The gifts of the Spirit are listed in a number of places in Scripture. The lists are not identical, but the principle that is at the root of it is rather clear. The gifts of the Spirit are blessings which God provides for His people by giving singular capacities to certain individuals, so that they do not all have the same gift, but it is the variety of gifts that provides the congregation with the blessings that God intends for it. We have lists of these in Romans 12:6–8 and then again in 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 and again in verses 28 and 29; then also in 1 Corinthians 14:26 and finally in Ephesians 4:11. Here we have gifts which relate to offices in the church and to particular manifestations of the life and the power and the Spirit which are of significance in the life of the congregation. Here we do not have a kind of accumulation of gifts as we find accumulation in the desired ability of the fruits of the Spirit. It is not the same people who possess all gifts, although the fact that a person has one gift does not disqualify that person from additional gifts that the Spirit may give.
In this connection, some of the so-called miraculous gifts have been much in the forefront of the claims that are frequently made, particularly the gift of tongues, of interpretation of tongues, of prophecy, and of healing. These gifts some people say are now obsolete because they were provided in the early church as a means of accrediting the message of the apostles. It was important that miraculous power should be manifested through them so that the people who desire to know the will of God should learn to place their confidence in what they said, God, so to speak, accrediting His messengers by the presence of signs and miracles which could not have been accomplished without the power of God to support them.
It is not the same people who possess all gifts, although the fact that a person has one gift does not disqualify that person from additional gifts that the Spirit may give.
The suggestion that the gifts are obsolete is difficult to maintain in the light of Scripture, for indeed, the apostles had a particular charisma which God intended them to exercise and which at times, particularly in their work on the mission field, seemed to be of great importance. But the suggestion that these gifts had a function only in the early church appears to be tied with a contention that the only purpose for a miracle is to accredit a messenger of God. But this is not proven by Scripture, even though it is true that miracles do accredit a person, but that does not mean that the only purpose that God has in accomplishing a miracle is the one to make known to observers that a certain one is gifted and is well-pleasing to God in the message that he or she delivers.
It is true that at times the emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit, especially the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, has led to certain assesses and that people who thought they were gifted in this way have come forward with pretensions that seem to be clearly unacceptable. On the other hand, the suggestion that in 1 Corinthians 13, the reference to tongues will disappear and prophecies will cease, tongues will be stilled and knowledge will pass away, this particular passage refers to the situation in the eschaton, that is, in heaven, and it does not suggest that the time at which this will be true will be the time in which we live after the death of the apostles, for indeed knowledge does continue and is desirable and we are encouraged to be developed in knowledge in the power of Jesus Christ. And so the passage of 1 Corinthians 13 is not a good argument for the disappearance of miraculous gifts in the church that succeeded the apostles.
It is a tall order to deny any miraculous intervention of God throughout the period that follows the year 100 or so
B. Warfield wrote a remarkable book entitled Counterfeit Miracles [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sone, 1981; various editions], and in it he claimed that all the miracles that were alleged to have taken place after the death of the apostles were really not cases of a singular intervention of God, but that they were simply misunderstood and that, in fact, no miracle was accomplished. It is a tall order to deny any miraculous intervention of God throughout the period that follows the year 100 or so, and in this respect one may question the nature of Warfield’s contention and the propriety of denying events which seem to be fairly well documented.
It is clear that in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, the apostle establishes a certain hierarchy of gifts, and he emphasizes particularly that the gifts of prophecy and of leadership, which God continues to provide to those who serve Him in the church, are of supreme importance and that other gifts like that of tongues are of lesser significance for the edification of the church. In fact, he made the rather remarkable statement that he would prefer to say five words with his sense than ten thousand words in tongues which the people might not be able to understand. And, furthermore, he regulates the exercise of supernatural gifts, especially the gift of tongues, in the worship of the church, the principle being that what is not conducive to the general edification has no place in the common worship of God, which is given in the church. Therefore, he says, if anyone has a message in tongues, there should be immediately an interpretation of it so that the people who are in a congregation may have an understanding of what is being said and may take benefit spiritually from these messages. Under those circumstances, it would appear that in most cases the gift of tongues is one that is conducive more to personal spiritual growth and development than to the edification of the church, since it is fairly seldom that you find people having a gift of interpretation of tongues which would then translate the message in a way that is understandable to all people present.
This article is excerpted from The Doctrine of Salvation, a course offering from Our Daily Bread University. To read the rest of the lesson, click the link or the banner below.
