I Corinthians 12:3b-13
3 … and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Whereas the previous subjects concerned the status of married and unmarried believers, virgins and food sacrificed to idols and other related communal issues, Paul now begins a protracted section of his letter (chapters 12-14) that considers spiritual gifts, particularly how they are to function in the gathered community. The passage can be an aid as we reflect upon the general notion of balancing disciplined congregational prayer on the one hand and free, hearty, and spontaneous prayer on the other. Paul wrestles with order and spontaneity in these chapters. The solution is for the minister to prepare for “extemporary” prayer, with due attention to connecting to the congregation, the historical connection to tradition, and to the need for stability of form.[1]
I Corinthians 12:3b-13 have the theme of the gifts of the Spirit. The point here will be that Christian life is not so much a theory as a love affair.[2] Paul is connecting some quite practical matters that ought to lead us to a deeper appreciation of the love that binds us to each other and to Christ through the Spirit. (1 Cor 12:1-11)
Further, no one can say, "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. Those who have genuinely become a bonded part of the Spirit-bred, Spirit-led community of faith announce reverently "Jesus is Lord." We see Paul distinguishing members of the Trinity, writing of a distinction between the risen Lord and the Holy Spirit.[3] In this case, the Spirit shows his deity by teaching us to recognize and confess the deity of another, that is, the Son.[4] In context, one of the concerns is authentic spirituality, which Paul is identifying as the common confession of Jesus as Lord. On the contrary, a Christian ecstatic experience would ground believers in their faith, not set them off on a flighty path. Christians in the Spirit would receive the power to recognize and proclaim, "Jesus is Lord." Paul wants to make it clear that the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit is antithetical to the pagan understanding of episodic moments of ecstasy. Apparently, many new Christians still believed that they could participate in familiar but heathen religious rites without losing their connection to the newly established Christian community. Paul argues that these rites are so intensely personal that in effect they separate or disconnect the new believer from the church. They stressed the diversity of the private experience at the expense of the unity of the communal sharing of the spiritual gift. The apostle's constant refrain is that spiritual gifts are for mutual edification, something that cannot happen if everyone is doing his/her own thing without the direction of the Spirit. In verse 13, the power of the Spirit through baptism does away with the distinctions of race or social status by the power of the Holy Spirit through baptism. Paul's use of the metaphor of the body makes this plain (12:12-31), as does his insistence that love is the greatest gift of all (chapter 13). Furthermore, in chapter 14 Paul argues that the gifts of prophecy and tongues are only useful if the church, rather than the individual, benefits. Therefore, those who are still worshiping the pagan deities are allowing noisy, sensational self-delusion to entice them and carry them away. The pagan gods are powerless and voiceless (v.2). So, not only is the pagan experience an individual one, it is also nonsense, having nothing spiritual about it. By means of these antithetical declarations, Paul makes the following point: Whereas some speech is compatible with the Spirit, other speech is not. To paraphrase, since you Corinthians are no longer pagans, and idols are lifeless and cannot speak, when you speak by God’s Spirit — who is and gives life, and speaks — there are acceptable and nonacceptable forms of speech.
If we were to discuss the ministry of the community, Paul makes emphatic use of the image of the body and its members. Throughout this passage, he will address gifts, services, and workings of the one Spirit. Paul affirms that the body is one, and that as such it has many members. The one body lives in the plurality of its members. In addition, the many members are one body. Therefore, the plurality has no right alone, but exist for all. Yet, this image is something real for Paul, for the vision he has before him is the body and members of the Head Jesus Christ. Paul is thinking of the one ministry and witness of the one Son. He thinks of the fellowship that the Father has in the Son with humanity.[5]
Paul carefully addresses the still confusing fact that while there is only one genuine Spirit, it manifested its presence in a variety of ways. This diversity in unity is, in fact, the greatest strength, the unique gift, of the Holy Spirit. Instead of forcing an unvarying unity of experience on believers (as required by so many other first century cults), the Spirit of God allowed for, indeed helped develop, the flowering of uniquely individual expressions and experiences within the faith community. The freedom of individuality occurs within limits. Our vocation or calling is from God in a way that concerns the individual and is for the uniqueness that everyone represents. Such a calling is not strange to the individual. The balance here is between one Spirit and differences in the distribution of the gifts.[6]
4Now there are varieties of gifts (χαρισμάτων), but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services (or ministries, διακονιῶν), but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities (ἐνεργημάτων, workings), but it is the same God who activates (ἐνεργῶν) all of them in everyone. The Spirit does not force an unvarying unity of experience on believers. Rather, the Spirit develops the flowering of uniquely individual expressions and experiences. To use an analogy from the arts, the artist is nothing without the gift he or she has. Yet, the gift is nothing without the work of the artist.[7]
Unless the eye catch fire, The God will not be seen./ Unless the ear catch fire, The God will not be heard. / Unless the tongue catch fire, the God will not be named./ Unless the heart catch fire, the God will not be loved./ Unless the mind catch fire, the God will not be known. --William Blake.
