I Corinthians 12:3b-13 have the theme of the gifts of the Spirit.
Does it not frighten you that some have so far skirted the edge of apostasy and demon possession that they have allowed themselves, in the name of the sought gift, to call Jesus accursed? A form of blasphemy, in which for the sake of God to deliver Jesus to divine judgment.[1] If this is a Gnostic offshoot, emphasizing the spiritual nature of the all-powerful risen Lord, they may well have rejected any need for or recognition of the human side of the man Jesus. In this state of self-delusion, the pagan adherent is liable to say almost anything, even something that is blasphemous to a particular pagan deity. Ecstasy alone is no criterion for its validity. [2] Do you not know that the Holy Spirit could never be the source of that outburst? I reject experience-centered spirituality detached from confession and community. For example, Psalm 115:4-7 declares idols are nothing more than silver and gold shaped by human hands, with mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, and feet that do not function.[3] Psalm 115:8 expresses the concern that those who make idols and those who trust them become like them. Here is a reminder of the diverse and deeply pagan the environment in which the early Christians lived and learned. Until quite recently, the Corinthians had been participants in this pagan culture, worshiping human-made idols. The important thing is to be rightly related to the Spirit. And that is not by any preconceived and sought sign. One first submits to the confession Jesus is Lord" (Rom 10:9). The affirmation is constitutive of the community.[4] The divinity of the Spirit depends upon the deity of the Son. Since Jesus is the Son, this confession becomes the basis for saying that Spirit is of God.[5] The Christological task is to ground this confession in the activity and fate of Jesus in the past.[6] The Christ event being the eschatological event, the confession of Jesus as Lord gives one a share in the new age and therefore a share in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the driving force behind the confession of Jesus as Lord.[7] The right apprehension of Christ is the result of the work of the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit is the condition of sharing in common life. When this common spirit shows itself in the individual, the person is a constituent part of the whole. Joining oneself to the whole, one receives a share in the Holy Spirit.[8] It is the means by which one discerns the genuine working of the Spirit.[9] This is a practical instruction to discern the spirits and test all forms of what appears to be inspired speech.[10] The Spirit does not tear up the historical roots of faith. The Spirit does not set out to undermine the foundations of the institution, the church, the body of Christ, which Jesus the Christ called into being.
Yet, it may well be that part of the modern frustration is that we have relied upon gods rather than God. We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the technical ability to destroy ourselves, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save or bring happiness to the human heart. Only God is able. It may well be that even we modern people need to find a way to rediscover faith in that which is reliable.[11]
In verses 4-11, Paul discusses the multiplicity and unity of spiritual gifts. The image of the body and its members is prominent. 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.[12] 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.[13]
Veres 4-6 have a unity in style and content, having a triadic formula of God-Lord-Spirit. Nothing said here is intended to deny genuine gifts by the Spirit. The Spirit gives not one buy many gifts, services, and activities (charisma, diakonia, energema). The point is that acts of service and supernatural phenomena of the Spirit are placed on the same sphere.[14] They all stem from the same Spirit, Lord, and God, anticipating the Trinitarian language of later Christian theology by grounding ecclesial diversity in the unity of the being of God. In distinguishing between the risen Lord and the Spirit, the Spirit shows his deity by teaching us to confess the deity of the Son. [15] However, there are not many Holy Spirits. There is but one. The Spirit does the choosing and the giving. We do the receiving and the profiting.
Verse 7 sums up the point of verses 4-6. The Spirit acts for the common good mutual edification of the community and not for individual glorification. Such gifts are relational and functional, leading to flexibility, situational relevance and interdependence. Such gifts exist for the body, not for hierarchy or competition. The criterion for authenticity is the edification of the community.
