Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
1 Corinthians 12:31

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 1 Corinthians 12:31. But covet earnestly — To covet signifies to desire earnestly. This disposition towards heavenly things is highly laudable; towards earthly things, is deeply criminal. A man may possess the best of all these gifts, and yet be deficient in what is essentially necessary to his salvation, for he may be without that love or charity which the apostle here calls the more excellent way, and which he proceeds in the next chapter to describe.

Some think that this verse should be read affirmatively, Ye earnestly contend about the best gifts; but I show unto you a more excellent way; i.e. get your hearts filled with love to God and man-love, which is the principle of obedience, which works no ill to its neighbour, and which is the fulfilling of the law. This is a likely reading, for there were certainly more contentions in the Church of Corinth about the gifts than about the graces of the Spirit.

1. AFTER all that has been said on the different offices mentioned by the apostle in the preceding chapter, there are some of them which perhaps are not understood. I confess I scarcely know what to make of those which we translate helps and governments. Bishop Pearce, who could neither see Church government nor state government in these words, expresses himself thus: "These two words, after all that the commentators say about them, I do not understand; and in no other part of the New Testament is either of them, in any sense, mentioned as the gift of the Spirit; especially it is observable that in 1 Corinthians 12:29; 1 Corinthians 12:30, where the gifts of the Spirit are again enumerated, no notice is taken of any thing like them, while all the other several parts are exactly enumerated. Perhaps these words were put in the margin to explain δυναμεις, miracles or powers; some taking the meaning to be helps, assistances, as in 2 Corinthians 12:9; others to be κυβερνησεις, governments, as in Romans 8:38; and from being marginal explanations, they might have been at last incorporated with the text." It must, however, be acknowledged that the omission of these words is not countenanced by any MS. or version. One thing we may fully know, that there are some men who are peculiarly qualified for governing by either providence or grace; and that there are others who can neither govern nor direct, but are good helpers. These characters I have often seen in different places in the Church of God.

2. In three several places in this chapter the apostle sums up the gifts of the Spirit. Dr. Lightfoot thinks they answer to each other in the following order, which the reader will take on his authority.

Verses 1 Corinthians 12:8, 1 Corinthians 12:9, and 1 Corinthians 12:10.

Is given

The word of Wisdom;

The word of Knowledge. Ver. 9. Faith;

Gifts of Healing. Ver. 10. Working of Miracles;

Prophecy;

Discerning of Spirits;

Divers kinds of Tongues;

Interpretation of Tongues.

Verse 1 Corinthians 12:28.

God hath set some

First, APOSTLES;

Secondly, PROPHETS;

Thirdly, TEACHERS;

After that, MIRACLES;

The GIFTS of HEALINGS;

HELPS;

GOVERNMENTS;

Divers kinds of TONGUES.

Verses 1 Corinthians 12:29, and 1 Corinthians 12:30.

Are all

Apostles;

Prophets;

Teachers;

Miracles; Ver. 30. Gifts of Healing.

Speak with Tongues;

Interpret.

If the reader think that this is the best way of explaining these different gifts and offices, he will adopt it; and he will in that case consider, 1. That the word or doctrine of wisdom comes from the apostles. 2. The doctrine of knowledge, from the prophets. 3. Faith, by means of the teachers. 4. That working of miracles includes the gifts of healing. 5. That to prophecy, signifying preaching, which it frequently does, helps is a parallel. 6. That discernment of spirits is the same with governments, which Dr. Lightfoot supposes to imply a deeply comprehensive, wise, and prudent mind. 7. As to the gift of tongues, there is no variation in either of the three places.

3. It is strange that in this enumeration only three distinct officers in the Church should be mentioned; viz. apostles, prophets, and teachers. We do not know that miracles, gifts of healing, helps, governments, and diversity of tongues, were exclusive offices; for it is probable that apostles, prophets, and teachers wrought miracles occasionally, and spoke with divers tongues. However, in all this enumeration, where the apostle gives us all the officers and gifts necessary for the constitution of a Church, we find not one word of bishops, presbyters, or deacons; much less of the various officers and offices which the Christian Church at present exhibits. Perhaps the bishops are included under the apostles, the presbyters under the prophets, and the deacons under the teachers. As to the other ecclesiastical officers with which the Romish Church teems, they may seek them who are determined to find them, any where out of the New Testament.

4. Mr. Quesnel observes on these passages that there are three sorts of gifts necessary to the forming Christ's mystical body. 1. Gifts of power, for the working of miracles, in reference to the Father. 2. Gifts of labour and ministry, for the exercise of government and other offices, with respect to the SonSong of Solomon 3:0. Gifts of knowledge, for the instruction of the people, with relation to the Holy Ghost.

The FATHER is the principle and end of all created power; let us then ultimately refer all things to him.

The SON is the Institutor and Head of all the hierarchical ministries; let us depend upon him.

The HOLY GHOST is the fountain and fulness of all spiritual graces; let us desire and use them only in and by him.

There is nothing good, nothing profitable to salvation, unless it be done in the power of God communicated by Christ Jesus, and in that holiness of heart which is produced by his SPIRIT. Pastors are only the instruments of God, the depositaries of the authority of Christ, and the channels by whom the love and graces of the Spirit are conveyed. Let these act as receiving all from God by Christ, through the Holy Ghost; and let the Church receive them as the ambassadors of the Almighty.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Unity in spite of many gifts (12:12-31)

The human body is made up of many parts, all with different functions, yet there is a basic unity throughout the body. So it is in the church which is Christ’s body. All believers, without distinction, are introduced into and united in that body through the baptism of the Spirit. The same Spirit dwells within each one (12-13).
Many parts make up the body, and all are necessary for its proper functioning. Those without more obvious gifts should not think there is no place for them in the church. In the body of Christ, as in the human body, each part has its own special task (14-20).
God has so designed the body that no matter how important one part may be, it cannot function properly without dependence upon all the other parts (21). People with more obvious gifts should not look down on others. Certain parts of the body may appear at first to be less important, but the body cannot do without them (22). Other parts of the body are less presentable, but they are the parts we clothe more attractively. Just as there is harmony between the various parts of the body, so there should be in the church (23-25). In addition, there should be unity. When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers; when one part is honoured, the whole is honoured. There is no competition (26).
It is clear, then, that all Christians are part of the body but their gifts vary widely, from the more important gifts to the less important (27-28). All gifts are necessary, but not everybody can do everything (29-30). Christians should desire the higher gifts, but there is something greater than even the highest gift that all, whether great or small, can have, and that is love. Paul will explain what he means in the next chapter (31).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? have all girls of healings? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But desire earnestly the greater gifts. And moreover a most excellent way show I unto you.

The tragedy at Corinth was that a few who had the genuine gift of tongues were displaying it for purposes of their own vanity in the public assemblies of the congregation, where it was never intended to be used, being absolutely unnecessary and unneeded there; and then, to compound the evil, there were evidently a great many others who were getting in on the action by exhibiting a kind of tongue speaking (called ecstatic utterances) which had absolutely nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, having only one utility, that of flattering the practitioners of it and bringing down the scorn of the whole community upon the whole church. With marvelous diplomacy, Paul avoided condemning "tongues" abstractly, for that might have been to reflect upon those who really possessed the gift; but he promptly gave orders which diminished and removed the objectionable conduct altogether. However, before he would give those orders (1 Corinthians 14), he would show them "a most excellent way." That way was the way of love, love itself being one of the fruits, indeed the first fruit, of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians (Galatians 5:22). The immortal words of the thirteenth chapter comprise the apostle's exhortation for the Corinthians to walk in the way of love.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

But covet earnestly - Greek “Be zealous for” Ζηλοῦτε Zēloute. This word, however, may be either in the indicative mood (ye do covet earnestly), or in the imperative, as in our translation. Doddridge contends that it should be rendered in the indicative mood, for he says it seems to be a contradiction that after the apostle had been showing that these gifts were not at their own option, and that they ought not to emulate the gifts of another, or aspire to superiority, to undo all again, and give them such contrary advice. The same view is given by Locke, and so Macknight. The Syriac renders it, “Because you are zealous of the best gifts, I will show to you a more excellent way.” But there is no valid objection to the common translation in the imperative, and indeed the connection seems to demand it. Grotius renders it, “Pray to God that you may receive from him the best, that is, the most useful endowments.”

The sense seems to be this, “I have proved that all endowments in the church are produced by the Holy Spirit; and that he confers them as he pleases. I have been showing that no one should be proud or elated on account of extraordinary endowments; and that, on the other hand, no one should he depressed, or sad, or discontented, because he has a more humble rank. I have been endeavoring to repress and subdue the spirit of discontent, jealousy, and ambition; and to produce a willingness in all to occupy the station where God has placed you. But, I do not intend to deny that it is proper to desire the most useful endowments; that a man should wish to be brought under the influence of the Spirit, and qualified for eminent usefulness. I do not mean to say that it is wrong for a man to regard the higher gifts of the Spirit as valuable and desirable, if they may be obtained; nor that the spirit which seeks to excel in spiritual endowments and in usefulness, is improper.

Yet all cannot be apostles; all cannot be prophets. I would not have you, therefore, seek such offices, and manifest a spirit of ambition. I would seek to regulate the desire which I would not repress as improper; and in order to that, I would show you that, instead of aspiring to offices and extraordinary endowments which are beyond your grasp, there is a way, more truly valuable, that is open to you all, and where all may excel.” Paul thus endeavors to give a practicable and feasible turn to the whole subject, and further to repress the longings of ambition and the contentions of strife, by exciting emulation to obtain that which was accessible to them all, and “which, just in the proportion in which it was obtained,” would repress discontent, and strife, and ambition, and produce order, and peace, and contentedness with their endowments and their lot, the main thing which he was desirous of producing in this chapter. This, therefore, is one of the “happy turns” in which the writings of Paul abounds. He did not denounce their zeal as wicked. He did not attempt at once to repress it. He did not say that it was wrong to desire high endowments. But he showed them an endowment which was more valuable than all the others; which was accessible to all; and which, if possessed, would make them contented, and produce the harmonious operation of all the parts of the church. That endowment was love.

A more excellent way - See the next chapter. “I will show you a more excellent way of evincing your “zeal” than by aspiring to the place of apostles, prophets, or rulers, and that is by cultivating universal charity or love.”

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

12:31: But desire earnestly the greater gifts. And moreover a most excellent way show I unto you.

In this final verse Paul affirmed that some spiritual gifts were “greater” than others (“greater gifts”). While all the spiritual gifts were needed by the first century saints (this point is made throughout this chapter), some were superior or more important because of what they did. We might compare the point to an automobile and its title. Both the vehicle and the title are important and necessary, but the vehicle is more important than its title. A similar thing was true with the miraculous gifts. All the gifts were necessary just as all the parts in our human body are necessary (verses 14-17), but some gifts had less importance, prominence, and a lower rank.

This final verse reminds readers of Isaiah 55:8-9 (Isaiah said man’s thoughts and ideas are often different from and lower than God’s thoughts and ideas). In the case of the Corinthians, these brethren wanted the “lesser gifts,” such as tongues. Also, the Corinthians were more concerned with their role in the church instead of the proper way to live. To help these Christians correct their thinking Paul said, “desire earnestly the greater gifts” (the KJV says “covet earnestly the best gifts”). The best spiritual gifts were things like prophesy and teaching-gifts that taught others about Christianity.

The expression desire earnestly (zeloo) can have both a positive and negative meaning in the New Testament; basically this word “signifies a human emotion which leads to action” (CBL, GED, 3:25). Paul used this same word to describe this same desire in 14:1, 39. Here desire earnestly is expressed with the present tense. The word translated greater (kreitton) meant “more prominent, higher in rank, preferable, better” (Gingrich and Danker, p. 449). Thayer (p. 359) defined this word as: “more useful, more serviceable.” More information about this term is found below.

There is some difficulty in understanding what Paul meant by seeking (desiring) spiritual gifts. One possibility is discussed in the commentary on verse 11 (although the Holy Spirit determined who received what gifts, Christians could hope for and seek various gifts). If this view is accepted (compare 14:1, 39), it illustrates how God’s power can work in conjunction with man’s free-will. Christians could seek various gifts (i.e. they could have some part in the process), but the Holy Spirit determined who received what abilities (verses 11 and 28). A similar point is found in Jesus’ description of the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:1-51. Jesus said the time for destruction would come, but Christians could “pray” that this day would not be “during the winter” or “on a Sabbath,” times when the city gates would be closed and it would be impossible to escape (Matthew 24:20).

It is also possible to understand the thought as a reprimand-the Corinthians were earnestly seeking gifts that were the most noticeable so they could “show off” to others. Whichever idea Paul meant, both points are true. Holman (7:223-224) rightly noted how the “Corinthians had a very skewed view of spiritual gifts. They took personal pride in their gifts as if they had earned them or deserved credit for showing them. They were more interested in using their gifts for personal fulfillment than for the good of the body. They failed to realize the importance of the smallest gifts. They also failed to recognize the importance of those people whose gifts were seemingly least useful.”

Since God gave gifts to first century saints, it was certainly not wrong to possess them or want to use them. It was, however, wrong to use them in an incorrect way, so Paul reminded the Corinthians of what they should do. He said these Christians were to pay attention to the greater gifts (the KJV says “best”). As shown in the preceding verses of this chapter, all the supernatural gifts had a necessary part in God’s plan (compare verses 14, 17), but Paul also recognized that some gifts did seem to be more prominent than others (verses 17, 22-24). Tongue speaking and the interpretation of tongues might have appeared to be the most desirable gifts, but Paul said these abilities were actually among the least important gifts (they are put last in the list of gifts in verses 28-30). If these Christians wanted gifts, they were to seek the superior abilities such as prophesy (14:39). Tongue speaking should not be “despised” (14:39b), but it was not the preferred or one of the more important abilities (14:39a).

The word greater (ASV) or best (KJV) is based on a manuscript variation. Some manuscripts have a word (kreitton) that meant “better.” This word is often used in the book of Hebrews, especially the first part of the book, to describe how the New Testament is superior to the Old Testament (see Hebrews 1:4; Hebrews 6:9; Hebrews 7:7; Hebrews 7:19; Hebrews 7:22; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:23, etc.). Other manuscripts have a different term (meizon) that also meant greater. This word is used again in 13:13 (“the greatest of these is love”) and 14:5 (“greater is he that prophesieth”). Whichever word Paul intended to use, the point of these final verses, as well as the illustrations earlier in this chapter, is clear. All the gifts were necessary and useful, but the Corinthians should have sought the greater gifts. This point is the complete opposite of what occurs in modern Pentecostalism, a movement which has much to say about “tongue speaking.”

In addition to telling the Corinthians about the greater gifts, Paul wanted to share with them the “most excellent way” (love, chapter 13). Paul said he wanted to “show” (deiknumi) the Corinthians this way. Show is a present tense verb that here means “‘to show’ in the sense of ‘to indicate something verbally,’ and therefore ‘to teach, explain or demonstrate’” (Kittel, 2:26). This is the same word the Bible uses to describe Satan “showing” Jesus the kingdoms of the world (Matthew 4:8; Luke 4:5) and a leper “showing” himself to a priest after being pronounced clean (Mark 1:44).

Another key word is excellent (huperbole), a term that occurs only a few times in the New Testament. In Romans 7:13 Paul used this same word to describe “exceeding” sinfulness. In 2 Corinthians 1:8 this term is translated “weighed down exceedingly” (the KJV says “pressed out of measure”). In 2 Corinthians 4:17 this word is translated “more exceeding.” In Galatians 1:13 it is rendered “beyond measure.” Paul wanted to show these Christians (and us) the best way to live life and part of this way involved understanding that spiritual gifts did not make Christians superior to others. The best way to live-which is described in the next chapter-is love. Even when compared with all the other spiritual gifts, love is the most important thing. Love is not an “okay way” or even a “better way” than what the Corinthians had chosen. Love is the best way-the “way beyond all comparison” (Rienecker and Rogers, p. 431). It is unfortunate that most do not understand this way, or if they do understand it, they do not live in this manner. Also, what people often call love is very different from the Biblical definition of love. Some profess to have love but they are hypocrites. Others profess to have a love for God, but they do not fully follow His word (John 14:15; John 15:12-14). For more information on the transition between this and the next chapter, see the introductory commentary to 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

31.Seek after the more excellent gifts. It might also be rendered — Value highly; and it would not suit in with the passage, though it makes little difference as to the meaning; for Paul exhorts the Corinthians to esteem and desire those gifts especially, which are most conducive to edification. For this fault prevailed among them — that they aimed at show, rather than usefulness. Hence prophecy was neglected, while languages sounded forth among them, with great show, indeed, but with little profit. He does not, however, address individuals, as though he wished that every one should aspire at prophecy, or the office of teacher; but simply recommends to them a desire to promote edification, that they may apply themselves the more diligently to those things that are most conducive to edification.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Now concerning the spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you be ignorant ( 1 Corinthians 12:1 ).