Paul expresses his concern for unity by using Trinitarian language with this reference to Lord, Spirit, and God. Such statements by Paul will become the basis for the orthodox teaching regarding the Trinity. One who prays to the Father, believes in the Son, and whom the Holy Spirit moves, is a person whom the one Lord meets and unites to the Lord. The presupposition and goal of the church in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity is the unity of God. Activities have varieties, but the same God energizes all of them in everyone.[8] 7 To each God gives the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. The gifts, services, and activities have the purpose of mutual edification. His point is that benefitting individually is not enough. The work of the Spirit is not simply for private use. The sign the Spirit is working is that it connects with others and benefits others. The diversity of genuine spiritual gifts works toward unity and harmony. The working of the Spirit will not disintegrate the bonds of faith that hold together the community. The work of the Spirit is that of a community in a specific place. The gifts of the grace granted to this community do have variety, but they all have one thing in common that guarantees their co-operation and the unity of the church. The real point is that they are all gifts of the same Spirit, who divides to every individual severally as the Spirit will.[9]
8 To one God gives through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, perhaps practical exhortation, and to another the utterance of knowledge, perhaps exposition of Christian truth and an intelligent grasp of the principles of the gospels guided by reason and led by the Spirit, according to the same Spirit. These two gifts seem important because Paul mentions them first. They serve the church in a practical manner. Preaching and teaching build up the community. 9 To another God gives faith by the same Spirit, suggesting the confidence in God to do great or extraordinary things, such as a faith to move mountains (13:2). To another God gives gifts of healing by the one Spirit, the power to help those with sickness of mind and body, which, as we now know, have a close interaction. 10 To another God gives the working of miracles, mighty deeds, such as exorcism, through the same Spirit. The Spirit gives to another prophecy, something like Old Testament prophets who spoke as messengers of God. God inspired them to utter the deep things of God for the conviction of sin, edification, comfort, and sometimes predicting the future. The Spirit gives to another the discernment of spirits, an intuitive discernment of whether the spirit of God inspires a person, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues, ecstatic utterance and its interpretation. 11 The one and the same Spirit activates (ἐνεργεῖ) all these gifts, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
Paul spells out some of the diverse expressions the Spirit can take in the lives of different believers. However, the tasks are always changing with changing situations. Paul does not claim the list fixes the number or types of gifts, but rather, stresses the unity of the gifts amid diversity. In fact, the intent of the diversity is to serve the one body, and therefore unity.[10] Paul is making the multiplicity of expressions of the Spirit a theme of theological reflection in this entire passage. He did so in debate with some people in Corinth who lifted one experience of the Spirit up as authentic. Paul opted for no one form of authentic spirituality. He found justification for the multiple expressions of the Spirit working and the mutual need to embrace the way the Spirit was at work. He stresses that the variety means that the Spirit does not work equally in all. His concern was to see to it that the differences in gifts did not occasion conflicts and schisms. Instead, all should recognize that the same Spirit is at work in all these gifts, imparting the gifts as the Spirit will, and that the proper concern for all with their different gifts should be what contribution they could make to the upbuilding of the community. Thus, the individual gifts of the Spirit supplement each other in the life of the church. The only criterion of authentic spirituality is the relation to confession of Christ (verse 3), and the relation to the one Lord means commitment to the unity of Christians in the fellowship of the church by mutual participation and love in the unity of the body of Christ. These thoughts on the theme of multiplicity and unity point the way for the church in every age.[11]
The church has always been a very human, and therefore weak, frail, and imperfect. One of the ways we demonstrate this reality is in our rebellion against affirming our oneness amid our diversity. The gift of Protestantism has been ever new diverse forms of expressing the Christian faith. The sadness I have is that the church could not figure out a way to experience that diversity while also affirming unity.
