on love. He writes that, without love, the supernatural gifts are no more than an annoyance:

·       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 do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor. 13:2)

Any other mention of the supernatural gifts is noticeably absent throughout the rest of the Bible, even in passages where we should expect them. Here are just a few evidences of these:

•  Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8)

Why doesn’t Peter instruct the church to also pursue the supernatural gifts if they are so essential to its vitality? Jesus makes no mention of them; nor does Paul in his other epistles:

•   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 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ…speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. (Eph. 4:11-13, 15)

• Here, maturity is a product of growing in the knowledge of Christ – a knowledge that is available apart from the operation of the supernatural gifts (also 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:2-3).

Why then did Paul instruct the Corinthian Church to pursue the supernatural gifts? Perhaps Paul was attempting to regulate and not promote the practice of tongues and prophecy, which were potentially disruptive, destructive, and confusing (1 Thess. 5:20; 1 Cor. 12:1-3; 14:39-40) in view of many who wanted to forbid them. Perhaps Paul was arguing against the other extreme - absolute prohibition of the supernatural gifts. Here are some arguments in favor of this:

If Paul had wanted to promote these gifts, he had chosen the wrong church. The Corinthians were already enamored with the supernatural (1 Cor. 14:12) and seemed to have practiced them more than other churches (1 Cor. 1:7; 2 Cor. 12:13). In view of this, Paul was likely wanting to minimize the abuses without prohibiting these God-given practices.

It doesn’t seem that Paul regarded these gifts as essential to the health of the church. Instead, he taught that Scripture was able to make the believer complete unto every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). How then can the gifts be essential!  Therefore, we would expect that these gifts would become less prevalent as the church matured into Scripture.

Paul wrote about this putting-away of the things of childhood that would accompany maturity:

• 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 the ways of childhood behind me. (1 Cor. 13:11)

Paul equates “the ways of childhood” with the practice of the supernatural gifts. They will abruptly disappear when the “perfect” Christ comes, and when we will know as we are known. However, along with their abrupt disappearance, there seems to also be a prior progressive disappearance. As we mature from childhood, the supernatural gifts might gradually fall away as would our childhood clothing. Perhaps they were more needful in the very immature Corinthian church. This would help to explain why Paul didn’t insist that others churches pursue the gifts.

While the knowledge imparted from the exercise of the supernatural gifts was needful (1 Cor. 14:18-19), a later and more mature church was able to glean this knowledge from the Word and Epistles of the Apostles without the danger of confusion inherent in the practice of the supernatural gifts.

We shouldn’t find it strange that God deals with different people, churches and times in different ways. God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for telling a partial truth (Acts 5) – something He doesn’t do now, at least not in such a dramatic way. He temporarily established the office of “Apostle.” He provided Apostles, pastors and teachers “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature” (Eph. 4:13). He healed through a mere piece of Paul’s clothing and Peter’s shadow. Perhaps special times required special means.

The progressive disappearance of these gifts can be seen in another way. At the beginning, they had been practiced so extensively that Paul stated that each had a supernatural gift:

• Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. (1 Cor. 12:7)

It is patently obvious that, today, we don’t practice the gifts so extensively. Pentecostals also agree with this assessment. Even though our God performs miracles of healing, few if any have proven gifts of healing – very different from the 1^st century church. Although there are some who claim the gift of the interpretation of tongues, such claims are questionable, even within Pentecostal circles, where these gifts are regularly pursued. And do we have the corresponding gift to judge prophecies or tongues? If we do, we seem to lack the means to prove this.

What then does this say about the claims of the pastor – that we are not enjoying the things of the Spirit because we are not actively pursuing them? I am concerned that such teaching might set us up for disappointment. His analysis might also be overly judgmental of those who don’t practice these gifts.

I sincerely want everything that my Savior has to offer me. I don’t want to be left behind in any regards. For years, I had sought these gifts without any satisfaction. I too had been told that if I am going to receive, I must ask, and I did ask – many times. However, I’ve learned to be content with what the Lord has given me. Yes, I still ask for more in a general sense, but I also trust that even if I’m not praying correctly, the Spirit is more than willing and able to intervene on my behalf, according to God’s will for my life:

•  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

It is this confidence in the Lord that brings me peace, along with the knowledge that He has a special plan for our lives, which He will fulfill (Eph. 2:10; Psalm 23, 139). Meanwhile, we have His assurances that He withholds no good thing from those who love Him (Psalm 84:11), even if we don’t ask for the right things in the proper way.