An interesting statement of Paul, because I think that in the church one of the areas where the greatest ignorance does exist today is in the area of spiritual gifts, and their operation within the church. And this ignorance is on both sides of the fence.

Within the Pentecostal churches there is a lot of abuse of the gifts of the Spirit, because people are ignorant of their true operation within the church. On the other side of the fence, among some of the fundamental churches there is a lot of ignorance of the gifts of the Spirit as they dismiss them to another age and do not see any validity for them today. So where Paul says, "I would not have you to be ignorant," sad but true, there is a great deal of ignorance today.

Now you know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led. So I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:2-3 ).

Evidently there was a rumor in Paul's day that someone speaking in tongues was overheard by someone who understood the language that he was speaking in, and he was actually blaspheming God. Paul said, "Impossible. No man by the Spirit calls Jesus accursed." Now that rumor probably started in Corinth, but it hasn't died yet. I often today hear people say, "Oh, there was a meeting, and my aunt knew a woman who attended a service . . . " Never will you ever hear a firsthand evidence of that rumor, it is always someone who knew somebody, somewhere. "And there was this meeting and someone got up and spoke in tongues, and someone was there from Egypt who understood the language, and they were blaspheming God and all." That rumor persists to the present day. However, know this, no man by the Spirit calls Jesus accursed, impossible.

"Also, if you have a son who comes to you and asks for bread, you are not going to give him a stone. If he asks for a fish, you're not going to give him a scorpion. Or if he asked for an egg, you're not going to give him a serpent. If you earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those that ask Him?" ( Luke 11:11-13 )

I am tired of these boogie man stories of, "You had better be careful when you yield yourself and open up yourself to God, because you don't know what spirit might come in." False. Your heavenly Father is much more gracious than we are as earthly fathers. And if I, as a sincere child of God, am seeking the fullness of God's Spirit and asking Him to give me more of His Spirit indwelling me and empowering me, it would be blasphemous to say that God would allow some false or evil spirit to come in and to take control of my life. That is an extremely blasphemous concept of God that I utterly reject.

The second part of this is also interesting, "No man can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit." If I really confess Jesus Christ as Lord, I can only do that as the result of the work of the Holy Spirit within my life. If you have made that confession, it is because the work of the Holy Spirit within your life. You can't do it apart from the work of the Holy Spirit; you cannot make a genuine confession that Jesus is Lord except the Holy Spirit has done His work within your life.

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:4 ).

There are many different gifts. There is a partial listing here. Paul gives us another listing in Romans 12 , in which he adds some that are not here. There are many different types of gifts, but there is just one Spirit, the same Spirit.

There are differences of administrations ( 1 Corinthians 12:5 ),

Now he speaks about governments, and helps and things of this nature, and there are different administrations.

and yet it is the same Lord. There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all ( 1 Corinthians 12:5-6 ).

So even with the diversities of gifts, then there are diversities of the operations of that gift. I may possess a certain gift of the Spirit and you may possess the same gift of the Spirit, but it may operate in my life differently than it operates in your life.

One thing about God is that He will not be pigeonholed by us. He refuses to be conformed to our patterns and to our mindsets. He allows Himself that liberty of working as He wills and as He desires. It doesn't always follow my patterns. Therefore, it is wrong to seek to receive the same kind of an experience that someone else receives. God may work differently in your life. A mistake that we often make when we hear a person give a glorious testimony of how they receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, or how they receive some gift of the Spirit in their lives. They think, "Oh, that's the way it happens," and so they try to look for the same kind of sensations, the same kind of feelings, as some people are very . . . the sanguine especially can describe things so vividly. "I was under the piano and I began to get this warm feeling that started at the top of my head. And it was just like it came right on down through me and my whole body was just tingling with these . . . " And they can go on. And so I am waiting upon God and say, "Oh Lord, I want to receive more of Your Spirit," and then I wait for this warm glow to start in the top of my head, and nothing happens. I wait, and wait, and I don't get this warm glow, and I think, "Well, maybe another night." Because I am looking to imitate someone else's experience.

But we, all of us, relate to God in our own ways, and God relates to us in His own way. And our experiences can vary dramatically, though we do have and can be exercising the same gift of the Spirit. The way it works in me is different than the way it works in you. The sensations that I may feel would be different from the sensations that you may feel. Thus, we should not be trying to receive some experience or predicate the fact that I have received the experience because I have had a warm glow or felt like a bath or felt like this or felt like that. The faith should never be in the feelings that I receive, because I may not have any feelings at all that I can describe. All I've got is pure faith in the promise of God. "Oh, what a shame!" No, what a blessing! I've got God's Word and I stand upon the Word of God.

The same with salvation. Some people describe these marvelous feelings when they receive Jesus Christ. So people are looking for some kind of a feeling rather than just taking the Word of God at face value. God has said it, He has promised it; I put my faith in the Word and the promise of God, and establish it there. Rather than, "Well, brother, let me tell you, this is how it happened to me." It is important that our faith be established in the Word, because it doesn't change, my feelings do. My feelings can change radically from tonight to tomorrow morning, but the Word of God doesn't change.

Thus, when my faith is established upon the Word then I have a solid relationship. Diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. The same Lord, the same God, and of course, here you have the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for the profit of all ( 1 Corinthians 12:7 ).

If God does give to me a gift of the Spirit, it isn't for my own personal pleasure. It isn't a toy for me to play with; it is for the profit of the whole body of Christ. There is only one gift spoken of that is to be used in one's personal devotion and it is for their personal benefit, and that is the gift of tongues. And we will get to that next Sunday night as we study the fourteenth chapter, the proper use of tongues in the life of the believer.

The gifts are given for the profit of the whole body of Christ.

To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ( 1 Corinthians 12:8 );

This word of wisdom is exercised in, of course, different ways--diversities of operations.

In the early church there arose a dispute between the Hellenist, the Grecians, and the Hebrews. Some of the Jews were following the Hellenistic culture. Some were following the Hebrew culture. Those that were following the Hellenist culture felt that their widows were getting a second-rate treatment from the church's welfare program. So they came to the apostles with their complaint, "Our widows are getting second-class treatment over there at the welfare tables." So the apostles got together, the word of wisdom, "Let us appoint seven men of good reputation, filled with the Holy Spirit, that they might take the duty of administering the church's welfare in order that we might continue to give ourselves to fasting and to prayer and to the Word of God. For it isn't right that we should leave our ministries to take care of distributing of the church's welfare program." Word of wisdom, further wisdom is manifested probably in the fact that of the seven men, five of them have Grecian names, which mean they probably came from the Hellenistic culture.

When certain brethren came to the church of Antioch and saw the Gentiles and their liberty in Christ, they said, "Hey, wait a minute, you can't be saved unless you are circumcised. You keep the law of Moses." So Paul and Barnabas gathered these guys together and, "We'll go right on down to Jerusalem. We'll settle this right now once and for all." So they came to the church in Jerusalem and there was a big division over this. Peter got up and said, "God called me to the Gentiles, and while I was speaking the Holy Spirit came upon me. Who was I to resist the Word of God? I don't think that we ought to try and put a yoke of bondage on them that we have never been able to keep." Then others of them, Paul and Barnabas, told the work that God had done, the miracles that we accomplished among their ministry in the Gentiles. Then James, with a word of wisdom, said, "I suggest let's just write to them and tell them, keep themselves from fornication and things that were offered to idols, things that were strangled; if they do that they do well. Let's not lay the whole thing on them, just know the essentials." Word of wisdom, everybody is happy, "Yes, let's do that."

So often when there are differences, disagreements, there is the possibility of people of polarizing, the word of wisdom so often can just come in and someone will speak up and say, "I think we ought to do that." And everybody says, "Hey, ya. That is a good idea. How did you ever think of that?" Really, it is just the word of wisdom coming forth. So there are some that God just gifts this way; it isn't the reservoir of wisdom that I can just tap on at anytime and it is there. But in a situation that arises the Lord just gives that word of wisdom that is satisfying to everybody.

The second that he lists here or speaks about is,

the word of knowledge ( 1 Corinthians 12:8 ),

Now, this is how that you intuitively or somehow inwardly just have knowledge of something that is going on, and you can't tell how you know it. You just . . . the Spirit has just revealed it and you have from the Spirit knowledge of a situation, knowledge of a person's circumstance. I have looked at people sometimes and the Lord just gave me all kinds of understanding of the problems that the person was going through, things that were happening in their lives. I can't tell you where I received it, or how, but it was just there.

The word of knowledge was probably exercised by Peter when this fellow Simon was seeking to buy the power that whosoever laid his hands on they might receive also the gift of the Holy Spirit. But Peter said, "Your money perishes with you. I perceive that in your heart there is bitterness, there is jealousy, there is envy that is there. You had better pray and repent." Peter was reading the fellow. This word of knowledge is interesting. I am not really always aware when it is being exercised. Many times in the pulpit ministering the word of knowledge is exercised and I am not even aware of it.

One time, every once in a while I get on these kicks of these evangelists or these men who have a paper ministry. It is all in letters. They go out and take pictures, "This is my great meeting here and continue to send in your support for God's work to go on." And they are doing nothing but sitting and typing these pitiful letters to their constituents and to their mailing list, and they really do no service for God. And I was going on about these kind of people one night and I said, "You know, they live down on Lido Island, and they drive white Cadillacs," and I go on and all. I was going on describing the scenario. Monday morning I received an irate call, because these services are broadcast. I received an irate call from a guy who lives down on Lido Island, who drives a white Cadillac who has a mailing ministry. He said, "You have no right speaking about my ministry. You don't know what I am doing for the Lord." I said, "I really don't. Who are you?" "You were talking about me last night, talking about my home here on Lido and my white Cadillac." I said, "Sir, I don't know anything about you. I have never heard of you in my life. I was just making up an example because the Lido is a plush area, I named Lido, and white Cadillacs is an epidemic for these guys." And I said, "But I don't know you." But I said, "If I were you, I would sure examine myself." The word of knowledge. Now, it does happen sometimes in very peculiar circumstances. I mean weird kind of things.

I was at a Rose Bowl game--S.C. and Ohio State. S.C. had the ball down on their own fifteen-yard line. And so this friend that I was at the game with, I said, "Watch on this next play, Davis is going to take the ball around the left end and he is going to go all the way in one play." My wife says that my voice carries, and she always says, "Honey, talk softer when you are in a restaurant, everybody can hear you." So people around me heard me. The very next play, the ball was given to Davis, around left end and ran all the way for a touchdown. Everybody in five rows turned around and looked at me, and they said, "What is going to happen next?" I don't know why I said it. I have never said anything like that in my life. But it was just something that came out, and then when it happened, I was as amazed as everybody.

Word of knowledge is a very interesting thing, and just how it operates a person just doesn't really know. You know, I think that one thing is that the supernatural often operates so naturally that we fail to recognize it as a supernatural. There is an awful lot of supernatural happening around us that we are totally oblivious to. We are not even aware of it. Because it happens so naturally. I expect if God speaks to me that there is going to be the, "Chuuuuuck . . . oh, oh," your hair standing on end; God is talking, you know. I mean, you can tell His voice, it has that shake to it. So we are looking for some type of supernatural phenomena in order to recognize the work of God, or the voice of God, but it oftentimes happens in a very still, small voice. An inner awareness, a sudden thought or an inspiration, a sudden desire as God speaks to our hearts and plants His truth within our hearts. I have learned not to look for the fire, not to look for the earthquake, not to look for the rushing wind, but to listen to that still, small voice as God speaks to our hearts, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.

To another faith ( 1 Corinthians 12:9 ),

Now, we are told to every man is given a measure of faith. That faith by which I believed in Jesus Christ was a gift of God, for by grace are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is a gift of God. The faith to believe in Jesus Christ was given to me by God.

When Peter was going with John into the temple and the man was seeking alms and Peter said, "Silver and gold I don't have, but what I have I will be glad to give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth stand to your feet and walk," and he took the man and lifted him to his feet. That was an act of faith on Peter's part, lifting a lame man to his feet. And immediately he received strength and he began to run and leap and praise God. And then, as he made his circuit through the temple, people said, "Isn't that the lame man who has been at the gate for many years?" "Yes, it sure looks like him. What is he doing running around?" "I don't know. Let's find out." And so as he came back out to Solomon's Porch where Peter was still standing, he took hold of Peter and he began to hug him, and all of the people began to relate the miracle to Peter. And so Peter said, "You men of Israel," about five thousand had gathered, "why marvel you at this? Or why look upon me, or upon us as though we through our own righteousness have done this good deed to this lame man? Be it made known unto you that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that this man stands before you whole. He is the stone that was set of nought by your builders, He has become the chief cornerstone. It is through the faith of Him that this man has perfect soundness in the presence of you all" ( Acts 3:6-16 ).

Peter didn't say, "It is my faith, my great faith. I prayed for years and God finally gave this to me." But Peter said, "It is through the faith of Him," the gift of faith, the faith of Him, "that this man has perfect soundness in the presence of you all." So Peter recognized that this wasn't just some faith that I have, I can go around and lift every lame man to his feet. But the Lord gave him faith in that particular instance, and he had that gift of faith for that instance, and he lifted the man to the feet by faith and God healed him. The gift of faith, and that is a special faith in a special situation. It isn't that you have faith in every situation. Men of faith oftentimes have great times of failure.

Abraham, the father of those who believe, God said, "I am going to give you a son, Abraham." God kept saying, "I am going to give you a son, Abraham," the older he got. Sarah went through menopause, God said, "I am going to give you a son, Abraham." Sarah said, "Abraham, let's quit fooling ourselves. God needs help. It's obvious. He wants to give you a son, so you take my handmaiden Hagar, go in unto her. And then when the child is born I will be the midwife and I will take the child from her womb and it will be like my child and it will be your son. And we'll help God out, because at this point, we have got to be practical." So Ishmael was born. One day when Ishmael was about thirteen years old playing outside, the Lord said to Abraham, "Abraham, I am going to bless you and give you a son." Abraham laughed and said, "Let Ishmael live before You forever, Lord. That's all right, Lord, there he is. I accept it." The Lord said, "No, through Sarah shall your seed be called."

Here is a man of faith, but he had a lapse of faith. It wasn't faith in every situation, he said, "Hey, Sarah, you are so beautiful they will kill me to take you away from me. So when we get out of there just say you are my sister. Don't tell them you are my wife." The man of faith, pawning off his wife as his sister. Sometimes we are discouraged because the faith is not always there. Men of faith often have lapses of faith.

Elijah, right after his contest with the prophets of Baal, when he said, "You build your altar, and I will build my altar, and we will pray to God and the god who answers by fire, let him be the God." They said, "Fair enough." They built their altar and they prayed all morning. Nothing happened. And Elijah came to them and said, "I bet your god is asleep. Have you ever thought of that? You probably will have to cry louder to wake him up, or it could be that he is off on a vacation, that would be a shame. Or it could be that he has gone to the restroom and relieving himself." That's what he said; he is a crude guy. And so these guys began to jump up and down and slash themselves with knives and throw themselves on the altar and all, and still nothing happened. So then Elijah said, "All right, now bring some water and pour it on my sacrifice there." And they brought the water and poured it on. "Pour on more, pour on more." Finally the whole thing was just sopped. They had dug a trench around it full of water, and he said, "Now okay, God, now show these guys." And the fire came and consumed the sacrifice, burned up the rocks upon which the altar was built, licked up all the water; a great man of faith.

While he had the roll going, he took the four hundred prophets of Baal down to the stream, the brook Kidron, and killed them all. And then that wicked queen Jezebel came back and she heard what Elijah did, and she said, "God help me if I don't have that guy's head by tomorrow afternoon." And Elijah heard, "Jezebel is after you," and he took off running. This great man of faith ran over a hundred miles, down to the Sinai where he hid in a cave. A great man of faith, hiding in a cave from Jezebel. You see, men of faith can have lapses of faith, and if you have the gift of faith, it doesn't mean it is going to operate all the time. "Hey, I've got finally the little genie here, and any time you want to rub it . . . shazam . . . alakazam, here it is," you know.

But God gives to you, in certain situations, special faith. And it is glorious when God gives you the faith that He is going to work, and you just have that confidence and that faith, and that trust, and rest in God. A beautiful experience. It doesn't happen in every case, but it is glorious when it does happen.

to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 12:9 );

Operates much the same as the gift of faith.