We are individuals with unique capacities and gifts. We are part of a community of believers in whom the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same Father is at work. This mixture of our individuality and community brings tensions. We might find ourselves wondering if the community really needs certain types of individuals. We may view ourselves as in competition with others in terms of influence, power, or prestige. Some persons may seem more important than others are, stronger than others are, more “needed” than others are. Such thoughts are the source of much divisiveness in the church.
What impresses me is how deeply embedded community appears to be in both the human and natural world. Even the atom is a community of particles. Each cell is a community of interacting parts. The human body requires genes and cells, with interacting electrical charges in the brain, to work together for the good of the body. We do not understand the parts fully until we see how it all comes together in the body. Each part has its place in the whole.
To view the church from this perspective is a humbling act. The most gifted in time, talent, or treasure, still needs other members of the community in order to grow in their faith, love, and hope. However, this view of the church is also an encouraging one. Every follower of Christ is important to the pattern of life the church is weaving.
I am only one; but I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But I can do something.
What I can do I ought to do;
And what I ought to do,
By the grace of God, I will do.[12]
Clearly, the church is not “the real thing,” if by that we mean the reign of God. You do not have to be involved very long before you realize that. I have seen far too many pastors end their ministries with a cynical frame of mind. The church is not New Jerusalem. Pastors are not saviors, of course. Yet, the church is to be a sign or pointer toward the real thing.
I do not want to press the image too far, but what would happen if God were building a model. What if the model God is building is the church? Why the church?
Well, as I understand biblical history, God keeps working with groups of people. God worked with the family of Abraham. God worked with Israel. The purpose was to have a community of people who would live faithfully in this world. They would direct people to the true God. Israel was to be a light to the nations. Jesus said of his followers that they were to be light, a city on a hill, and salt of the earth.
What would happen if God wants the church to be a model of something greater to come? One way to think about that is to consider why people make models. William Klink, physics and astronomy professor at the University of Iowa, says one key reason to create models is to provide an explanation of how things work. They enable the one making the model to understand why some parts of nature behave the way they do. The one making the model puts it together in a way that one can change and control in a workable fashion. What distinguishes a model from pure speculation is that one can test a model.[13]
Based on such an understanding of a model, we could ponder what God is testing in the church. Will the church be a means of grace in this world? Will the church be a place where the world can see and experience the love God has for the world? If the church is to be a place where the mission is to love God and neighbor as well as make disciples for Jesus Christ, will the church be its statement of mission? Will the church be a place where faith in Christ, love from God that flows to others, and hope in the future rule of God and destiny of humanity empower its life?
Paul offers the metaphor of the human body in order to help us grasp how the diversity and individuality with which the Spirit works in the community of believers is a benefit to the community.
Among the beautiful things that God did was to make us in such a way that none of us is complete alone. No matter how gifted and talented we are, no matter how saintly we become, we still need each other. In this way, we reflect the image of God. I realize that the Trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand and apply to one’s spiritual life. Yet, the Trinity is one way for us to understand the nature of God. God is one while God is also in relation. God is already in community, before God created anything else. This shows how much community means to God. God as Father, Son, and Spirit were in relationship with each other from eternity. God invites all creation, but especially us as human beings, into that relationship.
The teaching of the church concerning the Trinity suggests a relational image of God. As persons made into the image of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, we also need relationships with others. We are not complete until we enter that kind of relationship. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book, The Great Divorce of a place in which everyone got exactly what they wanted. They did not have to relate to others. They could live isolated lives, knowing they would also get want they wanted. He called that place Hell.
We can forget what matters most to us. I like the way Stephen Covey talks about this problem. We easily focus upon the trivial and minute matters of life, the little things that attract our attention, and lose sight of what matters most. I recall a Seminary professor asking a group of us why we entered ministry. I was surprised how many said that it was because they wanted to help people and work with people. After several responses, the professor said, “You must not understand people very well.” His point was that people could be difficult. However, even those difficulties are what we need to grow in our Christian life. We could focus upon the little things that irritate us. We could also focus upon what matters most.