Verses 8-10 are unsystematic, presenting the Spirit as both cause and norm. It is not our prerogative to choose our gift. The Spirit does that. But it does not matter whether I receive wisdom (practical exhortation), knowledge (exposition of Christian truth and an intelligent grasp of the principles of the gospel), these two gifts given priority because they serve the church in a practical way in preaching and teaching that builds up the community, faith (confidence that God will do great and extraordinary things (13:2), healings of mind and body, miracles like exorcism, prophetic utterances like those of Old Testament prophets convicting of sin and offering comfort, discernment of spirits as to whether the Spirit inspires a person, and, coming last because Corinth has placed such high value on them, ecstatic speaking in tongues, or interpretation (Chapter 14). Other parts of the New Testament refer to trances, visions, and casting out demons. Verse 11 rounds off this section: All are works of the same Spirit, sovereignly given according to the will of the Spirit. These gifts have the character of free grace. The one Spirit emphasis prepares the discussion for the one body that will follow. I must obey and be content. All the powers at work in the church are the result of the work of the Spirit. [16] The working of the Spirit is the bond between Spirit and community.[17] The Spirit is the subject of Christian action in so far as it happens out of trust in Jesus and the Father.[18]
This approach reflects the worship life of early Hellenistic congregations. These experiences were under the influence of the Spirit. [19]
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.[20] 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.[21]
In 12:12-31, he focuses upon one body with many members. Just as the human body has many members but is one body, so it is with Christ, Here is the central metaphor, emphasizing many members being distinct, while forming one unified whole in Christ. suggesting that the one body of the community is the one body of Christ.[22] Because the people of Christ belong to Christ, Christ is present in them.[23] One would expect: so also is the church, but this shows how being “in Christ” is a social concept and the discovery of true community.[24] 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.[25] 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. 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.[26] 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.[27]
Paul, of course, was not the first to use the body metaphor. One can find it in the works of many different ancient writers. The metaphor of the “body” that Paul uses in I Corinthians 12:12-26 was a common analogy in ancient rhetoric. For example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian and orator, compared the human body to the polis, or commonwealth. He urges that each part of the commonwealth have respect for the other. Each part is important and no part can become the whole. He urges that each part needs to behave in ways that benefit the common good. He uses the image to caution against inappropriate demands for liberty and for each class to respect the other class.[28] Of course, notably, Paul has said in verse 13 that such class distinctions are gone in Christ. In contrast, the point Dionysius is making is not, however, that all people (members of the body) have equal value. Rather, his point is that those parts that have less honor, such as the belly, should not object to the parts that have greater value, such as the brain, to rule over them. In other words, his analogy concludes that the plebeian classes in the Greek commonwealth should have no objection to rule by the Roman Senate. Just as in antiquity, using the human body to illustrate the unity and diversity of a group may seem like a common rhetorical trope with little new to say.
Thus, while Paul uses the same “body metaphor” that others did, he does it to accomplish very different ends. Furthermore, he works with spiritual, rather than primarily political, connotations. By marking his explanation with comments about Christ, then God, and finally back to Christ, he frames the discussion of the body of Christ with those who create, empower, and sustain this body and its gifts. Paul uses body imagery to affirm both the diversity and the unity inherent in Christ, without ever wholly subsuming one aspect within the other. Unlike some other pagan political writers who compared the parts with the whole in order to repress individual expression and personal freedoms for the sake of a communal good, Paul celebrates the diverse gifts present in the body of Christ in general and in this Corinthian church in particular. Paul is not interested in transforming the wildly, richly diverse Corinthians into some bland homogeneous conglomerate.