To another the working of miracles ( 1 Corinthians 12:10 );

Again, not in every situation, but a lot of miracles happening.

to another prophecy ( 1 Corinthians 12:10 );

Which is really speaking forth the truth of God through the anointing of the Spirit.

to another the discerning of spirits ( 1 Corinthians 12:10 );

For there are many spirits that have gone out into the world, and not all are of God.

to another the various kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues ( 1 Corinthians 12:10 ):

And we will save our commentary on this till next Sunday night when we get into chapter 14.

But all of these are working that the one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he wills ( 1 Corinthians 12:11 ).

These gifts of the Spirit are something that are wrapped up in the sovereignty of the Spirit of God. I cannot demand that a particular gift be operating in my life. The Spirit is sovereign in the dispensing of these gifts.

Now as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ ( 1 Corinthians 12:12 ).

So we are the body of Christ.

Now, in your body you have many different parts to your body. You have your fingers, you have your hands, you have your arms, you have your wrists, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mouth, your legs, your feet, your toes, various parts of your body. Many parts of your body, but yet, you are one body.

Now, if you drop a lead pipe on your toe, where do you hurt? You hurt all over. One member is suffering, the whole body suffers. It is hard to divide the areas of pain when I am hurting.

The body of Christ, here we are many members, but we are not the whole body of Christ. The many members of the body of Christ include the Presbyterian Church down the street, the Lutheran Church over in Mesa Verde, the Baptist Church down on Baker; we are all members of the body of Christ. We are all, then, a part of each other, a part of that one body. God help us to come to this awareness and realization.

There are always those who seek to want to divide the body of Christ. The recognition of themselves to the exclusion of other parts. Or, there are always those who think that they are the most important part of the body of Christ. But every part is necessary for the other. And if the whole body were just an ear, then where would be the seeing? If the whole body were just an eye, then how could you hear? So God has brought the body of Christ of many members, brought them together. We are all one body, and in recognition of this, if one member of the body is suffering, then we should all be feeling it. If one member of the body is being exalted, then we should all rejoice in the exaltation of that part of the body.

So Paul teaches this beautiful lesson of the oneness of the body of Jesus Christ, an important lesson that I pray that God, by His Holy Spirit, will help us to all grasp and to put into practice in our own mental concepts, in our own thinking processes. That we will not be guilty of just thinking of ourselves exclusively or looking for our own benefits exclusively, or just one segment of the body of Christ to the exclusion of others.

We have not yet heard on Channel 30 whether or not the interim license will be given to us. We are supposed to hear any day, but it is a government agency and they're not always the most dependable. They were have supposed to have issued it by the fourth, by their previous declaration, but they are no doubt deliberating it. And whatever the decision they come up with we will surely abide with, but we do intend, if they grant to us that permit for Channel 30, I intend to immediately call Chuck Swindoll, James Dobson, Dave--over in Santa Ana at the Calvary Church-Hocking, John MacArthur, and get these fellows together and say, "Look, here is what God has laid in our laps. Let's pray together and seek the Lord how to best use this facility for His glory." Get many different representatives from the body of Christ. Giving them exposure, giving their ministries exposure on television, rather than just representing one small spectrum of the Christian body on television. I would like to see all of the spectrums of the Christian body represented; the true body of Christ, those who own to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

So John and I disagree in some areas, but we are still brothers in Christ Jesus and one in Him. And that oneness that we share in Christ is far greater than any disagreement that we might have concerning the issues that we are talking about tonight. We need to have that awareness that when we get to heaven there is not going to be a section for the Methodist, and another for the Presbyterian, and another for Baptist, but in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, Baptist or Methodist, Presbyterian or Nazarene, or Church of God, or Church of Christ, but they are all one in Him. Beautiful lessons here that Paul teaches concerning the oneness of the body.

For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we are Jews or Gentiles [Baptist or Presbyterians], whether we be bond or free; we have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many ( 1 Corinthians 12:13-14 ).

Can you imagine if the body was just . . . what a weird world this would be if your body had just one member and each of us were just a different part. "Look at that big toe going down the street. Isn't that weird looking?"

If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? ( 1 Corinthians 12:15 )

Now, if any part of your body had the right to complain it would probably be your foot; it lives in the dark most of the time. Stuffy and smelly environment, yet it never complains. Well, it does complain sometimes at night if you work too hard, but I mean, it is just there, it just functions, it just is a part of your whole body. It doesn't seek to exalt itself and move up and become appended to your knee or something. "I'm going to get out of this dirty smelly place. I want to be something different."

If the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? ( 1 Corinthians 12:16 )

There are those who say, "We are this, we are that, we are not part of the whole body," they don't see it.

If the whole body were an eye [it would be weird], where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? Now God has set the members every one of them in the body, as it has pleased him ( 1 Corinthians 12:17-18 ).

Again, "as it has pleased Him." An important phrase in the New Testament. Follow through in your concordance, "as it has pleased Him." God gives us a body as pleases Him, our new body.

And if they were all one member, then where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of you: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be sort of insignificant, are necessary: And those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow the more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts the more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked ( 1 Corinthians 12:19-24 ):

And so God, creating the body of Christ and those parts that we sometimes look down upon, sort of look down our nose, "Well, you know they are . . . " Yet, God chose to bless and exalt them to bestow upon them honor.

That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffers, then all members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular ( 1 Corinthians 12:25-27 ).

You are all important. You all have a vital part to play in the body, a vital part to fill in the body, a ministry that the body might be whole and complete. And if you don't fill your part, then the body is missing in that area. So each of you have been placed in the body of Christ to fulfill your area of ministry there within the body.

And God has set some in the church, first of all the apostles, secondly the prophets, thirdly the teachers, and after that the miracles, and the gifts of healings, and the helps, and the governments, and the diversities of tongues ( 1 Corinthians 12:28 ).

Rhetorical questions.

Are all apostles? [No.] Are all prophets? [No.] Are all teachers? [No.] Do all work miracles? [No.] Have all the gifts of healing? [No.] Do all speak with tongues? [No.] Do all interpret? [No.] Therefore covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet I will show you a more excellent way ( 1 Corinthians 12:29-31 ).

A more excellent way than having these gifts of miracles, or healings, or whatever, operating in your life. God has something even better for you. We'll get to it next Sunday as we move along.

For these last few verses, this morning's sermon is an exposition of this latter portion, and so I would refer you to this morning's sermon to it for the exposition to this portion from verse 1 Corinthians 12:28 on. And next week we will move into that thirteenth chapter of Corinthians which has to be one of the greatest chapters in the entire Bible, as Paul defines for us this interesting and intriguing Greek word agape. And we get the definition for this kind of love that originates with God and that He wants to flow through our lives. Then in chapter 14, the proper use of the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues. So interesting study next Sunday night.

Never think, "I'm unimportant. It doesn't really matter if I am there or not." It does. God has placed you in the body and God has chosen to place the greater honor on some of the more insignificant or parts that aren't as obvious or as noticed as others. In a sense, I guess God has made me a mouth, but if the whole body were a mouth, what a mess it would be. We each take our place within the body, opening our hearts to God that the Holy Spirit might cause us to function in a well-coordinated way. That God, then, might use us for His glory.

One of the problems with the church is that so often we find the church is spastic, because each part of the body is wanting it's own thing. We are not really sensitive and yielded to the Holy Spirit who is the one who coordinates the movement of the body. The church has not had as strong a testimony before the world as it should, because the body is fighting against itself.

Now, what if your body did that? What if your hand had a different idea than your arm of what it wanted to do? Or your legs, each of them had separate desires of where they wanted to go? And you get a picture of what the body of Christ looks like before the world many times, as everyone wants to do their own thing and not surrender to the Holy Spirit. How we need to be yielded to the Spirit that He might coordinate the activities of the church, the body of Jesus Christ.

Thus, may you be sensitive to the Spirit, open to the Spirit, used by the Spirit. In Jesus' name. "

Contending for the Faith

But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.

This verse belongs to the teaching in chapter thirteen about "charity." It serves well with this chapter, however, to lead to the great subject of love discussed in chapter thirteen.

To "covet earnestly" (zeloo) means "to desire earnestly, pursue" (Thayer 271-2-2206). Paul is saying, "If they are going to be envious at all, be envious for the ’best gifts’ and not of the people who have received them." The "best gifts" refer to those mentioned in chapter fourteen as the ones that promoted edification of the church. They especially involve "love" or "charity" as discussed in chapter thirteen. Paul says, "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity" (13:13).

Paul concludes this chapter by saying that he is showing them a more excellent way of possessing the greatest gift, which is love.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. The need for varieties of spiritual gifts 12:4-31

Paul planned to return to the subject of glossolalia (ch. 14), but first he wanted to talk more generally about spiritual gifts. In the verses that follow he dealt with differences in gifts in the church.

"Having given the negative and positive criterion of genuine spiritual endowments as manifested in speech, the Apostle goes on to point out the essential oneness of these very varied gifts." [Note: Robertson and Plummer, p. 262.]

Diversity, not uniformity, is necessary for a healthy church, and God has seen to it that diversity exists (1 Corinthians 12:6-7; 1 Corinthians 12:11; 1 Corinthians 12:18; 1 Corinthians 12:24; 1 Corinthians 12:28). Notice that the Corinthians were doing in the area of spiritual gifts essentially what they were doing in relation to their teachers (1 Corinthians 3:4-23). They were preferring one over others and thereby failing to benefit from them all. This section of Paul’s argument puts the subject of gifts into proper theological perspective whereas the previous pericope put it into its proper Christological perspective.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

The fact of diversity restated 12:27-31

Next, the apostle spoke more specifically about the members of the body of Christ again (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-11).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Paul advised the Corinthians to seek some gifts more than others because some are more significant in the functioning of the body than others. While the bestowal of gifts is the sovereign prerogative of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8-11; 1 Corinthians 12:18), human desire plays a part in His bestowal (cf. James 4:2). This seems to indicate that the Spirit does not give all His gifts to us at the moment of our salvation. I see nothing in Scripture that prohibits our viewing the abilities God gives us at birth as part of His spiritual gifts. Likewise a believer can receive a gift or an opportunity for service or the Spirit’s blessing on his ministry years after his conversion. Everything we have or ever will have is a gift from God. [Note: See Barclay, The Letters . . ., p. 120.]

God did not give the gift of apostleship, in the technical sense, to any other than those whom Christ Himself selected who had seen the risen Lord. It went to a small group in the first generation of the church’s history. Apostleship in the general sense of one sent out with a message continues today. Normally we refer to these gifted people as missionaries to distinguish them from Paul and the 12 apostles.

Likewise we use the term prophet in a technical and in a general sense today. Usually we think of prophets as people who gave new revelation from God or predicted the future. As I mentioned previously, prophets also spoke forth a word from the Lord by exhorting or encouraging the church, and some of them led the church in worship. The Greek word prophetes means "one who speaks forth." In the first, technical sense prophets have ceased in the church. In the second, general sense they are still with us. [Note: See John E. Johnson, "The Old Testament Offices as Paradigm for Pastoral Identity," Bibliotheca Sacra 152:606 (April-June 1995):182-200.] We usually refer to the exhorters and encouragers as preachers to distinguish them from first century prophets who gave new revelation and predicted the future.

Today some people who desire to sharpen their ability to preach and teach the Scriptures enroll in Bible college or seminary to do so. This is one example of zealously desiring the greater gifts.

However, Paul said there is an even more important discipline that a believer should cultivate to reach the goal of being maximally effective. That way involves valuing and cultivating love (ch. 13). The apostle did not mean, of course, that one should disregard the most important gifts but seek love. We should give attention to cultivating love and cultivating abilities that are strategically important in Christ’s body. Nevertheless as important as sharpening abilities is, it is even more important that we excel in loving.

"’The most excellent way’ which Paul will now show his friends at Corinth is not one more gift among many, but ’a way beyond all this.’ That extraordinary way is, of course, the way of agape, that fruit of the Spirit which is of primary importance to every believer and to the body of Christ." [Note: Thomas A. Jackson, "Concerning Spiritual Gifts: A Study of 1 Corinthians 12," Faith and Mission 7:1 (Fall 1989):68.]

"What Paul is about to embark on is a description of what he calls ’a way that is beyond comparison.’ The way they are going is basically destructive to the church as a community; the way they are being called to is one that seeks the good of others before oneself. It is the way of edifying the church (1 Corinthians 14:1-5), of seeking the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7). In that context one will still earnestly desire the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:1), but precisely so that others will be edified. Thus it is not ’love versus gifts’ that Paul has in mind, but ’love as the only context for gifts’; for without the former, the latter have no usefulness at all-but then neither does much of anything else in the Christian life." [Note: Fee, The First . . ., p. 625.]

Chapter 12 is a chapter that stresses balance (cf. Galatians 5). On the one hand each Christian is only a part of a larger organism, but each is an indispensable part. In one sense we are equally important because we all serve an essential function, but in another sense some are more crucial than others. God determines our gifts, ministries, and individual differences, yet our desire and initiative do have something to do with our service as well. Ability, ministry opportunity, and individuality are very important, but love is even more important. A good measure of our personal maturity as Christians will be how well we can keep these paradoxes in balance in our personal lives and ministries. The Corinthians needed help in this area.

"The Church is neither a dead mass of similar particles, like a heap of sand, nor a living swarm of antagonistic individuals, like a cage of wild beasts: it has the unity of a living organism, in which no two parts are exactly alike, but all discharge different functions for the good of the whole. All men are not equal, and no individual can be independent of the rest: everywhere there is subordination and dependence. Some have special gifts, some have none; some have several gifts, some only one; some have higher gifts, some have lower: but every individual has some function to discharge, and all must work together for the common good. This is the all-important point-unity in loving service." [Note: Robertson and Plummer, pp. 269-70.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 12

THE CONFESSION OF THE SPIRIT ( 1 Corinthians 12:1-3 )

12:1-3 Brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant about manifestations of the Spirit. You know that when you were heathens you were led away to dumb idols, just as any impulse moved you. I want you therefore to know that no one, speaking through the Spirit of God, can say, "Accursed be Jesus," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," unless through the Holy Spirit.

In the Church of Corinth the most amazing things were happening through the action of the Holy Spirit, but in an age of ecstasy and of enthusiasm there can be hysterical excitement and self-delusion as well as the real thing, and in this and the next two chapters Paul deals with true manifestations of the Spirit.

This is a very interesting passage because it gives us two phrases which were battle cries.

(i) There is the phrase Accursed be Jesus. There could be four ways in which this terrible phrase might arise.

(a) It would be used by the Jews. The synagogue prayers included regularly a cursing of all apostates; and Jesus would come under that. Further, as Paul knew so well ( Galatians 3:13), the Jewish law laid it down, "Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree." And Jesus had been crucified. It would be no uncommon thing to hear the Jews pronouncing their anathemas on this heretic and criminal whom the Christians worshipped.

(b) It is by no means unlikely that the Jews would make proselytes attracted by Christianity either pronounce this curse or suffer excommunication from all Jewish worship. When Paul was telling Agrippa about his persecuting days, he said, "I often punished them in every synagogue and I forced them to blaspheme." ( Acts 26:11). It must often have been a condition of remaining within the synagogue that a man should pronounce a curse on Jesus Christ.

(c) Whatever was true when Paul was writing, it is certainly true that later on, in the sore days of persecution, Christians were compelled either to curse Christ or to die. In the time of Trajan, it was the test of Pliny, governor of Bithynia, to demand that a person accused of being a Christian should curse Christ. When Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was arrested, the demand of the proconsul Statius Quadratus was, "Say, 'Away with the atheists,' swear by the godhead of Caesar, and blaspheme Christ." And it was the great answer of the aged bishop, "Eighty and six years have I served Christ, and he has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?" There certainly came a time when a man was confronted with the choice of cursing Christ or facing death.

(d) There was the possibility that, even in the Church, someone in a semi-mad frenzy might cry out, "Accursed be Jesus." In that hysterical atmosphere anything might happen and be claimed to be the work of the Spirit. Paul lays it down that no man can say a word against Christ and attribute it to the influence of the Spirit.

(ii) Beside this there is the Christian battle cry, Jesus is Lord. In so far as the early Church had a creed at all, that simple phrase was it. (compare Php_2:11 ). The word for Lord was kurios ( G2962) and it was a tremendous word. It was the official title of the Roman Emperor. The demand of the persecutors always was, "Say, 'Caesar is Lord (kurios, G2962) .'" It was the word by which the sacred name Jehovah was rendered in the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures. When a man could say, "Jesus is Lord," it meant that he gave to Jesus the supreme loyalty of his life and the supreme worship of his heart.

It is to be noted that Paul believed that a man could say, "Jesus is Lord," only when the Spirit enabled him to say it. The Lordship of Jesus was not so much something which he discovered for himself as something which God, in his grace, revealed to him.

