Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 12-14.

In today’s passage Paul speaks of Gifts of the Spirit and our worship services.  He begins by pointing out that no one will be inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak against Jesus.  On the other hand, anyone who is inspired by a spirit to say that Jesus is Lord the spirit they are inspired by is the Holy Spirit.  Knowing this goes a long way towards identifying if the spirit which is bringing us revelation comes from God or the Adversary.  Then Paul begins writing about spiritual gifts by talking about three things.  I believe he does so because the things which the Holy Spirit brings us fall into different categories depending on the context.  Here Paul writes that there are different kinds of gifts, and different kinds of service, and different kinds of working, but all of them come from God.  The gifts are all distributed by the same Holy Spirit, the different kinds of service are all in service to the same Lord, and the different kinds of working are the work of the same God.  I could make this whole study about the implications of what Paul is writing there, but there are other points which I would rather write about today.

Paul then uses a metaphor to help us understand how these gifts work in the Church.  He writes that just as the different parts of the body have different functions, so to do the different members of the Church have different gifts from the Holy Spirit.  And the Church, which is the Body of Christ, needs each of those gifts as much as our own bodies need the different parts.  Just as the eye needs the hand to be part of the body, so to do those who have the more “glorious” gifts need the parts which seem less glorious.  The man with the gift to move hearts with his oratory and speech needs the usher and the janitor.  I love the way in which Paul, on one hand, calls on those who might see the gifts they have been given as making them more important to the Church than others as no better than anyone else. And, on the other hand, tells those who might think that their gift makes them unimportant that they are just as crucial to the Church as anyone else.  Paul points out that our bodies need both eyes and ears, and hands and feet.  He even points out that we take special care of the parts of the body which do things we do not talk about in polite society.  In the same way, we in the Church need to make sure we take special care of the members whose gifts lead them to the jobs we kind of wish weren’t necessary (like janitor).

I’ve already gone longer than I prefer, but I cannot conclude without mentioning how love interacts with the other gifts of the Spirit.  First, we often associate the thirteenth chapter with marriage (something I think would surprise Paul), but here Paul points out that love is a gift of the Spirit.  In fact, he tells us that it is the most important gift of the Spirit, one of the three most important gifts which the Spirit gives to each of us (or does if we are willing to accept them).  Those three gifts are faith, hope, and love.  They are more important than any other gifts of the Spirit.  Without them, especially without love, the other gifts of the Spirit have no value whatsoever.  In fact, no skill or ability we possess has any value if we do not exercise it with the love which comes from God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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