Verse 13 deserves special attention because of its reference to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 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. Baptism and the Lord's Supper symbolize this unity, transcending social distinctions. Ultimately, the church, though imperfect, is intended to be a living model of God's love and community in the world, a "sign or pointer toward the real thing," demonstrating how individual gifts contribute to the collective good and reflect God's design for interdependence. For in the one Spirit we (testifying to his own baptism[29]) were all baptized into one body (we are baptized into a united whole, the community; or, we were baptized in order that a united whole might arise)[30] 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 body denotes the existing body into which believers are baptized. The body is the pneumatic element into which believers are integrated and with which they are made to drink.[31] The Spirit is the source of Christian fellowship and unity. The church as the new Israel is animated by the Spirit.[32] 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.[33] By the Spirit, we receive baptism through the one Spirit and immediately we drink of the one Spirit.[34] 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.[35] 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.[36] 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.[37] As such, the church becomes a provisional sign of the eschatological fellowship of a renewed humanity in the future reign of God.[38] 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.[39]
[1] Forester, TDNT III, 1088.
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[3] “Their idols are silver and gold, / the work of human hands. / They have mouths, but do not speak; / eyes, but do not see. / They have ears, but do not hear; / noses, but do not smell. / They have hands, but do not feel; / feet, but do not walk; / they make no sound in their throats” (cf. Psalm 135:15-18).
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[10] Gordon D. Fee, First Corinthians, 578-82.
[11] Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., but I have never seen the source.
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[22] Schweizer, TDNT VII, 1070-1.
[23] Grundmann, TDNT IX, 548.
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[28] (Ant. Rom. 6.86) "A commonwealth resembles in some measure a human body. For each of them is composite and consists of many parts; and no one of their parts either has the same function or performs the same service as the others. 2 If, now, these parts of the human body should be endowed, each for itself, with perception and a voice of its own and a sedition should then arise among them, all of them uniting against the belly alone, and the feet should say that the whole body rests on them; the hands, that they ply the crafts, secure provisions, fight with enemies, and contribute many other advantages toward the common good; the shoulders, that they bear all the burdens; the mouth, that it speaks; the head, that it sees and hears and, comprehending the other senses, possesses all those by which the thing is preserved; and then all these should say to the belly, 'And you, good creature, which of these things do you do? What return do you make and of what use are you to us? Indeed, you are so far from doing anything for us or assisting us in accomplishing anything useful for the common good that you are actually a hindrance and a trouble to us and — a thing intolerable — compel us to serve you and to bring things to you from everywhere for the gratification of your desires. 3 Come now, why do we not assert our liberty and free ourselves from the many troubles we undergo for the sake of this creature?' If, I say, they should decide upon this course and none of the parts should any longer perform its office, could the body possibly exist for any considerable time, and not rather be destroyed within a few days by the worst of all deaths, starvation No one can deny it. Now consider the same condition existing in a commonwealth. 4 For this also is composed of many classes of people not at all resembling one another, every one of which contributes some particular service to the common good, just as its members do to the body. For some cultivate the fields, some fight against the enemy in defense of those fields, others carry on much useful trade by sea, and still others ply the necessary crafts. If, then, all these different classes of people should rise against the senate, which is composed of the best men, and say, 'As for you, senate, what good do you do us, and for what reason do you presume to rule over others? Not a thing can you name. Well then, shall we not now at last free ourselves from this tyranny of yours and live without a leader?' 5 If, I say, they should take this resolution and quit their usual employments, what will hinder this miserable commonwealth from perishing miserably by famine, war and every other evil? Learn, therefore, plebeians, that just as in our bodies the belly thus evilly reviled by the multitude nourishes the body even while it is itself nourished, and preserves it while it is preserved itself, and is a kind of feast, as it were, provided by joint contributions, which as a result of the exchange duly distributes that which is beneficial to each and all, so in commonwealths the senate, which administers the affairs of the public and provides what is expedient for everyone, preserves, guards, and corrects all things. Cease, then, uttering those invidious remarks about the senate, to the effect that you have been driven out of your country by it and that because of it you wander about like vagabonds and beggars. For it neither has done you any harm nor can do you any, but of its own accord calls you and entreats you, and opening all hearts together with the gates, is waiting to welcome you."
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[30] Schweizer, TDNT VII, 1070-1.
[31] Schweizer, TDNT VI, 418.
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