GOD'S DIFFERING GIFTS ( 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 )

12:4-11 There are distinctions between different kinds of special gifts, but there is one and the same Spirit. There are distinctions between different kinds of service, but there is one and the same Lord. There are distinctions between different kinds of effects, but it is one and the same God who causes them all in every man. To each man there is given his own manifestation of the Spirit, and always towards some beneficial end. To one man there is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit; to still another, faith, by the same Spirit; to another, the special gifts of healing through one and the same Spirit; to another, the ability to produce wonderful deeds of power; to another, prophecy; to another, the ability to distinguish between different kinds of spirits; to another, different kinds of tongues; to another, the power to interpret tongues. One and the same Spirit produces all these effects, sharing them out individually to each man, as the Spirit wishes.

Paul's idea in this section is to stress the essential unity of the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ and the characteristic of a healthy body is that every part in it performs its own function for the good of the whole; but unity does not mean uniformity, and therefore within the Church there are differing gifts and differing functions. But every one of them is a gift of the same Spirit and designed, not for the glory of the individual member of the Church, but for the good of the whole.

Paul begins by saying that all special gifts (charismata, G5486) come from God and it is his belief that they must, therefore, be used in God's service. The fault of the Church, in modem times at least, is that it has interpreted the idea of special gifts far too narrowly. It has too often acted on the apparent assumption that the special gifts which it can use consist of things like speaking, praying, teaching, writing--the more or less intellectual gifts. It would be well if the Church would realize that the gifts of the man who can work with his hands, are just as special gifts from God. The mason, the carpenter, the electrician, the painter, the engineer, the plumber all have their special gifts, which are from God and can be used for him.

It is of the greatest interest to examine the list of special gifts which Paul gives, because from it we learn much about the character and work of the early Church.

He begins with two things which sound very like each other--the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. The Greek word we have translated wisdom is sophia ( G4678) . It is defined by Clement of Alexandria as "the knowledge of things human and divine and of their causes." Aristotle described it as "striving after the best ends and using the best means." This is the highest kind of wisdom; it comes not so much from thought as from communion with God. It is the wisdom which knows God. Knowledge--the Greek word is gnosis ( G1108) --is a much more practical thing. It is the knowledge which knows what to do in any given situation. It is the practical application to human life and affairs of sophia ( G4678) . The two things are necessary--the wisdom which knows by communion with God the deep things of God, and the knowledge which, in the daily life of the world and the Church, can put that wisdom into practice.

Next on the list comes faith. Paul means more than what we might call ordinary faith. It is the faith which really produces results. It is not just the intellectual conviction that a thing is true; it is the passionate belief in a thing which makes a man spend all that he is and has on it. It is the faith which steels the will and nerves the sinew of a man into action.

O God, when the heart is warmest,

And the head is clearest,

Give me to act;

To turn the purposes Thou formest

Into fact!

It is the faith which turns the vision into deeds.

Next Paul speaks of special gifts of healings. The early Church lived in a world where healing miracles were a common-place. If a Jew was ill he was much more likely to go to the Rabbi than to the doctor; and he would most likely be healed. Aesculapius was the Greek God of healing. People went to his temples, usually spending whole nights there, to be healed, and often they were. To this day we find among the ruins of these temples votive tablets and inscriptions commemorating healings; and no one goes to the trouble and expense of erecting an inscription for nothing. In the Temple at Epidaurus there is an inscription which tells how a certain Alketas, "although blind saw the dream vision. The god seemed to come to him and to open his eyes with his fingers, and he first saw the trees that were in the temple. At day-break he went away cured." In the temple at Rome there is an inscription, "To Valerius Aper, a blind soldier, the god gave an oracle to come and take blood of a white cock with honey and to mix them into a salve and anoint his eyes for three days, and he received his sight and came and gave thanks publicly to the god." It was an age of cures.

There is not the slightest doubt that gifts of healing did exist in the early Church; Paul would never have cited them unless they were real. In the letter of James ( James 5:14) there is an instruction that if a man is ill he must come to the elders and they will anoint him with oil. It is the simple historical fact that until the ninth century the Sacrament of Unction was for healing; and only then did it become the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, and a preparation for death. The Church never altogether lost this gift of healing; and in recent times it has been somewhat rediscovered. Montaigne, one of the wisest writers who ever wrote, said about a boy's education, "I would have his limbs trained no less than his brains. It is not a mind we are educating nor a body; it is a man. And we must not split him in two." For too long the Church split man into a soul and a body, and accepted responsibility for his soul but not for his body. It is good that in our time we have once again learned to treat man as a whole.

Next Paul lists wonderful deeds of power. Almost certainly he refers to exorcisms. In those days many illnesses, often all illnesses, and especially mental illnesses, were attributed to the work of demons; and it was one of the functions of the Church to exorcise these demons. Whether or not they were in fact real, the person so possessed was convinced that they were, and the Church could and did help him. Exorcism is still very much a reality in the mission field; and at all times it is the function of the Church to minister to a mind diseased and disturbed.

Paul goes on to mention prophecy. It would give a better idea of the meaning of this word if we translated it preaching. We have too much associated prophecy with the foretelling of what was to happen. But at all times prophecy has been far more forthtelling than foretelling. The prophet is a man who lives so close to God that he knows his mind and heart and will, and so can make them known to men. Because of that his function is twofold. (a) He brings rebuke and warning, telling men that their way of action is not in accordance with the will of God. (b) He brings advice and guidance, seeking to direct men into the ways God wishes them to go.

Paul then mentions the ability to distinguish between different kinds of spirits. In a society where the atmosphere was tense and where all kinds of manifestations were normal, it was necessary to distinguish between what was real and what was merely hysterical, between what came from God and what came from the devil. To this day, when a thing is outside our ordinary orbit, it is supremely difficult to tell whether it is from God or not. The one principle to observe is that we must always try to understand before we condemn.

Lastly Paul lists the gift of tongues and the ability to interpret them. This matter of tongues was causing a great deal of perplexity in the Church at Corinth. What happened was this--at a church service someone would fall into an ecstasy and pour out a torrent of unintelligible sounds in no known language. This was a highly-coveted gift because it was supposed to be due to the direct influence of the Spirit of God. To the congregation it was of course completely meaningless. Sometimes the person so moved could interpret his own outpourings, but usually it required someone else who had the gift of interpretation. Paul never questioned the reality of the gift of tongues, but he was well aware that it had its dangers, for ecstasy and a kind of self-hypnotism are very difficult to distinguish.

The picture we get is of a Church vividly alive. Things happened; in fact astonishing things happened. Life was heightened and intensified. There was nothing dull and ordinary about the early Church. Paul knew that all this vivid, powerful activity was the work of the Spirit who gave to each man his gift to use for all.

THE BODY OF CHRIST ( 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 )

12:12-31 Just as the body is one, although it has many members, and just as all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by the one Spirit we have all been baptized in such a way as to become one body, whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be slaves or free men; and we have all been watered by the one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, "Because I am not the hand I am not of the body," it is not because of that not part of the body. And if the ear were to say, "Because I am not the eye, I am not part of the body," it is not because of that not part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body consisted only of the sense of hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But, as it is, God has arranged the members, each individual one of them, as he willed. If everything were one member where would the body be? But, as it is, there are many members but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I do not need you." Or again, the head cannot say to the feet, "I do not need you." Rather indeed those parts of the body which seem to be weaker are all the more essential; and to those parts of the body which seem to be rather without honour we apportion a very special honour; and the uncomely parts of the body have a special comeliness, while the comely parts need no special consideration. God has so compounded the body, giving a special honour to that part of it which seemed to lack all honour, so that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should all have the same care for each other. So, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and if one member is glorified all the members share its joy. You are the body of Christ and each of you is a member of it. So God appointed in the Church some, in the first place, as apostles; in the second place, prophets; in the third place, teachers; then the power to work wonders; then special gifts of healings; the ability to help; the ability to administer; different kinds of tongues. Surely all are not apostles? Surely all are not prophets? Surely all are not teachers? Surely all have not the power to do wonderful things? Surely all do not possess the gifts of healings? Surely all do not speak with tongues? Surely all cannot interpret? Long for the yet greater gifts. I show you a still more excellent way.

Here is one of the most famous pictures of the unity of the Church ever written. Men have always been fascinated by the way in which the different parts of the body cooperate. Long ago Plato had drawn a famous picture in which he had said that the head was the citadel; the neck, the isthmus between the head and the body; the heart, the fountain of the body; the pores, the lanes of the body; the veins, the canals of the body. So Paul drew his picture of the Church as a body. A body consists of many parts but there is in it an essential unity. Plato had pointed out that we do not say, "My finger has a pain," we say, "I have a pain." There is an I, a personality, which gives unity to the many and varying parts of the body. What the I is to the body, Christ is to the Church. It is in him that all the diverse parts find their unity.

Paul goes on to look at this in another way. "You," he says, "are the body of Christ." There is a tremendous thought here. Christ is no longer in this world in the body; therefore if he wants a task done within the world he has to find a man to do it. If he wants a child taught, he has to find a teacher to teach him; if he wants a sick person cured, he has to find a physician or surgeon to do his work; if he wants his story told, he has to find a man to tell it. Literally, we have to be the body of Christ, hands to do his work, feet to run upon his errands, a voice to speak for him.

"He has no hands but our hands

To do his work today;

He has no feet but our feet

To lead men in his way;

He has no voice but our voice

To tell men how he died;

He has no help but our help

To lead them to his side."

Here is the supreme glory of the Christian man--he is part of the body of Christ upon earth.

So Paul draws a picture of the unity which should exist inside the Church if it is to fulfil its proper function. A body is healthy and efficient only when each part is functioning perfectly. The parts of the body are not jealous of each other and do not covet each other's functions. From Paul's picture we see certain things which ought to exist in the Church, the body of Christ.

(i) We ought to realize that we need each other. There can be no such thing as isolation in the Church. Far too often people in the Church become so engrossed in the bit of the work that they are doing and so convinced of its supreme importance that they neglect or even criticize others who have chosen to do other work. If the Church is to be a healthy body, we need the work that everyone can do.

(ii) We ought to respect each other. In the body there is no question of relative importances. If any limb or any organ ceases to function, the whole body is thrown out of gear. It is so with the Church. "All service ranks the same with God." Whenever we begin to think about our own importance in the Christian Church, the possibility of really Christian work is gone.

(iii) We ought to sympathize with each other. If any one part of the body is affected, all the others suffer in sympathy because they cannot help it. The Church is a whole. The person who cannot see beyond his or her own organization, the person who cannot see beyond his or her congregation, worse still, the person who cannot see beyond his or her own family circle, has not even begun to grasp the real unity of the Church.

At the end of the passage Paul speaks of various forms of service in the Church. Some he has already mentioned, but some are new.

(i) At the head of everything he puts the apostles. They were beyond question the greatest figures in the Church. Their authority was not confined to one place; they had no settled and localized ministry; their writ ran through the whole Church. Why should that be? The essential qualification of an apostle was that he must have companied with Jesus during his earthly life and been a witness of the Resurrection ( Acts 1:22). The apostles were those who had the closest contact with Jesus in the days of his flesh and in the days of his risen power. Jesus never wrote a word on paper; instead he wrote his message upon men, and these men were the apostles. No human ceremony can ever give a man real authority; that must always come from the fact that he has companied with Christ. Once someone said to Alexander Whyte after a service, "Dr. Whyte, you preached today as if you had come straight from the presence." "Perhaps I did," answered Whyte softly. The man who comes from the presence of Christ has apostolic authority no matter what may be his Church denomination.

(ii) We have already spoken about the prophets, but now Paul adds teachers. It is impossible to exaggerate their importance. These were the men who had to build up the converts won by the preaching of the evangelists and the apostles. They had to instruct men and women who knew literally nothing about Christianity. Their supreme importance lies in this--the first gospel, Mark's, was not written until about A.D. 60, that is to say, not until about thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. We have to think ourselves back to a time when printing did not exist, when books had to be hand-written and were scarce, when a volume the size of the New Testament would cost pounds to buy, when ordinary folk could never hope to possess a book. As a result the story of Jesus had to be handed down in the beginning by word of mouth. That was the teacher's task; and we must remember this--a scholar will learn more from a good teacher than from any book. We have books in plenty nowadays, but it is still true that it is through people that a man really learns of Christ.

(iii) Paul speaks of helpers. These were people whose duty it was to succour the poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger. From the very beginning Christianity was an intensely practical thing. A man may be a poor speaker and have no gift of teaching; but it is open to everyone to help.

(iv) Paul speaks of what the Revised Standard Version calls administrators (kuberneseis, G2941) . The Greek is very interesting; it literally refers to the work of a pilot who steers the ship through the rocks and shoals to harbour. Paul is referring to the people who carry out the administration of the Church. It is a supremely essential work. In the foreground the preacher and the teacher hold the limelight; but they could never do their work at all unless in the background there were those who shouldered the routine day to day administration. There are parts of the body which are never seen but whose function is more important than any other; there are those who serve the Church in ways that win no publicity, but without whose service the Church could not go on.

But in the end Paul is going to go on to speak of a greater gift than all the others. The danger always is that those who have different gifts will be at variance with each other, and so the effective working of the body will be hindered. Love is the only thing which can bind the Church into a perfect unity; and Paul goes on to sing his hymn to love.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

But covet earnestly the best gifts,.... Which may be rendered either indicatively as an assertion, "ye do covet earnestly the best gifts": of prophesying and teaching, of doing miracles, healing diseases, speaking with, and interpreting, different tongues and languages; but I can, and do show you something that is better, and more excellent than these: or, by way of interrogation, "do ye covet earnestly the best gifts?" do you zealously affect them, fervently desire them, and emulate one another in your endeavours after them? I have something to observe to you which exceeds them all, and which you would do well to follow after, and eagerly pursue; or imperatively, as an exhortation, as it is rendered by our translators: and by the best gifts may be meant, the best of these external gifts before mentioned; and not those of the highest class, and the more extraordinary, but which are the most useful and beneficial to the church, as preaching or prophesying was: the Corinthians seemed most covetous and desirous of speaking with different tongues; but the apostle shows, in 1 Corinthians 14:1, by divers reasons, that prophesying was preferable, being more serviceable and useful to the church, and so more eligible and to be desired by them, to which he may have regard here: or else by them are meant the internal graces of the Spirit, as faith, hope, and love, which are all of them gifts of God's grace; all useful and valuable, and better than all external extraordinary gifts whatever, which a man might have, and be nothing, be lost and damned; whereas he that believes in Christ, has a good hope through grace, and love in his soul to God, Christ, and his people, though he is destitute of the other gifts, shall certainly be saved; wherefore these are the gifts which men should be solicitous for and covet after, and be greatly concerned to know that they have them, and to be content without the other:

and yet show I unto you a more excellent way: if by the best gifts are designed the above graces of the Spirit, then by "the more excellent way", Christ must be meant, the author and object of these graces; who is the way to the covenant, and to a participation of all the blessings of it, as justification, pardon, adoption, and eternal life; the way into a Gospel church, and to all the ordinances of the Gospel dispensation, as baptism, and the Lord's supper; for faith in him is the prerequisite, and proper qualification for the enjoyment of each of these: Christ is the way of salvation, and the way to the Father, and to heaven and eternal happiness; and an excellent one he is, the more, yea, the most excellent; he is the only way to each of these; he is the new and living way, a plain and pleasant one; and so a safe and secure one, in which all that walk shall certainly be saved: now this way the apostle showed, declared, pointed out in the ministry of the word; it was his chief and principal business, the sum of his doctrine, to make known Christ, and him crucified, as the way, the truth, and the life; to direct souls to him, and to show them the way of salvation by him: but if by the best gifts are meant the more useful ones of those before mentioned, as prophesying, or preaching, then the more excellent way designs grace, special and internal grace; and that either grace in general, regenerating, sanctifying grace, including all sorts of grace; which is the way of a soul's passing from the death of sin to a life of faith and holiness; and is the way to eternal glory, and which gives a meetness for it, and is inseparably connected with it. This is a more excellent way than gifts; for gifts, be they ever so great, may be lost or taken away, through disuse or misimprovement; but grace always remains, can never be lost, nor will ever be taken away, but will issue in everlasting life: men may have the greatest gifts, and yet not be saved, as Judas and others; but he that has the least degree of faith in Christ, hope in him, and love to him, shall be saved by him with an everlasting salvation: or particularly the grace of charity, or love to the saints, may be intended by the more excellent way; which is the evidence of a man's passing from death and life; the new commandment of Christ, and the fulfilling of the law; without which, a man, though he has never such great gifts, he is nothing as a Christian, nor in the business of salvation; and is the greatest of all the graces of the Spirit; and is of such a nature, that when prophecies, tongues, knowledge, and all external gifts shall fail, and even the internal graces of faith and hope shall cease, the one being changed for vision, and the other swallowed up in enjoyment, this will continue; and the rather this grace may be thought to be meant, since the apostle immediately passes to treat it in the next chapter, and prefers it to all gifts, and even graces.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.   28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.   29 Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles?   30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?   31 But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.

      I. Here the apostle sums up the argument, and applies this similitude to the church of Christ, concerning which observe,

      1. The relation wherein Christians stand to Christ and one another. The church, or whole collective body of Christians, in all ages, is his body. Every Christian is a member of his body, and every other Christian stands related to him as a fellow-member (Romans 12:27; Romans 12:27): Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular, or particular members. Each is a member of the body, not the whole body; each stands related to the body as a part of it, and all have a common relation to one another, dependence upon one another, and should have a mutual care and concern. Thus are the members of the natural body, thus should the members of the mystical body be, disposed. Note, Mutual indifference, and much more contempt, and hatred, and envy, and strife, are very unnatural in Christians. It is like the members of the same body being destitute of all concern for one another, or quarrelling with each other. This is the apostle's scope in this argument. He endeavours in it to suppress the proud, vaunting, and contentious spirit, that had prevailed among the Corinthians, by reason of their spiritual gifts.

      2. The variety of offices instituted by Christ, and gifts or favours dispensed by him (Romans 12:28; Romans 12:28): God hath set some in the church; first, apostles, the chief ministers entrusted with all the powers necessary to found a church, and make an entire revelation of God's will. Secondarily, prophets, or persons enabled by inspiration, as the evangelists did. Thirdly, teachers, those who labour in word and doctrine, whether with pastoral charge or without it. After that, miracles, or miracle-workers. The gifts of healing, or those who had power to heal diseases; helps, or such as had compassion on the sick and weak, and ministered to them; governments, or such as had the disposal of the charitable contributions of the church, and dealt them out to the poor; diversities of tongues, or such as could speak divers languages. Concerning all these observe, (1.) The plenteous variety of these gifts and offices. What a multitude are they! A good God was free in his communications to the primitive church; he was no niggard of his benefits and favours. No, he provided richly for them. They had no want, but a store-all that was necessary, and even more; what was convenient for them too. (2.) Observe the order of these offices and gifts. They are here placed in their proper ranks. Those of most value have the first place. Apostles, prophets, and teachers, were all intended to instruct the people, to inform them well in the things of God, and promote their spiritual edification: without them, neither evangelical knowledge nor holiness could have been promoted. But the rest, however fitted to answer the great intentions of Christianity, had no such immediate regard to religion, strictly so called. Note, God does, and we should, value things according to their real worth: and the use of things is the best criterion of their real worth. Those are most valuable that best answer the highest purposes. Such were apostolical powers, compared with theirs who had only the gift of healing and miracles. What holds the last and lowest rank in this enumeration is diversity of tongues. It is by itself the most useless and insignificant of all these gifts. Healing diseases, relieving the poor, helping the sick, have their use: but how vain a thing is it to speak languages, if a man does it merely to amuse or boast himself! This may indeed raise the admiration, but cannot promote the edification, of the hearers, nor do them any good. And yet it is manifest from Romans 14:1-23; Romans 14:1-23 that the Corinthians valued themselves exceedingly on this gift. Note, How proper a method it is to beat down pride to let persons know the true value of what they pride themselves in! It is but too common a thing for men to value themselves most on what is least worth: and it is of great use to bring them to a sober mind by letting them know how much they are mistaken. (3.) The various distribution of these gifts, not all to one, nor to every one alike. All members and officers had not the same rank in the church, nor the same endowments (Romans 12:29; Romans 12:30): Are all apostles? Are all prophets? This were to make the church a monster: all one as if the body were all ear or all eye. Some are fit for one office and employment, and some for another; and the Spirit distributes to every one as he will. We must be content with our own rank and share, if they be lower and less than those of others. We must not be conceited of ourselves, and despise others, if we are in the higher rank and have greater gifts. Every member of the body is to preserve its own rank, and do its own office; and all are to minister to one another, and promote the good of the body in general, without envying, or despising, or neglecting, or ill-using, any one particular member. How blessed a constitution were the Christian church, if all the members did their duty!

      II. He closes this chapter with an advice (as the generality read it) and a hint. 1. An advice to covet the best gifts, charismata ta kreittona--dona potiora, præstantiora, either the most valuable in them selves or the most serviceable to others; and these are, in truth, most valuable in themselves, though men may be apt to esteem those most that will raise their fame and esteem highest. Those are truly best by which God will be most honoured and his church edified. Such gifts should be most earnestly coveted. Note, We should desire that most which is best, and most worth. Grace is therefore to be preferred before gifts; and, of gifts, those are to be preferred which are of greatest use. But some read this passage, not as an advice, but a charge: zeloute, You are envious at each other's gifts. In Romans 13:4; Romans 13:4, the same word is thus translated. You quarrel and contend about them. This they certainly did. And this behaviour the apostle here reprehends, and labours to rectify. Only of pride cometh contention. These contests in the church of Corinth sprang from this original. It was a quarrel about precedency (as most quarrels among Christians are, with whatever pretences they are gilded over); and it is no wonder that a quarrel about precedence should extinguish charity. When all would stand in the first rank, no wonder if they jostle, or throw down, or thrust back, their brethren. Gifts may be valued for their use, but they are mischievous when made the fuel of pride and contention. This therefore the apostle endeavours to prevent. 2. By giving them the hint of a more excellent way, namely, of charity, of mutual love and good-will. This was the only right way to quiet and cement them, and make their gifts turn to the advantage and edification of the church. This would render them kind to each other, and concerned for each other, and therefore calm their spirits, and put an end to their little piques and contests, their disputes about precedency. Those would appear to be in the foremost rank, according to the apostle, who had most of true Christian love. Note, True charity is greatly to be preferred to the most glorious gifts. To have the heart glow with mutual love is vastly better than to glare with the most pompous titles, offices, or powers.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

As usual, the introductory words (1 Corinthians 1:1-3) of the epistle give us no little intimation of that which is to follow. The apostle speaks of himself as such "called [to be ] an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God," but coupling a brother with him, "and Sosthenes our brother," he writes to "the church of God at Corinth" not to the saints, as was the case in the epistle to the Romans, but to the church at Corinth "to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus," as in the former epistle "called [to be] saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours."

This will be found to lead the way into the main subject of the present communication. Here we must not look for the great foundations of Christian doctrine. There is the unfolding of the assembly in a practical way; that is, the church of God is not viewed here in its highest character. There is no more than an incidental glance at its associations with Christ. No notice is here taken of the heavenly places as the sphere of our blessing; nor are we given to hear of the bridal affections of Christ for His body. But the assembly of God is addressed, those sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints called, "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus room is left for the profession of the Lord's name. It is not, as in Ephesians, "to the saints which are in Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus." There is no such closeness of application, nor intimacy, nor confidence in a really intrinsically holy character. Sanctified they were in Christ Jesus. They had taken the place of being separate, "calling upon the name of the Lord;" but the remarkable addition should be noticed by the way "with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord, both theirs and ours." And this is the more notable, because if there be an epistle which the unbelief of Christendom tries more than another to annul in its application to present circumstances, it is this first letter to the Corinthians. Nor need we wonder. Unbelief shrinks from that which calls, now rather recalls, the saints to a due sense of their responsibility in virtue of their position as the church of God here below. Those at Corinth had forgotten it. Christendom has not merely forgotten but denied it, and so would fain treat a large part of that which will come before us tonight as a bygone thing. It is not disputed that God did thus work in times past; but they have not the smallest serious thought of submitting to its directions as authoritative for present duty. Yet who can deny that God has taken more care to make this plain and certain in the very frontispiece of this epistle than anywhere else? He is wise and right: man is not. Our place is to bow and believe.

There is another point also to be weighed in the next verses (4-8). The apostle tells them how he thanks his God always on their behalf, but refrains from any expression of thankfulness as to their state. He recognises their rich endowments on God's part. He owns how they had been given all utterance, and all knowledge, the working of the Spirit of God, and His power. This is exceedingly important; for there is a disposition often to consider that difficulties and disorder among the saints of God are due to a want of government and of ministerial power. But no amount of gift, in few or many, can of itself produce holy spiritual order. Disorder is never the result of weakness alone. This, of course, may be taken advantage of, and Satan may tempt men to assume the semblance of a strength they do not possess. No doubt assumption would produce disorder; but weakness simply (where it leads souls, as it should, to spread out their need before the Lord) brings in the gracious action of the Holy Ghost, and the unfailing care of Him who loves His saints and the assembly. It was not so at Corinth. Theirs was rather the display of conscious strength; but at the same time they lacked the fear of God, and the sense of responsibility in the use of what God had given them. They were like children disporting themselves with not a little energy that wrought in vessels which altogether failed in self-judgment. This was a source, and a main source, of the difficulty and disorder at Corinth. It is also of great importance to us; for there are those that continually cry out for increase of power as the one panacea of the church. What reflecting spiritual mind could doubt that God sees His saints are not able to bear it? Power in the sense in which we are now speaking of it that is, power in the form of gift is far from being the deepest need or the gravest desideratum of the saints. Again, is it ever the way of God to display Himself thus in a fallen condition of things? Not that He is restrained, or that He is not Sovereign. Not, moreover, that He may not give, and liberally as suits His own glory; but He gives wisely and holily, so as to lead souls now into exercise of conscience and brokenness of spirit, and thus keep and even deepen their sense of that to which God's church is called, and the state into which it has fallen.

At Corinth there was a wholly different state of things. It was the early rise of the church of God, if I may so say, among the Gentiles. And there was not wanting an astonishing sample of the power of the Spirit in witness of the victory that Jesus had won over Satan. This was now, or at least should have been, manifested by the church of God, as at Corinth. But they had lost sight of God's objects. They were occupied with themselves, with one another, with the supernatural energy which grace had conferred on them in the name of the Lord. The Holy Ghost in inspiring the apostle to write to them in no way weakens the sense of the source and character of that power. He insists on its reality, and reminds them that it was of God; but at the same time he brings in the divine aim in it all. "God," says he, "is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord." Immediately after he alludes to the schisms that were then at work among them, and calls on them to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment; informing them of the tidings which had reached him through the house of Chloe, that there were contentions among them, some saying, "I am of Paul," others "I am of Apollos;" some, "I am of Cephas," and others "I am of Christ himself." There is no abuse to which flesh cannot degrade the truth. But the apostle knew how to introduce the Lord's name and grace with the grandly simple but weighty facts of His person and work. It was unto His name that they were baptized; it was He that had been crucified. And be it observed, that from the first of this epistle it is the cross of Christ that has the prominence. It is not so much His blood-shedding, nor even His death and resurrection, but His cross. This would have been as much out of place in the beginning of Romans as the putting forward of propitiation would be out of place here. Expiation of sins by Christ, His death and resurrection, are given of God to be displayed before the saints, who needed to know the firm, immutable foundation of grace; but what the saints wanted most was to learn the gross inconsistency of turning to selfish ease, honour, and aggrandisement the privileges of God's church, and the power of the Spirit of God that wrought in its members.

It is the cross which stains the pride of man, and puts all his glory in the dust. Hence the apostle brings Christ crucified before them. This to the Jew was a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness. These Corinthians were deeply affected by the judgment of both Jews and Greeks. They were under the influence of man. They had not realized the total ruin of nature. They valued those that were wise, scribes, or disputers of this world. They were accustomed to the schools of their age and country. They conceived that if Christianity did such great things when those who possessed it were poor and simple, what might it not do if it could only be backed by the ability, and the learning, and the philosophy of men! How it must ride triumphantly to victory! How the great must bow, and the wise be brought in! What a glorious change would result when not the unlettered poor only, but the great and the noble, the wise and the Prudent, were all joined in the confession of Jesus!

Their thoughts were fleshly, not of God. The cross writes judgment on man, and folly on his wisdom, as it is itself rejected by man as folly; for what could seem more egregiously unreasonable to a Greek than the God that made heaven and earth becoming a man, and, as such, crucified by the wicked hands of His creatures here below? That God should use His power to bless man was natural; and the Gentile could coalesce as to it with the Jew. Hence too, in the cross, the Jew found his stumbling-block; for he expected a Messiah in power and glory. Though the Jew and the Greek seemed opposite as the poles, from different points they agreed thoroughly in slighting the cross, and in desiring the exaltation of man as he is. They both, therefore, (whatever their occasional oppositions, and whatever their permanent variety of form,) preferred the flesh, and were ignorant of God the one demanding signs, the other wisdom. It was the pride of nature, whether self-confident or founded on religious claims.

Hence the apostle Paul, in the latter part of chap. 1, brings in the cross of Christ in contrast with fleshly wisdom, as well as religious pride, urging also God's sovereignty in calling souls as He will. He alludes to the mystery (1 Corinthians 2:1-16), but does not develop here the blessed privileges that flowed to us from a union with Christ, dead, risen, and ascended; but demonstrates that man has no place whatever, that it is God who chooses and calls, and that He makes, nothing of flesh. There is glorying, but it is exclusively in the Lord. No flesh should glory in his presence."

This is confirmed in1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, where the apostle reminds them of the manner in which the gospel had entered Corinth. He had come there setting his face against all things that would commend himself. No doubt, to one of such eminent ability and such varied gifts as the apostle Paul, it was hard, to speak after the manner of men, to be nothing. How much it must have called for self-denial utterly to decline that which he could have handled so well, and which people at Corinth would have hailed with loud acclamation. Just think of the great apostle of the Gentiles, on the immortality of the soul, giving free rein to the mighty spirit that was in him! But not so. What absorbed his soul, in entering, the intellectual and dissolute capital of Achaia, was the cross of Christ. He determined therefore, as he says, to know nothing else not exactly to know the cross alone, but "Jesus Christ and him crucified." It was emphatically, though not exclusively, the cross. It was not simply redemption, but along with this another order of truth. Redemption supposes, undoubtedly, a suffering Saviour, and the shedding of that precious blood which ransoms the captives. It is Jesus who in grace has undergone the judgment of God, and brought in the full delivering power of God for the souls that believe. But the cross is more than this. It is the death of shame pre-eminently. It is utter opposition to the thoughts, feelings, judgments, and ways of men, religious or profane. This is the part accordingly that he was led in the wisdom of God to put forward. Hence the feelings of the apostle were distrust of self, and dependence on God according to that cross. As he says, "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." Thus, as Christ Himself is said in 2 Corinthians 13:1-14 to be crucified in weakness, such was also the servant here. His speech and his preaching was "not in enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Accordingly, in this chapter he proceeds to supplement the application of the doctrine of the cross to the state of the Corinthians by bringing in the Holy Ghost; for this again supposes the incapacity of man in divine things.

All is opened out in a manner full of comfort, but at the same time unsparing to human pride. Weigh from the prophecy of Isaiah the remarkable quotation "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." There is first the great standing fact before our eyes. Such is the Saviour to the saved. Christ crucified is the death-knell on all man's wisdom, and power, and righteousness. The cross writes total condemnation on the world. It was here the world had to say to Jesus. All that it gave Him was the cross. On the other hand, to the believer it is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because he humbly but willingly reads in the cross the truth of the judgment of his own nature as a thing to be delivered from, and finds Him that was crucified, the Lord Himself, undertaking a deliverance just, present, and complete; as he says, "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Flesh is absolutely put down. Man cannot go lower for weakness and ignominy than the cross on which hangs all the blessedness God gives the believer. And therein God is glorified as He is nowhere else. This in both its parts is exactly as it should be; and faith sees and receives it in Christ's cross. The state of the Corinthians did not admit of Christ risen being brought in, at least here. It might have drawn a halo, as it were, round human nature this presenting the risen man in the first instance. But he points to God as the source, and Christ as the channel and means, of all the blessing. "Of him," says he, "are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." But then, as he shows, there was not only this great source of blessing in Christ, but there is the power that works in us. Never is it the spirit of man that lays hold of this infinite good which God vouchsafes him. Man requires a divine power to work within him, just as he needs the Saviour outside himself

Accordingly, in 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, still carrying on the thought of Christ crucified, and connecting it with their condition, he intimates that he was in no wise limited to it. If persons were grounded in Christianity, he was prepared to go into the greatest depths of revealed truth; but then the power of entering safely was not human, but of the Holy Ghost. Man is no more capable of fathoming the depths of divine things than a brute can comprehend the works of human wit or science. This doctrine was utterly repulsive to the pride of the Greeks. They might admit man to have need of pardon, and of moral improvement. They fully admitted his want of instruction, and refinement, and, so to speak, of spiritualization, if it only might be. Christianity deepens our estimate of every want. Man not only wants a new life or nature, but the Holy Ghost. It is not merely His grace in a general sense, but the power of the Holy Ghost personally dwelling in him. It is this alone which can lead us into the deep things of God. And this, he lets us see, affects not merely this particular or that, but the whole working of divine grace and power in man. The whole and sole means of communicating blessing to us must be the Holy Ghost. Hence he insists, that as it is the Spirit of God in the first place who reveals the truth to us, so it is the same Spirit who furnishes suitable words, as, finally, it is through the Holy Ghost that one receives the truth revealed in the words He Himself has given. Thus, from first to last, it is a process begun, carried on, and completed by the Holy Ghost. How little this makes of man!

This introduces 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 and gives point to his rebukes. He taxes them with walking as men. How remarkable is such a reproach! Walking as men! Why, one might ask, how else could they walk? And this very difficulty as no doubt it would be to many a Christian now (that walking as men should be a reproach) was no doubt a clap of thunder to the proud but poor spirits at Corinth. Yes, walking as men is a departure from Christianity. It is to give up the distinctive power and place that belongs to us; for does not Christianity show us man judged, condemned, and set aside? On the faith of this, living in Christ, we have to walk. The Holy Ghost, besides, is brought in as working in the believer, and this, of course, in virtue of redemption by our Lord Jesus. And this is what is meant by being not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, which is proved by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us.

Here the apostle does not explain all this, and he gives a very withering reason for his reticence. These Corinthians had an uncommonly good opinion of themselves, and so they must be told plainly the reason why he does not open out these deep things. They themselves were not fit; they were but babes. What! the polished Greek believers no more than babes! This was rather what they would have said of the apostle or of his teaching. They thought themselves far in advance. The apostle had dwelt on the elementary truths of the gospel. They yearned after the fire of Peter and the rhetoric of Apollos. No doubt they might easily flatter themselves it was to carry on the work of God. How little many a young convert knows what will best lead him on! How little the Corinthians dreamt of depreciating the Second man, or of exalting the first! Hence the apostle tells them that he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat." Far from denying, he owns that their insinuation was true he had only brought before them elementary truths. They were not in a condition to bear more. Now this is full of meaning and importance practically at all times. We may damage souls greatly by presenting high truths to those that want the simplest rudiments of divine truth.

The apostle, as a wise master-builder, laid the foundation. The state of the Corinthians was such that he could not build on the foundation as he would have desired. His absence had given occasion for the breaking out of their carnal wishes after the world's wisdom. They were making even the ardour of a Peter and the eloquence of an Apollos to be a reason for dissatisfaction with one that, I need not say, was superior to both of them. But the apostle meets them in a way most unexpected to their self-satisfaction and pride, and lets them know that their carnality was the real reason why he could not go on with them into deeper things.

This leads him to point out the seriousness of the work or building; for he presents the church of God under this figure. What care each servant needs to take how and what he builds! What danger of bringing in that which would not stand the fire or judgment of God nay, further, of bringing in that which was not simply weak and worthless, but positively corrupting; for it was to be feared there were such elements even then at Corinth! Again he brings in another principle to bear upon them. Their party spirit, their feeling of narrowness, the disposition to set up this servant of Christ or that, was not only a dishonour to the Master, but a real loss to themselves. Not that there is any ground to suppose it was the fault of Peter or Apollos any more than of Paul. The evil was in the saints themselves, who indulged in their old zeal of the schools, and allowed their natural partiality to work. In point of fact this never can be without the most grievous impoverishment to the soul, as well as a hindrance to the Holy Ghost. What faith must learn is, that "all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas; . . . . . all are yours." Thus the subject enlarges, as is his wont, taking in an immense breadth of the Christian's possessions life, death, things present, and things to come. "All are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

This again brings in another point before the subject closes. He is not content with the pressing of responsibility on others; he had a solemn sense of his own place, which made him wonderfully independent of the judgments of men. Obedience gives firmness as well as humility. Not in the smallest degree was the pride of the Corinthians met by pride on his part, but by keeping the Lord and His will before his soul. Yet this is certainly true that this effect of faith looks like pride to a man who merely views things on the surface. The calm going on in the service of Christ, the endurance of this spirit or that, as no more than the idle wind, was no doubt exceedingly unpleasant to such as were wise in their own conceit, and valued the criticism they freely bestowed on the different servants of the Lord. But Paul sees all in the light of the eternal day. They had forgotten this, and were in a sense trafficking with these powers of the Spirit of God. They were making them the counters of a game they were playing in this world. They had forgotten that what God gives He gives in time, but in view of eternity. The apostle puts the truth of the case before their souls as he had it vividly before his own. (1 Corinthians 4:1-21)

Another thing is noticeable here. He had reproached them with walking not as Christians but as men (that is, with their habitual life and conversation formed on human principles instead of divine). On the other hand, it would appear from what follows, that they reproached the apostle in their hearts, not, of course, in so many words, with not being enough of a gentleman for their taste. This seems to me the gist of the fourth chapter. It was a thing that they considered quite beneath a Christian minister to work from time to time with his hands, often poor, occasionally in prison, knocked about by crowds, and so on. All this they thought the fruit of indiscretion and avoidable. They would have preferred respectability, public and private, in one who stood in the position of a servant of Christ. This the apostle meets in a very blessed way. He admitted that they were certainly not in such circumstances; they were reigning as kings. As for him it was enough to be the off-scouring of all men, this was his boast and blessedness. He wished that they did indeed reign that he might reign with them (that the blessed time might really arrive). How his heart would rejoice in that day with them! And surely the time will come, and they would all reign together when Christ reigns over the earth. But he quite admits that for the present the fellowship of Christ's sufferings was the place he had chosen. Of honour in the world, and ease for the flesh, he at least could not, if they could, boast. Present greatness was what he in no wise coveted; to suffer great things for His sake was what the Lord had promised, and what His servant expected in becoming an apostle. If his own service was the highest position in the church, his was certainly the lowest position in the world. This was as much an apostle's boast and glory as anything that God had given them. No answer can I conceive more telling to any one of his detractors at Corinth who had a heart and conscience.

In 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 we enter on another and more painful part of the epistle. A fearful instance of sin had come to light, so gross, indeed, that the like was not even named among the Gentiles. In fact it was a case of incest, and this among those called of God, and sanctified in Christ Jesus! The question is not in the least raised whether the guilty person was a saint or not; still less does he allow that which one so often and painfully heard pleaded in extenuation, "Oh, but he [or she] is a dear Christian." Christian affection is most excellent; as brethren we should love even to laying down life for each other; as it is also very right that we should own the work God has wrought, above all what He has wrought in grace. But when one bearing the name of the Lord has, through unwatchfulness, fallen into wickedness, which of course grieves the Holy Ghost and stumbles the weak, it is not the time to talk thus. It is the time, in the very love that God implants, to deal sternly with that which has disgraced the name of the Lord. Is this to fail in love to the person? The apostle showed ere long that he had more love for this evildoer than any of them. The second epistle to the Corinthians entreats them to confirm their love to him whom they had put away. They were too hard against him then, as they were too loose now. Here their consciences needed to be roused. To deal with the matter they owed to the Lord Jesus. It was not merely getting rid of the obnoxious man. They had to prove themselves clear in the matter certainly; but he puts before them another course, whenever the guilty one had repented.

"I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already," etc. The case was most gross, and there was no question about it. The facts were indisputable; the scandal was unheard of. "I have judged already, as though present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh." There was no discussion raised whether the person might be converted. The fact is, church discipline supposes and goes on the ground that those on whom it is exercised are Christians; but when it is a question of discipline, it is not the season for the display of Christian affection. This would falsify the conscience and turn the eye from off the point to which the Holy Ghost was directing attention. There was wickedness in their midst; and while known and unjudged, all were implicated; none could be clean till it was put away. Accordingly the apostle, while he expresses the desire that the spirit of the man should be saved in the day of the Lord, flesh being destroyed, at the same time rouses the saints to that which became the name of the Lord on the very ground that they were unleavened. If they were free from evil, let them act consistently. Let them preserve that purity in practice which was theirs in principle. They were unleavened, and therefore should be a new lump. Notoriously there was old leaven among them. What business had it there? "Put away from" not the table of the Lord merely, this he does not say, but "Put away from among yourselves." This is much stronger than expelling from the table. Of course, it implies exclusion from the Lord's table, but from their table too "with such an one, no, not to eat." An ordinary meal, or any such act expressive even in natural things of fellowship with the person thus dishonouring the Lord, is forbidden.

Mark, they must put away. It is not the apostle acting for them; for God took particular care that this case, demanding discipline to the uttermost, should be where the apostle was not. What an admirable instruction for us who have no longer an apostle! None can pretend that it was an assembly where there was a high degree of knowledge or spirituality. The very reverse was the case. The responsibility of discipline depends on our relationship as an assembly to the Lord, not on its changing states. The Corinthians were babes; they were carnal. He who loved them well could not speak of them as spiritual. Nevertheless, this responsibility attached to the very fact that they were members of Christ His body. If saints are gathered to the name of the Lord, and so are God's assembly, if they have faith to take such a position here below, and have the Holy Ghost owned as in their midst, this, and nothing short of this, is their responsibility; nor does the ruined state of the church touch the question, nor can it relieve them from their duty to the Lord. The church at Corinth had soon failed most gravely far and wide. This was the more shameful, considering the brightness of the truth vouchsafed to them, and the striking manifestation of divine power in their midst. The presence of apostles elsewhere in the earth, the beautiful display of Pentecostal grace at Jerusalem, the fact that so short a time had elapsed since they had been brought out of heathenism into their standing in God's grace, all made the present state of the Corinthians so much the more painful; but nothing can ever dissolve the responsibility of saints, whether as individuals or as an assembly. "Put away from among yourselves that wicked person."

Another thing is to be observed, that the Holy Spirit's scale of sin is not that of man. Which of you, my brethren, would have thought of classing a railer with an adulterer? A railer is one who uses abusive language for the purpose of injuring another, not the transient out-breaking of flesh, sad as it is, but provoked it may be, or at any rate, happening through unwatchfulness. The habit of evil speaking stamps him who practises it as a railer; and such a man is unfit for the company of the saints, for God's assembly. It is the old leaven of malice and wickedness. He is unclean. Doubtless the world would not so judge; but this is not the world's judgment. The Corinthians were under the influence of the world. The apostle had already shown that to walk as men is beneath the Christian. Now we see that to walk as the world, no matter how refinedly, ever exposes Christians to act worse than men of the world. God has stamped upon His children the name of Christ; and what does not express His name is inconsistent, not only with the Christian, but with His assembly. They are all as such held responsible, according to the grace and holiness and glory of Christ, for the sin done in their midst, of which they are cognisant. They are bound to keep themselves pure in ways.

There was another case also: brother was going to law with brother. (1 Corinthians 6:1-20) We have no reason to think they had fallen so far as to go to law with those that were not brethren; this would seem to be a lower step still. But brother was going to law with brother, ,and this before the unjust. How often now-a-days one hears, "Well, one expects something better from a brother; and surely he ought to suffer the consequences of his ill-doing." This was just the feeling of the Corinthian plaintiff. What, then, is the weapon that the apostle uses in this case? The dignified place in the glory that God designs for the Christian: "Know ye not that we shall judge the world judge angels?" Were such going before the Gentiles? Thus is seen how practical all truth is, and how God casts the bright light of the approaching day on the smallest matters of the life of today.

Again, there was no quarter in the world where personal purity was more unknown than at Corinth. Indeed, such were the habits of the ancient world, it would only defile the ears and minds of God's children to have any proofs of the depravity in which the world then lay, and that too in its best estate, the wisest and the greatest not excepted, those, alas. whose writings are in the hands of the youth of our day, and more than ever, perhaps, in their hands. Those wits, poets, and philosophers of heathen antiquity lived in habitual, yea, often in unnatural grossness, and thought nothing of it. It is a danger for the saints of God to be tinctured by the atmosphere of the world outside when the first fervour of grace cools, and they begin to take up their old habits. It was certainly so at Corinth.

Accordingly the believers there were betrayed into their former uncleanness of life when the heavenly light got dim. And how does the apostle deal with this? He recalls to them the Holy Spirit's dwelling in them. What a truth, and of what force to the believer! He does not say simply that they were redeemed, though he brings it in also; still less does he merely reason on the moral heinousness of the sin; neither does he cite the law of God that condemned it. He presses upon them that which was proper to them as Christians. It was no question of man, let him be Gentile or Jew, but of a Christian. Thus he sets before them the distinctive Christian blessing the Holy Ghost dwelling in the believer, and making his body (not his spirit but his body) a temple of the Holy Ghost; for here was precisely where the enemy seems to have misled these Corinthians. They affected to think they might be pure in spirit, but do what they liked with their bodies. But, answers the apostle, it is the body which is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The body belongs to the Lord and Saviour; the body, therefore, and not the spirit only, He claims now. No doubt that the spirit be occupied with Christ is a grand matter; but the licentious flesh of man would talk, at any rate, about the Lord, and at the same time indulge in evil. This is set aside by the blessed fact that the Holy Ghost even now dwells in the Christian, and this on the ground of his being bought with a price. Thus the very call to holiness ever keeps the saint of God in the sense of his immense privileges as well as of his perfect deliverance.

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 naturally leads from this into certain questions that had been proposed to the apostle touching marriage and slavery questions which had to do with the various relationships of life. The apostle accordingly gives us what he had learned from the Lord, as well as what he could speak of as a commandment of the Lord, distinguishing in the most beautiful manner, not between inspired and non-inspired, but between revelation and inspiration. All the word is inspired; there is no difference as to this. There is no part of Scripture that is less inspired than another. " All (every) scripture is given by inspiration of God;" but all is not His revelation. We must distinguish between parts revealed and the whole inspired. When a thing is revealed of God, it is absolutely new truth, and of course is the commandment of the Lord. But the inspired word of God contains the language of all sorts of men, and very often the conversation of wicked men nay, of the devil I need not say that all this is not a revelation; but God communicates what Satan and wicked men say (as for instance Pilate's words to our Lord and the Jews). None of these evidently was that which is called a revelation; but the Holy Ghost inspired the writers of the book to give us exactly what each of these said, or revealed what was in the mind of God about them. Take, for example, the book of Job, in which occur the sayings of his friends. What intelligent reader could think that they were in any way authorised communicators of the mind of God? They say sometimes very wrong things, and sometimes wise, and often things that do not in the smallest degree apply to the case. Every word of the book of Job is inspired; but did all the speakers utter necessarily the mind of God? Did not one of the speakers condemn one or other of the rest? Need one reason on such facts? This, no doubt, makes a certain measure of difficulty for a soul at the first blush; but on maturer consideration all becomes plain and harmonious, and the word of God is enhanced in our eyes.

And so it is in this chapter, where the apostle gives both the commandment of the Lord, and his own matured spiritual judgment, which he expressly says was not the commandment of the Lord. Still he was inspired to give his judgment as such. Thus the whole chapter is inspired, one part of it just as much as another. There is no difference in inspiration. What was written by the different inspired instruments is of God as absolutely as if He had written it all without them. There is no degree in the matter. There can be no difference in inspiration. But in the inspired word of God there is not always revelation. Sometimes it is a record which the Spirit gave a man to make of what he had seen and heard, sometimes he recorded by the Spirit what no man could have seen or heard. Sometimes it was a prophecy of the future, sometimes a communication of God's present mind according to His eternal purpose. But all is equally and divinely inspired.

The apostle then lays down at least as far as may be here briefly sketched that while there are cases where it is a positive duty to be married, undisguisedly there was a better place of undivided devotedness to Christ. Blessed is he who is given. thus to serve the Lord without let: still it must be the gift of God. The Lord Jesus had laid down the same principle Himself. InMatthew 19:1-30; Matthew 19:1-30, it is needless to say, you have the selfsame truth in another form.

Again, while the Lord employs the apostle thus to give us both His own commandment and His mind, the general principle is stated as to the relationships of life. It is broadly laid down that one should remain in that condition in which he is called, and for a very blessed reason. Supposing one were a slave even, he is already, if a Christian, a freeman of Christ. You must remember that in these days there were everywhere bondmen: those that then ruled the. world took them from all classes and all countries There were bondmen highly educated, and once in a high position of life. Need it be said that often these bondmen rose up against their cruel masters? The very knowledge of Christ, and the possession of conscious truth, if grace did not counteract mightily, would tend to increase their sense of horror at their position. Suppose, for instance, a refined person, with the truth of God communicated to his soul, was the slave of one living in all the filth of heathenism, what a trial it would be to serve in such a position! The apostle urges the truth of that liberty in Christ which Christendom has well-nigh forgotten that if I am Christ's servant I am emancipated already. Match if you can the manumission he has got. Twenty millions will procure no such emancipation. At the same time, if my master allows me liberty, let me use it rather. Is it not a remarkable style of speech and feeling? The Christian, even if a slave, possesses the best freedom after all: anything else is but circumstantial. On the other hand, if you are a freeman, take care how you use your liberty: use it as the Lord's bondman. The freeman is reminded of his bondmanship; the bondman is reminded of his freedom. What a wonderful antithesis of man is the Second Man! How it traverses all the thoughts, circumstances, and hopes of flesh!