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. As a metaphor of how all this works, a body is one, but also has many members. The members of the body are many but are part of one body. Christ is the same way. His point is that the aim of the Christian is the well-being of the whole body. One meaning of this description is that the existence of the church involves a repetition of the Incarnation of the Word of God in the person of Jesus Christ in that area of the rest of humanity that is distinct from the person of Jesus Christ.[14] The term “body of Christ” stresses Christ is a body. The “being” of the Christian community is this “body.” Christ is one in many. Jesus Christ is by nature body. Such a statement is why Paul will stress the necessity of unity and plurality in the community. The gifts, services, and workings have a bodily nature that recognizes the order and freedom needed within the community. The resurrection of Jesus is what allows Paul to tell the Corinthians they are the body of Christ in verse 27. The body of Christ as seen in the community points like an arrow to the unity of humanity in Christ. The exclusiveness of referring to church as the body of Christ is relative, provisional, and teleological. To use the language and theology of Karl Barth, the community is the body of Christ in the election of Jesus Christ from eternity. It became the body of Christ and individual members of it due to their election in the death of Christ on the cross and proclaimed in his resurrection from the dead. The work of the Holy Spirit is to realize subjectively the election of Jesus Christ and to reveal and bring it to humanity. The Holy Spirit awakens the poor praise on earth.[15] We may also find a kind of representation in a broader sense in any social group in which individual members have special functions that both single them out and enable them to contribute to the unit as a whole and to the other members, this passage being an example. In a working society, the different members do jobs for others, and all the members relate reciprocally to each other. They are “for” each other and must act in solidarity in this sense.[16]
13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body in a way that dissolves distinctions of race and class-- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-- and we were all made to drink, maybe referring to baptism again but also a possible reference to the Lord’s Supper, of one Spirit. The Spirit is the means through which the reconciling work of Father and Son find completion. For Paul, the fellowship of Christians with God and each other rests on their participation in the one Jesus Christ to whom each of them is related by faith and baptism.[17] By the Spirit, we receive baptism through the one Spirit and immediately we drink of the one Spirit.[18]Here, Paul describes as a work of the Spirit the incorporating of believers into the one body of Christ by baptism, by which they also receive sonship.[19] The Holy Spirit binds believers together in the fellowship of the body of Christ and thus constitutes the church, as the Spirit is present as its lasting gift.[20] Baptism incorporates individuals into the body of Christ and thus relates them to the unity of the body. Baptism establishes the identity of individual Christians and integrates them with their separate individual qualities into the fellowship of the church.[21] As such, the church becomes a provisional sign of the eschatological fellowship of a renewed humanity in the future reign of God.[22] The redemptive work of the Spirit is present in individuals and society. Individuals receive the gift of the Spirit in baptism, but the gift is not in isolation. It binds them to fellowship with each other. All of this points us toward the goal of the work of the Spirit, renewing individual life and corporate life.[23]
St. Boniface of Mainz lived in the 700's in Germany. He was archbishop of the area when he went to the city of Frisia. He thought he went to a meeting to instruct new converts and confirm them in the faith. Instead, some ruffians showed up and killed him because his preaching threatened shrines to local gods. They also thought that he carried a treasure of gold in the large chests he carried with him. Instead, after they killed him, they found only the books he carried with him. One well-known quote he made about the church goes like this. “The church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship, but to keep her on her course.”
God created a system of interdependence. We cannot escape the reality that we belong to one another and function in unhealthy fashion without each other.
Paul refers to baptism and the Lord's Supper as signs of our unity. Regardless of our differences in social standing, wealth, gender, or ethnic background, Christians are one in their reception of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both sacraments remind us that Christian life is about Christ. Here is our unity.
God has made you for others and others for you and all for his Body collected.
[1] Barth, CD, III.4 [53.3] 114-5.
[2] Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. —G.K. Chesterton.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 269.
[4] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 321.
[5] Barth, CD IV.3 [72.4] 856-9.
[6] Barth, CD, III.4 [56.2] 603.
[7] The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. -Emile Zola (1840-1902)
[8] Barth, CD, I.1 [9] 348-9.
[9] Barth, CD, IV.2 [64.4] 321.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 372.
[11] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 18.
[12] (C. Farrar, "I am only one.")
[13] Klink, William H. “Ecology and eschatology: Science and theological modeling.” The Otherness of God. Orrin F. Summerell, ed. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 1998.
[14] Barth, CD I.2 [16.1] 215.
[15] Barth, CD IV.1 [ 62.2] 662-8.
[16] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 419.
[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 15.
[18] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 451.
[19] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 16.
[20] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 134.
[21] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 459.
[22] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 478.
[23] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 552.
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