Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
(I Corinthians 14:1)
Paul’s summary exhortations are characteristically precise
and clear. Here is a teaching telling us to DO three things. Those who are wise
will hear these words of Jesus and put them into practice, while those who are
unwise will hear these words of Jesus and not put them into practice.
However, while discussions of spiritual gifts have tended to
divide the church into the haves and the have-nots, it is not because God’s
word is unclear in revealing God’s will. Rather, the divisiveness is
characterized by Satan’s work of pushing the church into pendulum extremes that
keep us from truly living by the plumbline of God’s word and will, and the
sark’s[1]
work of pursuing its self-centered, self-protective philosophy of life. Both
the devil and the flesh are determined to keep churches from putting Jesus’
words into practice as precisely and faithfully as his words require.
With the context of Scripture telling us clearly how to
respond to this instruction, and the context of church history testifying to
how easily the church divides over this issue, here are some additional bits of
information that should draw us to settle on both the knowing and doing of
God’s will.
1. This
instruction to “pursue love” is in
the New Testament letter that contains the beautiful teaching about love in
what is often called, “the love chapter” of I Corinthians 13. In fact, the
command to pursue love comes immediately after this love chapter, particularly
after Paul just said, “So now faith,
hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”[2]If
the church accepts that “the greatest of
these is love,” the response of obedient faith is, “pursue love”. Response: Yes, Lord!
2. The exhortation
to “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”
is prefaced by I Corinthians 12 in which Paul gives an in-depth teaching on this
subject. In that chapter Paul has taught us what to think about spiritual
gifts, how they are distributed among the members of Jesus’ body, and how we
are to show no favoritism or partiality in how we think of them. If we wonder
how obedient faith is to respond to such teaching, Paul is very clear, “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.”
Response: Yes, Lord!
3. The elaboration
to “especially” earnestly desire “that you may prophesy” is followed by I
Corinthians 14 in which Paul shows why prophecy is as supreme in the gifts of
the Spirit as love is in the fruit of the Spirit. While we may need to meditate
on all the Scriptures about prophecy in the New Testament to be sure we
understand this gift, we do not need to wait until we have full understanding
to agree that God is calling us to “earnestly
desire that you may prophesy,” in whatever he means by prophecy. Response:
Yes, Lord!
4. This teaching is
so clear that it will quickly distinguish those who say yes to their heavenly
Father by pursuing love as taught in I Corinthians 13, earnestly desiring
spiritual gifts as taught in I Corinthians 12, and especially earnestly
desiring the gift of prophesy as taught in I Corinthians 14, and those who say
no to this instruction by either refusing to pursue love, or refusing to
earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, or refusing to especially earnestly
desire that their church may prophecy, or refusing all of the above.
When Jesus
reached the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount,[3]
he told us about the only two ways we can respond to his teaching, wherever we
find it in God’s word. He wrote,
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine
and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but
it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who
hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who
built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the
winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of
it.”[4]
We must be
those who hear Jesus’ words as given through the apostles, and put them into
practice with the same clarity of obedient faith as God has given us in the
clarity of his words. Response: Yes, Lord!
5. Before Paul got
to these three beautiful chapters on love and spiritual gifts, he had already
made a foundational exhortation regarding how we relate to what the apostles
had written. He wrote:
“I have applied all these things to myself
and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go
beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one
against another.”[5]
Anyone who
tries to exaggerate what Paul says about love and spiritual gifts (pendulum
right), or to dissuade us from obeying what Paul wrote about love and spiritual
gifts (pendulum left), is going beyond what is written (plumbline), and puffing
themselves up so people will favor them instead of another teacher.
We must respond
to Paul’s teaching (what is “written”)
by refusing to go beyond what is written in either exaggerating or denying
these Scriptures. Response: Yes, Lord!
6. By the time we
come to I Corinthians 12-14, and find something that is clearly written, we
ought to have the mindset that we will treat this as the God-breathed
Scriptures that are “profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that
the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,”[6]
and that we will not be those who “’live
by bread alone,” but will be those
who live “by every word that comes from
the mouth of God.’”[7]
Response: Yes, Lord!
7. I do not write
this as someone who is especially experienced in the use of spiritual gifts.
Rather, even though I detest what churches force on people by exaggerating
spiritual gifts far beyond what is written, and am deeply disappointed in
churches that deny select portions of Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts
because a favorite teacher has told them to do so, I must be one of those who “received the word with all eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so,”[8]
and, “accepted it not as the word of men
but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”[9]
Response: Yes, Lord!
It is interesting that, after Paul explains to the church
why prophecy should be pursued “especially”
earnestly, he says, “Brothers, do not be
children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”[10]
Our thinking about spiritual gifts should be led by the mature.
Why?
Because infants and children can only think of themselves,
hence the focus on the gifts that would tend to be self-beneficial, or using
spiritual gifts in self-benefiting ways. On the other hand, the mature have learned
to think of others in the way the apostles taught, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count
others more significant than yourselves.”[11]
The immature tend towards selfish ambition and conceit, while the mature have
learned the humility that thinks more highly of others than the immature can
imagine.
With the mature leading the way, the church can put Paul’s
instruction into practice with conscious desire and effort to minister to
people “for their upbuilding and
encouragement and consolation,”[12] and
to do what, “builds up the church,”[13] in
fact, to “strive to excel in building up
the church.”[14]
Because the command of Scripture to pastors is, “preach the word; be ready in season and out
of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching,”[15]
every pastor must preach what the apostles teach us about spiritual gifts,
reprove the wrong beliefs and practices surrounding spiritual gifts (people on
both pendulum extremes going beyond what is written), rebuke the wrong beliefs
and practices of those who continue pursuing what is disobedient to God’s word,
exhort everyone to hear all Jesus’ words and put them all into practice, and to
keep doing so with “complete patience and
teaching” even when he feels outflanked on one side by the exaggerators,
and on the other side by the detractors. Paul clearly had to do that in his
day,[16]
and we who follow his example must expect to do so in our day.[17]
The conclusion is simple: “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that
you may prophesy.”
© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
I often prefer the sound of “sark” as a transliteration of the Greek word
translated “flesh” in the New Testament.
[2]
I Corinthians 13:13
[3]
Matthew 5-7
[4]
Matthew 7:24-27
[5]
I Corinthians 4:6
[6]
II Timothy 3:16-17
[7]
Matthew 4:4
[8]
Acts 17:11
[9]
I Thessalonians 2:13
[10]
I Corinthians 14:20
[11]
Philippians 2:3
[12]
I Corinthians 14:3
[13]
I Corinthians 14:4
[14]
I Corinthians 14:12
[15]
II Timothy 4:2
[16]
In both I and II Corinthians, Paul testified to the problem of false teachers
and “super apostles” (II Corinthians
11:5; 12:11) working to lead the church “astray
from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (II Corinthians 11:3).
[17]
Especially when Paul followed up his exhortation to pastors to preach the word
by saying, “For the time is coming when
people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn
away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (II Timothy
4:3-4). Both pendulum extremes are “myths”.
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