Then he brings before us the different relationships at the end of the chapter, as they are affected by the coming of the Lord. And there is nothing which shows more the importance of that hope as a practical power. There is not only the direct but the indirect allusion when the heart is filled with an object; and the indirect is a yet stronger witness of the place it holds than the direct. A mere hint connects itself with that which is your joy and constant expectation; whereas when a thing is little before the heart you require to explain, prove, and insist upon it. But this chapter brings vividly before them how all outward things pass away, even the fashion of this world. Time is short. It is too late either to make much of scenes so changing, or to seek this thing or that here below with such a morrow before our eyes. Hence he calls on those who had wives to be as those who had none, on those who were selling and buying to be above all the objects that made up the sum of business. In short, he puts Christ and His coming as the reality, and all else as the shadows, transitions, movements of a world that even now crumbles underneath us. No wonder that he follows all up at the end with his own judgment, that the man most blessed is he who has the least entanglement, and is the most thoroughly devoted to Christ and His service.

Next in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 he begins to take up another danger for the Corinthian saints. They had the sound of the truth ringing in their ears; and assuredly there are few sounds sweeter than the liberty of the Christian. But what is more liable to abuse? They had abused power to self-exaltation; they were now turning liberty to license. But there is a solemn fact which none can afford to forget as to both power and liberty that without responsibility nothing is more ruinous than either. Herein lay the sad failure of these saints. In the sense of responsibility they were utterly wanting They seem to have forgotten completely that the Lord from whom the liberty had come is the One in whose sight, and for whose glory, and according to whose will, all power was to be used. The apostle recalls them to this; but he takes up their license in going into heathen temples, and eating things offered to idols, not first of all on the high ground of the Lord, but on account of their brethren. In their boasted liberty, and because they knew an idol was nothing, they considered that they might go anywhere, and do what they pleased. Nay, not so, cries the apostle; you must consider your brother. There is many a disciple who, far from knowing how vain idolatry is, thinks a good deal of the idol. Thus, you that know so much, if you make light of going here and there, will induce other disciples to follow your steps who may slip into idolatry through it, and thus a brother perish for whom Christ died; and what is the liberty of one who is instructed may prove the extreme ruin of one who is equally a believer in the Lord. Thus he looks at the thing in its full character and ultimate tendency if unchecked. Grace, as we know, can arrest these tendencies, and avert the evil results.

In 1 Corinthians 9:1-27 he interrupts the course of his argument by an appeal to his own place as an apostle. Some were beginning to question his apostolate. It was not that he in the slightest degree forgot his call by God's will to that special service; neither was he insensible to the blessed liberty in which he was serving the Lord. He could lead about a sister-wife like another; he had foregone this for the Lord's sake. He could look for support from the church of God; he preferred to work with his own hands. So in the second epistle to the Corinthians he begs them to forgive the wrong; for he would not accept anything from them. They were not in a condition to be entrusted with such a gift. Their state was such, and God had so overruled it in His ways, that the apostle had received nothing from them. This fact he uses in order to humble them because of their pride and licentiousness.

The course of this chapter then touches on his apostolic place, and at the same time his refusal to use the rights of it. Grace can forego all questions of right. Conscious of what is due, it asserts rights for others, but refuses to use them for itself. Such was the spirit and the faith of the apostle. And now he shows what he felt as to practical state and walk. Far from being full of his knowledge, far from only using his place in the church for the assertion of his dignity and for immunity from all trouble and pain here below, he on the contrary was as one under the law to meet him that was under it; he was as a Gentile to meet him that was free from law (that is, a Gentile). Thus he was a servant of all that he might save some. Besides, he lets them know the spirit of a servant, which was so lacking in the Corinthians in spite of their gifts; for it is not the possession of a gift, but love which serves and delights in service. The simple fact of knowing that you have a gift may and often does minister to self-complacency. The grand point is to have the Lord before you, and when others are thought of, it is in the love which has no need to seek greatness, or to a et it. The love of Christ proves its greatness by serving others.

This, then, was the spirit of that blessed servant of the Lord. He reminds them of another point that he was himself diligent in keeping his body in subjection. He was like a man with a race that was going to be run, and who gets his body into training. He puts this in the strongest way, "Lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Mark the tact of the apostle. When he has something discreditable to say, he prefers to say it about himself; when he has something pleasing to say, he loves to put it with regard to others. So here he says, "Lest I myself become a castaway," not " you." He meant their profit, no doubt; his aim was for them to have their own consciences searched by it. If Paul even was exercising himself to have a conscience void offence; if Paul was keeping his body in subjection, how much more did these men need it? They were abusing all the comfort that Christianity brings, to live at ease and play the gentleman, if one may speak according to modern language. They had not entered in the smallest degree into the spirit of the moral glory of Christ humbled here below. They had dislocated the cross from Christianity. They had severed themselves from the power of service. Thus they were in the utmost possible jeopardy; but the apostle, who had the blessedness of Christ before him, and the fellowship of His sufferings is scarce another had like him, even he used all diligence of heart, and held a tight rein over himself. Faithful man as he was, he allowed himself none of these licenses. Liberty indeed he prized, but it was not going here and there to feasts of idols. He was free to serve Christ, and time was short: what had such an one to do with heathen temples?

Thus he wants them to feel their danger, but first of all he begins with himself. He was free but watchful; and he was jealous over himself, the greater the grace shown him. It was not that he in the smallest degree doubted his security in Christ, as some so foolishly say; or that such as have eternal life may lose it again. But it is plain that men who merely take the place of having eternal life may, and often do, abandon that place. Those who have eternal life prove it by godliness; those who have it not prove the lack of it by indifference to holiness, and lack of that love which is of God. So the apostle shows that all his knowledge of the truth, far from making him careless, prompted him to yet greater earnestness, and to daily denial of himself. This is a very important consideration for us all (I press it more especially on the young in such a day as this); and the greater the knowledge of the saints, the more they need to keep it in view.

The apostle draws their attention to another warning in the history of Israel. These had eaten of the same spiritual meat, for so he calls it; they had the heaven-sent manna, had drunk of the same spiritual drink; yet what became of them? How many thousands of them perished in the wilderness? The apostle is approaching far closer to their state. He began with application to his own case, and now he points to Israel as a people sanctified to Jehovah. At length the word is, "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful." This was a great comfort, but it was also a serious caution. "God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." It is in vain, therefore, to plead circumstances as an excuse for sin. "But [He] will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry." He makes it plain that he is, with characteristic address, dealing with their little-exercised consciences from the statement of his own earnest vigilance over his ways, and then from the sad and solemn history of Israel judged of the Lord. Thus, too, he goes forward into new ground, the deeper spiritual motives, the appeal to Christian affection as well as to faith. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? He begins with that which most nearly touches the heart. It would have been an order more natural, if one may so say, to speak of the body of Christ; as we know in the Lord's supper habitually, there is that which brings before us first the body and then the blood. The departure from what may be called the historical order makes the emphasis incomparably greater. More than that, the first appeal is founded on the blood of Christ, the answer of divine grace to the deepest need of a soul found in its guilt before God and covered with defilement. Was this to be slighted? "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" He does not here say, "the blood" or the "body of the Lord." This we find in 1 Corinthians 11:1-34; but it is here Christ, because it becomes a question of grace. "The Lord" brings in the idea of authority. This, then, is evidently an immense advance in dealing with the subject. Accordingly he now develops it, not on the ground of injury to a brother, but as a breach of fellowship with such a Christ, and indifference to His immense love. But he does not forget His authority: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of demons." It is not simply the love of Christ, but His full authority as the Lord. The apostle contrasts two mighty powers that were contesting demons, on the one hand, a power stronger than man, struggling as to him here below; and, on the other hand, there was the Lord that had shed His blood for them, but the Lord of all who should judge quick and dead. Hence he follows up with a comprehensive and simple principle, but full of liberty withal, that in going into the market you need ask no questions. If I do not know that the food has been connected with idols, the idol is nothing to me; but the moment I know it, it is no longer the question of an idol but a demon; and a demon, be assured, is a very real being indeed. Thus what the apostle insists on amounts to this, that their vaunted knowledge was short indeed. Whenever a person boasts, you will in general find. that he particularly fails precisely where he boasts most. If you set up for great knowledge, this will be the point in which you may be expected to break down. If you set up for exceeding candour, the next thing we may well dread to hear is that you have played very false. The best thing is to see that we give ourselves credit for nothing. Let Christ be all our boast. The sense of our own littleness and of His perfect grace is the way, and the only way, to go on well. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Then in 1 Corinthians 11:1-34 we enter on another point. It would seem that the sisters at Corinth gave them a deal of trouble, and that they had forgotten entirely their due relative place. No doubt the men were at least as much to blame. It is hardly possible that women should ever put themselves forward in the church unless Christian men have deserted their true, responsible position and public action. It is the man's place to guide; and although women may assuredly be far more useful in certain cases, still, unless the man guides, what an evident departure from the order God has assigned to them both! How complete a desertion of the relative position in which they were placed from the first! Thus it was at Corinth. Among the heathen, women played a most important part, and in no quarter of the world, perhaps, so prominent a one as there. Need it be said that this was to their deep shame? There was no city in which they were so degraded as that in which the attained such conspicuous and unnatural prominence. And how does the apostle meet this new feature? He brings in Christ. This is what decides all. He affirms the everlasting principles of God, and he adds that which has so brightly been revealed in and by Christ. He points out that Christ is the image and the glory of God, and that the man stands in an analogous place as connected with and distinguished from the woman. That is to say, the woman's place is one of unobtrusiveness, and in fact, she is most effective where she is least seen. The man, on the contrary, has a public part a rougher and ruder task, no doubt one that may not at all bring into play the finer affections, but which demands a calmer and more comprehensive judgment. The man has the duty of the outward rule and administration.

Accordingly he marks the first departure from what was right by the woman's losing the sign of her subjection. She was to have a covering, on her head; she was to have that which indicated as a sign that she was subject to another. The man seemed to have failed just in the opposite way; and although this may seem a very little thing, what a wonderful thing it is, and what power it shows, to be able to combine in the same epistle eternal things and the very smallest matter of personal decorum, the wearing of long hair or short, the use of a covering on the head or not! How truly it marks God and His word!! Men. would scorn to combine them both in the same epistle; it seems so petty and so incongruous. But it is the littleness of man which calls for big matters to make him important; but the smallest things of God have significance when they bear on the glory of Christ, as they always do. In the first place, it was out of order that a woman should prophesy with her head uncovered; man's place was to do so. He was the image and the glory of God. The apostle connects it all with first principles, going up to the creation of Adam and Eve in a very blessed manner, and above all bringing in the second Man, the last Adam. Did they think to improve on both?

The latter part of the chapter takes up not the relative place of the man and the woman, but the supper of the Lord, and so the saints gathered together. The first part of it, as is evident, has nothing to do with the assembly, and thus does not dispose of the question whether a woman should prophesy there. In fact, nothing is said or implied in the early verses of the assembly at all. The point primarily mooted is of her prophesying after the manner of a man, and this is done with the greatest possible wisdom. Her prophesying is not absolutely shut out. If a woman has a gift for prophecy, which she certainly may have as well as a man, for what is it given of the Lord but for exercise? Certainly such an one ought to prophesy. Who could say the gift of prophecy given to a woman is to be laid up in a napkin? Only she must take care how she does exercise it. First of all, he rebukes the unseemly way in which it was done the woman forgetting that she was a woman, and the man that he is responsible not to act as a woman. They seem to have reasoned in a petty way at Corinth, that because a woman has a gift no less than a man, she is free to use the gift just as a man might. This is in principle wrong; for after all a woman is not a man, nor like one officially, say what you please. The apostle sets aside the whole basis of the argument as false; and we must never hear reasoning which overthrows what God has ordained. Nature ought to have taught them better. But he does not dwell on this; it was a withering rebuke even to hint at their forgetfulness of natural propriety.

Then, in the latter verses, we have the supper of the Lord, and there we find the saints expressly said to be gathered together. This naturally leads the way to the spiritual gifts that are treated of in1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31. As to the supper of the Lord, happily I need not say many words to you. It is, by the great mercy of God, familiar to most of us; we live, I may say, in the enjoyment of it, and know it to be one of the sweetest privileges God vouchsafes us here below. Alas! this very feast had furnished occasion, in the fleshly state of the Corinthians, to a most humiliating abuse. What led to it was the Agape, as it was styled; for in those days there was a meal which the Christians used to take together. Indeed, the social character of Christianity never can be overlooked without loss, but in an evil state it is open to much abuse. Everything that is good may be perverted; and it never was intended to hinder abuse by extinguishing that which was only to be maintained aright in the power of the Spirit of God. No rules, no abstinence, no negative measures, can glorify God, or make His children spiritual; and it is only by the power of the Holy Ghost in producing a sense of responsibility to the Lord as well as of His grace that saints are duly kept. So it was then at Corinth, that the meeting for the Lord's Supper became mingled with an ordinary meal, where the Christians ate and drank together. They were glad to meet at any rate, originally it was so, when love was gratified with the company of each other. Being not merely young Christians, but unwatchful and then lax, this gave rise to sad abuse. Their old habits re-asserted their influence. They were accustomed to the feasts of the heathen, where people thought nothing whatever of getting drunk, if it was not rather meritorious. It was in some of their mysteries considered a wrong to the god for his votary not to get drunk, so debased beyond all conception were the heathen in their notions of religion.

Accordingly these Corinthian brethren had by little and little got on until some of them had fallen into intemperance on the occasion of the Eucharist; not, of course, simply by the wine drank at the table of the Lord, but through the feast that accompanied it. Thus the shame of their drunkenness fell upon that Holy Supper; and hence the apostle regulated, that from that time forward there should be no such feast coupled with the Lord's Supper. If they wished to eat, let them eat at home; if they came together in worship, let them remember it was to eat of the Lord's body, and to drink of the Lord's blood. He puts it in the strongest terms. He does not feel it needful or suitable to speak of "the figure" of the Lord's body. The point was to make its grace and holy impressiveness duly felt. It was a figure, no doubt; but .still, writing to men who were at least wise enough to judge aright here, he gives all its weight, and the strongest expression of what was meant. So Jesus had said. Such it was in the sight of God. He that partook undiscerningly and without self-judgment was guilty of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. It was a sin against Him. The intention of the Lord, the true principle and practice for a saint, is to come, examining his ways, trying his springs of action, putting himself to the proof; and so let him eat (not stay away, because there is much discovered that is humbling). The guard and warning is, that if there be not self-judgment, the Lord will judge. How low is the state of things to which all saints tend, and not the Corinthians only! There ought to have been, I suppose, an interposition of the church's judgment between the Christian's lack of self-judgment and the Lord's chastenings; but, alas! man's duty was altogether lacking. It was from no want of gifts. They had no sense of the place God designed self-judgment to hold; but the Lord never fails.

In 1 Corinthians 12:1-31 accordingly, the apostle enters on a full statement of these spiritual powers. He shows that the distinctive feature of that which the Spirit of God leads to is the confession, not exactly of Christ, but of Jesus as Lord. He takes the simplest and most necessary ground that of His authority. This is observable in verse 3: "Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Impossible that the Spirit should dishonour, yea, that He should not exalt, Him who humbled Himself for God's glory. "Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God that worketh all in all." They had forgotten all this. They were pre-occupied with human thoughts, with this clever Jew and that able Gentile. They had lost sight of God Himself working in their midst. The apostle points out that if there were different services, if distinct gifts to one and another, it was for the common good of all. He illustrates the nature of the church as a body with its various members subserving the interests of the body and the will of the head. "By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body;" it is not the Holy Ghost merely making many members, but "one body." Accordingly he confronts with this divine aim their misuse of their spiritual powers, independence one of another, disorder as to women, self-glorification, and the like, as we see in1 Corinthians 14:1-40; 1 Corinthians 14:1-40 the detail. He presses that the least comely members, those that are least seen, may be of more importance than any others; just as in the natural body some of the most vital parts are not even visible. What would a man do without a heart, or liver, or lungs? So in the spiritual body there are members which are most important and not seen at all. But men are apt to value most those which make a showy appearance. Thus he rebukes the whole tenor and spirit of Corinthian vanity; at the same time he maintains their place of blessing and responsibility to the last. After all their faults he does not hesitate to, say, "Now ye are the body of Christ." This way of dealing with souls has been grievously enfeebled in the present day. Grace is so feebly known, that the first thought you will find amongst godly people is what they ought to be; but the ground and weapon of the apostle Paul is what they are by God's grace. "Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular; and God hath set some in the church." It was far from his mind in the least to deny it. Observe here an important use of the expression, "the church." It cannot be the local assembly, because, looking at Corinth, no apostles were there. Whatever might be the providential arrangements outside in the world, he is looking at the assembly of God here on earth; and it is the assembly as a whole, the Corinthian assembly being, as every true assembly is, a kind, of representative, of the church universally. It is the church of God here below; not merely churches, though that was true also.

