The Spirit and the Gifts are Ours (1 Cor 12:1-3)

March 16, 2023 at 2:00 pm (1 Corinthians, Holy Spirit, Jesus)

posted by R. Fowler White

As Luther put it, the Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth. What a stupendous acclamation this is, especially in these days of increasing declension. Luther’s words provoke us to master and be mastered by Paul’s instruction on the Spirit and the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12–14. He starts his lessons for us in 12:1-3.

We must know who does and does not have the Holy Spirit and His gifts, 12:1-2. The Apostle does not want us to be uninformed or misinformed but to be well informed about who has the Holy Spirit and His gifts. How do we recognize someone who is genuinely “of the Spirit”? So often we hear that they take part in supernatural phenomena, speak in tongues, fall into trances, dreams, and visions. But we should not ignore that such things took place in Corinth’s temples to Apollo and in Egyptian palaces. They even take place in certain Muslim mosques today. We should not make the mistake, then, of thinking that supernatural happenings have their source always and only in the Holy Spirit of Christ. The biblical fact is that manifestations often associated with or attributed to the Spirit may actually have their source in sinful human nature (aka the flesh) or even in servants of Satan who disguise themselves as apostles or prophets of Christ (2 Cor 11:13-15; Acts 16:16-18).

Given the range of supernatural sources, Paul underscores that none of us had the Holy Spirit before we became believers in Christ Jesus, 12:2. To the contrary, he reminds us that before our conversion, we were in captivity to idols (cf. Hab 2:18-19). As idol worshipers, we were like Narcissus in Greek mythology: he fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. So it was with us: before our conversion we were just in love with an illusion of our own making, a figment of our imagination. Indeed, the Spirit of Christ was not ours, and we were not His.

Yet the Spirit changed us. The Apostle explains. Our captivity notwithstanding, none other than the Holy Spirit ended our bondage to idols and gave us hearts to believe and mouths to confess that Jesus is Lord, 12:3. Paul traces the change in our confession to the enabling power and presence of the Spirit of Christ. Consider this, he says: no confession that Jesus is accursed (i.e., justly condemned) has the Spirit of Christ as its source (12:3a). Only the confession that Jesus is Lord has the Spirit of Christ as its source (12.3b). Still we must be careful and clear: confessing Jesus as Lord is not about saying certain words (as Jesus Himself made clear in Matt 7:21-23). No, in Scripture, confessing Jesus as Lord is the fruit of the work of His Spirit within us so that we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths. To confess Jesus is Lord, then, is to acclaim His majesty and to swear absolute allegiance to Him as our Royal Deity, as our Savior and Judge. To confess Jesus is Lord is to confess that He has claimed us as His own and that we have claimed Him and His yoke as our own. To confess Jesus is Lord is to confess that He, the crucified one, has been, by His resurrection and ascension, publicly declared to be Lord of all, from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. For many, such a confession is mere foolishness, even blasphemy. Paul would remind us, however, that for them there is no Lord but the idol of their own imagination. To confess Jesus is Lord actually sets believers apart from all others as those who are of the Spirit of Christ.

Knowing these things, how does the truth that the Spirit and His gifts are ours fit into the big picture of what God has been doing throughout history? That big picture is the macro-narrative that God has been following throughout the history of His work to save sinners. That pattern is that He first wins a victory for His chosen people and then celebrates that victory by giving His Spirit to enable His people to build a sanctuary where He dwells with them. We can see this story-line in both the OT and the NT. The two major OT examples are found in the histories of Moses and David-Solomon. In the book of Exodus we read that God through Moses delivered Israel from Egypt and then by His Spirit equipped His people to build the tabernacle as His dwelling place among them. Later, in the narratives about David and Solomon (2 Sam 2–8; 1 Kgs 5–8), God through David delivered Israel from their enemies and then by His Spirit endowed Solomon to construct the first temple as His holy house among His people. Turning to the NT, we see the same narrative, only better: Christ, full of the Spirit, rescues sinners from their sins and then by the Spirit and His gifts enables them to build and to be built as His living sanctuary.

Remarkable, isn’t it? Moses, David, Solomon, and Israel might well have sung Luther’s lyric with us. How so? They would have done so knowing that God was going to do something better through the One who is greater than they were. After all, Jesus is delivering His people from sin and death, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And by the Spirit and His gifts He is preparing not just a place, but His people, to be His sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. That work goes forward as we learn the lesson that Scripture has for us: the Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth.