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John the Baptist stood in the Jordan River preaching a message of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. When people asked if he was the Messiah, he told the people that while he baptized with water, another person was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (Lk 3:1-17).
Last Sunday, when we reaffirmed our baptismal vows, we reaffirmed the promise that in our baptisms we have been sealed with this same Holy Spirit John spoke of. Yes, Jesus is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire. This Sunday we build on that message by turning to Paul’s discussion of spiritual things. Here in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells the believers in Corinth that he does want them to be ignorant when it comes to spiritual things.
Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church reveal something interesting. They are a very dysfunctional congregation, which means dysfunctional churches have been around since the very beginning of the Christian movement. There has never been a golden age when everything worked perfectly. Since the Corinthian church was about as dysfunctional as any church you can think of, I think we can breathe a bit more easily. We can’t be that bad!
One of the challenges facing this church is that it was very new and most of its members came out of a variety of polytheistic religious traditions. So, they had their own ideas about spiritual things that didn’t mix well with the message Paul had proclaimed to them. This contributed to the divisions and factions that existed in the congregation.
In fact, one of the areas of division had to do with the way at least some of them understood spiritual things. You see, some in the church pursued spiritual experiences that benefitted them at the expense of the larger body of believers. That is they valued experiences that enhanced their sense of being part of a spiritual elite.
Paul addressed this situation by introducing them to the concept of the charismata or spiritual gifts. He had already told the congregation, in the opening lines of the letter, that they didn’t lack in spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 1:7). But, there was a problem. While they eagerly pursued spiritual experiences, they weren’t growing into spiritual maturity. That’s why there were so many factions in the congregation.
So here in chapter 12, Paul invites the Corinthian believers to consider the presence of a variety of spiritual gifts that were available to the church. He also strongly reminds them who the giver of these gifts is!
In a sense, Paul feels the need to get back to basics. Therefore, in chapters 12 through 14, Paul redirects their attention from the pursuit of self-serving spiritual experiences to receiving “spiritual gifts” that serve the common good.
The spiritual gifts, or charisms, Paul spoke of here, are gifts of grace that equip and empower the people of God in their service to others. While we may receive spiritual benefits from making use of these gifts of the Spirit that isn’t their primary purpose. This is one of the reasons I wrote my book on spiritual gifts. In that book I wrote:
As we make use of spiritual gifts we find that our hearts are turned to the other. In seeking to encourage the other, we find wholeness for ourselves [Unfettered Spirit, p. 49-50].
When it comes to experiencing the presence of God’s Spirit, Paul reminds us that spiritual experiences need to be rooted in our confession that “Jesus is Lord.” That’s because no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. This is the foundation that Paul laid when he planted the congregation in Corinth. Now he was calling them and us back to this foundation. He wants us to know that when we say “Jesus is Lord,” we’re affirming that we belong to God. This is the starting point for understanding what it means to be spiritual.
When it comes to the gifts of the Spirit, Paul offers several lists, one of which is found here in verses 8 through 10. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it offers some possibilities. From the looks of things, Paul included some of the gifts coveted by the self-proclaimed spiritual elites in the congregation. You will find another list later in chapter 12, along with other lists in Romans and Ephesians. All of these lists are helpful in understanding how we can live together as a congregation, but the point isn’t the lists but the purpose of these gifts of God’s Spirit.
We’ll talk more next Sunday about the relationship of spiritual gifts to the life of the church, which Paul calls the body of Christ. However, he gives us a hint about what that means in verses four through six, where he writes:
There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
So, although we are all different, Paul insists that God wants us to live together in unity. We may have different gifts and callings, but we’re bound together in Christ by the Spirit so we can live faithfully in the presence of God. Therefore, let us take hold of the promise that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
We’ve gathered here this morning, in the season of Epiphany, which calls our attention to the ways in which God is made manifest in the world. In writing to the Corinthian church, Paul reminds us that each of us has been given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good so that we can manifest the presence of God in our world. Since each of us has been given a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” we can also affirm that these manifestations of the Spirit are “activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
Paul opens the chapter by telling us he doesn’t want us to be ignorant of spiritual things. While he’ll admit to having spiritual experiences (1 Cor. 14:18), he emphasizes the gifts that lead to the common good. He wants us to know that every gift of the Spirit is intended to be used for the building up of the body of Christ. Therefore, as we’ll see more clearly in next Sunday’s reading from 1 Corinthians 12, every gift is important to the health and well-being of the congregation. While some gifts and callings may be more visible, there isn’t a spiritual hierarchy in the body of Christ. Therefore, there is no place for spiritual elitism in the church.
There may be a variety of gifts, but there is only one Spirit. The church of Jesus Christ is diverse in its gifts and callings, but according to Paul, God wants us to live together in unity. One of the messages we find present in Paul’s theology of spiritual giftedness, is that unity doesn’t require uniformity. But it does require spiritual maturity.
So, we return to the opening question posed by the Corinthian leadership to Paul. What about these spiritual things, these spiritual experiences, that so many in the church seemed to covet? Paul’s answer to their question was simple: to each has been given “a manifestation of the Spirit,” and this gifting comes as the Spirit chooses. Or, in the words found in the Ephesian letter, these gifts, these charisms, are given to the church so we might “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church
Troy, MI
January 16, 2022
Epiphany 2C
Image Attribution: God's Hands and the Holy Spirit, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56826 [retrieved January 15, 2022]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/basta-cosi/1547659026/ - Jean Bean.
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