Thus we can look at what the church will be by-and-by glorified and absolutely perfect. We can also look at a particular local assembly. Besides there is this most important sense of the church never to be forgotten namely, that divine institution viewed as a whole on. earth. Members of Christ no doubt compose it; but there is His body, the assembly as a whole, in which God works here below. Such is the reason why we do not find in this epistle evangelists or pastors, because it is not a question of what is needed to bring souls in or lead them on. He looks at the church as a thing already, subsisting as the witness of the power of God before men. Therefore it was not at all necessary to dwell on those gifts which are the fruit of Christ's love to and cherishing of the church. It is regarded as a vessel of power for the maintenance of God's glory, and responsible for this here below. Therefore tongues miracles, healings, the use of outward powers, are largely dwelt on here.

But we pass on to another and a still more important theme, a wonderfully full picture even for God's word, that most perfect and beautiful unfolding of divine love which we have in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. After all, if the Corinthians had coveted gifts, they had not coveted the best But even if we may desire the best gifts, there is better still; and the best of all is charity love. Accordingly we have this in the most admirable manner brought out both in what it is and in what it is not, and that too as corrective of the wrong desires of the Corinthians, and the evil spirit which had manifested itself in the exercise of their gifts; so that what seems to be an interruption is the wisest of parentheses between chapter 12, which shows us the distribution of gifts and their character, and chapter 14, which directs the due exercise of gifts in the assembly of God. There is but one safe motive-power for their use, even love. Without it even a spiritual gift only tends to puff up its owner, and to corrupt those who are its objects.

Hence 1 Corinthians 14:1-40 thus opens: "Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy." And why? Prophecy seemed to be somewhat despised amongst the Corinthians. Miracles and tongues were liked, because these made themselves of importance. Such wonders made men stare, and drew general attention to those who were invested evidently with a superhuman energy. But the apostle lays it down, that the gifts which suppose the exercise of spiritual understanding have a far higher place. He himself could speak more tongues than they all. It need hardly be added that he did more miracles than any of them. Still, what he valued most was prophesying. We must not suppose that this gift simply means a man preaching. Prophesying never means preaching. More than this, prophesying is not simply teaching. It, no doubt, is teaching; but it is a good deal more. Prophesying is that spiritual application of the word of God to the conscience which puts the soul in His presence, and makes manifest as light to the hearer the mind of God. There is a great deal of valuable teaching, exhortation, and application, that has no such character. It is all very true, but it does not put the soul in the presence of God; it gives no such absolute certainty of God's mind flashing on the condition and judging the state of the heart before Him. I do not speak now of the unconverted, though prophesying might affect such as well as the converted. The direct object of it was, of course, the people of God; but in the course of the chapter the unbeliever is shown coming into the assembly and falling on his face, and owning that God was among them of a truth. Such is the genuine effect. The man finds himself judged in the presence of God.

There is no need to enter into all that this chapter brings before us, but it may be well to observe that we have giving of thanks and blessing, as well as singing and prayer. Prophesying and the rest are brought in as all pertaining to the Christian assembly. What was not directly edifying, as speaking in a tongue, is forbidden unless one could interpret. I doubt very much whether there was any revelation after the scheme of Scripture was complete. To suppose anything revealed, when that which is commonly called the canon was closed, would be an impeachment of God's purpose in it. But till the last portion of His mind was written down in a permanent form for the church, we can quite understand His goodness in allowing a special revelation now and then. This gives no warrant to look for anything of the sort at any time subsequent to the completion of the New Testament. Again, it is plain from this that there are certain modifications of the chapter. Thus so far it is true that if anything has, through the will of God, terminated (for instance, miracles, tongues, or revelations), it is evident that such workings of the Spirit ought not to be looked for; but this does not in the smallest degree set aside the Christian assembly or the exercise according to God's will of what the Spirit still distinctly gives. And undoubtedly He does continue all that is profitable, and for God's glory, in the present state of His testimony and of His church here below. Otherwise the church sinks into a human institute.

In the end of the chapter a very important principle is laid down. It is vain for people to plead the mighty power of God as an excuse for anything disorderly. This is the great difference between the power of the Spirit and the power of a demon. A demon's power may be uncontrollable: chains, fetters, all the power of man outside, may utterly fail to bind a man who is filled with demons. It is not so with the power of the Spirit of God. Wherever the soul walks with the Lord, the power of the Spirit of God on the contrary is always connected with His word, and subject to the Lord Jesus. No man can rightly pretend that the Spirit forces him to do this or that unscripturally. There is no justification possible against Scripture; and the more fully the power is of God, the less will a man think of setting aside that perfect expression of God's mind. All things therefore are to be done decently and in order an order which Scripture must decide. The only aim, as far as we are concerned, that God endorses, is that all be done to edification, and not for self-display.

The next theme (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) is a most serious subject doctrinally, and of capital importance to all. Not only had the devil plunged the Corinthians into confusion upon moral points, but when men begin to give up a good conscience, it is no wonder if the next danger is making shipwreck of the faith. Accordingly, as Satan had accomplished the first mischief among these saints, it was evident the rest threatened soon to follow. There were some among them who denied the resurrection not a separate state of the soul, but the rising again of the body. In fact the resurrection must be of the body. What dies is to be raised. As the soul does not die, "resurrection" would be quite out of place; to the body it is necessary for God's glory as well as man. And how does the apostle treat this? As he always does. He brings Christ in. They had no thought of Christ in the case. They seem to have had no wish to deny the resurrection of Christ; but should not a Christian have at once used Christ to judge all by? The apostle at once introduces His person and work as a test. if Christ did not rise, there is no resurrection, and therefore no truth in the Gospel; "your faith is vain: you are yet in your sins." Even they were quite unprepared for so dreadful a conclusion. Shake the resurrection and Christianity goes. Having reasoned thus, he next points out that the Christian waits for the time of joy and glory and blessing for the body by-and-by. To give up resurrection is to surrender the glorious hope of the Christian, and to be the most miserable of men.. For what could be more cheerless than to give up all present enjoyment without that blessed hope, for the future at Christ's coming? Thus strongly was the whole complex nature of man before the apostle's mind in speaking of this hope of blessedness by-and-by.

Then, somewhat abruptly, instead of discussing the matter any more, he unfolds a most weighty revelation of truth "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the. resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." True, the kingdom is not yet come for which we are waiting, but it 'will come. See how all truth hangs together, and how Satan labours to make a consistency in error. He knows the weakness of man's mind. Nobody likes to be inconsistent. You may be dragged into it, but you are never comfortable when you have a sense of inconsistency about you. Hence, after one. error gains empire over the mind of man, he is ready to embrace others just to make all consistent.

Such was the danger here among the Corinthians. They had been offended by the apostle's supreme indifference to all that is of esteem among men. His habits of speech and life were not at all up to the mark that they supposed seemly before the world in a servant of God. Out of this fertile root of evil has the clergy grown. It has been the effort to acquire as much refinement as possible. Holy orders make a man a sort of gentleman if he was not so before. This seems to have been at work in, the minds of these critics of the apostle. Here we find what lay at the bottom of the matter. There is generally a root of evil doctrine where you find people wrong in practice. At any rate, where it is a deliberate, persistent, and systematic error, it will not be merely a practical one, but have a root deep underneath. And this was what now came out at Corinth. It was feebleness about that which, after all, lies at. the very foundation of Christianity. They did not mean to deny the person of Christ or His condition as risen from the dead; but, this is what the enemy meant, and into this their wrong notion tended to drift them. The next step, after denying resurrection for the Christian, would be to deny it about Christ. And here the apostle does not fail to rebuke them, and in a manner trenchant enough. He (exposes the stupidity of their questions, wise as they flattered themselves to be. How? It is always the danger of man that he is not content to believe; he would like first of all to understand. But this is ruinous in divine things, which are entirely outside sense and reason. All real understanding for the Christian is the fruit of faith.

The apostle does not hesitate in apostrophising the unbeliever, or at any rate, the errorist he has in view, to expose his folly. "Thou fool," says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." Thus the strongest possible censure falls on these Corinthians, and this for the very matter in which they plumed themselves. Human reasoning is poor indeed outside its own sphere. However, he is not content merely with putting down their speculations; he brings in subsequent and special revelation. The previous part of the chapter had pointed out the connection of Christ's resurrection with our resurrection, followed by the kingdom which finally gives place in order that God may be all in all. In the latter part of the chapter he adds what had not been explained hitherto, From the early portion we should not have known but that all saints die, and that all rise at Christ's coming. But this would not be the full truth. It is most true that the dead in Christ rise, of course, but this does not explain about the living saints. He had vindicated the glorious character of the resurrection; he had proved how fundamental, and momentous, and practical, is the truth that the body is to be raised again, which they were disposed to deny as though it were a low thing, and useless even if possible. They imagined the true way to be spiritual was to make much of the spirit of man. God's way of making us spiritual is by a simple but strong faith in the resurrection-power of Christ; look to His resurrection as the pattern and spring of our own. Then at the last he adds that he would show them a mystery. On this I must just say a few words in order to develop its force.

The resurrection itself was not a mystery, The, resurrection of just and unjust was a well-known Old Testament truth. It might be founded on Scriptures comparatively few, but it was a fundamental truth of the Old Testament, as the apostle Paul lets us hear in his controversy with the Jews in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, the Lord Jesus also assumes the same thing in the gospels. But if the raising of the dead saints was known, and even the raising of the wicked dead, the change of the living saints was a truth absolutely unrevealed. Up to this it was not made known, It was a New Testament truth, as this indeed is what is meant by a "mystery." It was one of those, truths that were kept secret in the Old Testament, but now revealed not so much a thing difficult to comprehend when stated, as a thing not revealed before. "And behold," says he, "I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Evidently this supports and confirms, while it might seem an exception to, the resurrection; but, in point of fact, it gives so much the more force and consistency to the rising of the dead in a very unexpected way. The general truth of the resurrection assuredly does put the sentence of death on all present things to the believer, showing that the earth cannot rightly be the scene of his enjoyment, where all is stamped with death, and that he must wait for the resurrection power of Christ to be applied before he enters the scene where the rest of God will be our rest, and where there will be nothing but joy with Christ, and even this earth will behold Christ and His saints reigning over it till the eternal day. The addition to this of the New Testament truth of the chance gives immense impressiveness to all, and a fresh force, because it keeps before the Christian the constant expectancy of Christ. "Behold, I show you a mystery" not now that the dead in Christ shall rise, but "we," beginning with the "we" "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality." And "therefore," as he closes with the practical deduction from it all, "my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work, of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

The last chapter is now before us, in which the apostle lays down a weighty exhortation as to collections for the saints. He puts it on the ground of their being prospered in any degree, and connects it with the special day of Christian enjoyment, when they gather together for the communion of saints. "Upon the, first day of the week let every one of you lay by in store as he has been prospered, that there be no gatherings when I come." Need it be said how human influence has dislocated the truth there? No doubt this was precisely what the apostle, or the Holy Ghost rather, discerned to be at work at Corinth, the same mistake that has wrought so malignantly in Christendom; that is to say, personal rank, learning, eloquence, or a great name (as of an apostle for instance), invoked to call out the generosity of the saints (perhaps, even of the world), and increase the proceeds by all these or like means.

But is there not another danger? Is there no snare for you, beloved brethren? When persons are more or less free from the ordinary incubus of tradition, when they are not so much under the influence of excitement, and of those appeals to the love of being known and of pleasing this or that man, or the cause, or any of those human motives that often do operate, I apprehend that they are exposed to danger in a wholly opposite direction. Do we sufficiently make it a matter of personal responsibility to the Lord, everyone of us, to give, and that in connection with the first day of the week and its blessed surroundings and objects, when we meet at His table? Do we every one of us give as we are prospered by the way? It is very well to keep clear of human influence, but let us see to it that we do not forget that "the Lord has need" of our giving for the purposes He loves here below. And of this I am sure, that if we have rightly cast aside mere human calls, and if we do thank God for the deliverance from worldly influence, and from the power of custom, public opinion, etc., it would be a deep reproach if we did not do double as much now, under the grace that confides in us, as we used to do under the law that used to govern us. Your own consciences must answer whether you can meet the Lord about this matter. I believe that we are in no small danger of settling down in the conviction that our old way was quite wrong, and simply keeping the money in our pockets. It does seem to me, I confess, that bad as human pressure may be in order to raise money, bad as may be a variety of earthly objects in this way or that, bad as a worldly lavish expenditure is, after all, a selfish personal keeping to ourselves of what we have is the worst thing of all. I am quite persuaded that the danger of the saints of God who have been brought outside the camp lies here, lest, delivered from what they know to be wrong, they may not seek in this an exercised conscience. Standing in the consciousness of the power of God's grace, they need to be continually looking out that they be devoted to Him. To cease doing what was done in a wrong way, and sometimes for wrong ends too, is not enough. Let there be zealous and vigilant exercise of soul, and enquiry how to carry out right objects in right ways, and so much the more, if indeed a simpler, fuller knowledge of God's grace and of Christ's glory has been given us.

Then we have various forms of ministry noticed. It is not here gifts as such, but persons devoted to labouring in the Lord; for there is a difference between the two things, as this chapter shows us strikingly. For instance, the apostle himself comes before us in ministry with his especial gift and position in the church. Then again, Timothy is there, his own son in the faith, not only an evangelist, but with a charge over elders at length, to a certain extent acting occasionally for the apostle Paul. Again, we have the eloquent Alexandrian thus introduced: "As touching our brother Apollos I greatly desired him to come unto you, but his will was not at to come at this time." How delicate and considerate the grace of Paul who wished Apollos to go to Corinth then, and of Apollos who wished not to go under the circumstances! On the face of the case we have the working of liberty and responsibility in their mutual relations; and the apostle Paul is the very one to tell us that Apollos's will was not to go as he himself wished at this time. It was no question of one in a place of worldly superiority regulating the movements of another of subordinate degree. The apostle did express his strong desire for Apollos to go; but Apollos must stand to his Master, and be assured that he was using a wisdom greater than that of man's. Finally, we observe another character of service lower down in "the house of Stephanas." This was a simpler case and a humbler position, but very real before God, whatever the danger of being slighted of men. Hence, I think, the word of exhortation "I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,)" etc. They gave themselves up in an orderly manner to this work. "That ye submit yourselves," not merely to Timothy or to Apollos, but to such, to the simple-hearted Christian men whose desire was to serve the Lord with the measure of power they had, and this proved by their persevering labour. Undoubtedly, in the midst of the difficulties of the church, in the face of the oppositions and disappointment, manifold griefs, enemies, and sources of sorrow and shame, it requires the power of God to go on without being moved by any of these things. It is an easy thing to make a start; but nothing short of the power of God can keep one without wavering at the work in the face of everything to cast down. And this was the question. We may suppose that these Corinthians were troublesome enough. From the statements made in the early part of the epistle it is evident; and so the apostle calls upon them to submit themselves. Evidently there was an unsubject spirit, and those ministered to thought they were just as good as the house of Stephanas. It is good to submit ourselves "unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us and laboureth." I am persuaded, beloved brethren, that it is no impeachment of the blessedness of the brotherhood to maintain the speciality of ministry in the Lord. There can be in these matters no more deplorable error than to suppose that there is not to be this godly submission one toward another, according to the place and power that the Lord is pleased to entrust.

The Lord grant that our souls may hold fast the truth here revealed, and in no general or perfunctory way. All I pretend to now is to give a sketch or combination of the parts of the epistle. But may the word itself, and every part of it, sink into our souls and be our joy, that we may not only take the precious truth of such an epistle as the Romans for the peace and joy of our hearts in believing individually, but also may understand our place by faith as of God's assembly on earth, and with thankful praise as those that call on the name of the Lord ours as well as theirs as those that find ourselves practically in need of such exhortations. The Lord give us His own spirit of obeying the Father.