Beautiful Members Who Have Received the Gifts of the Spirit

4Now there are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are various kinds of service, and the same Lord. 6There are various kinds of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. 7But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all. 8For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; 9to another faith, by the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healings, by the same Spirit; 10and to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of languages; and to another the interpretation of languages. 11But the one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing to each one separately as he desires. 12For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. 13For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink into one Spirit.

These days it seems there is no one who does not take nutritional supplements.

Go to a pharmacy and you see countless kinds of supplements, along with many health products you cannot even identify.

Of course, people who eat a well-balanced diet will not run into serious problems if they do not take supplements. But they say that since one cannot meet the recommended intake of nutrients, taking supplements can still help.

Our bodies develop problems wherever any nutrient is lacking, so taking one particular supplement does not make us healthy.

The spiritual side is just the same.

When someone who has lived looking only at the world hears the gospel one day and receives Christ, from that day on they grow spiritually as they read, hear and share the Word. For God’s word is spiritual food.

People who lived as they pleased in the world feel stressed when they hear that they must live according to God’s will.

But as they live their life of faith more diligently, they will also come to realize that the only way to relieve that stress is to know God more deeply.

They will also learn that praise is the way to overcome the lusts of the flesh, and that when they worship in the Spirit and in truth, they grow stronger as children of God.

Just as we eat a balanced diet to keep the body healthy, as believers pray, read the Word, sing praise and worship, their spiritual eyes to see the dark world will open, and they will realize that they are growing wise.

And as they come to understand spiritually that the kingdom of God truly exists, they grow healthy within an ever firmer faith.

Going to church can bring spiritual growth, but the way to receive great help in maturing further spiritually is none other than the gifts of the Spirit.

When believers receive gifts from the Holy Spirit and become spiritually full, their faith, standing on the rock, is not shaken, so the gifts are very beneficial to believers.

1 Corinthians 12:12-14

12For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. 13For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink into one Spirit. 14For the body is not one member, but many.

Christ is the head, and all believers on this earth who believe in Christ are members that together make up one body.

Just as the body is a single whole and yet is organically connected with its many members, they are closely bound to one another and cannot be separated.

Christ the head and the many members have different roles, but through the working of the Holy Spirit they have perfect unity, so they cannot be separated.

The body has many members, but each of those members has its own role, so each need only carry out that role well.

Just as there are members you can see on the outside, and there are also precious ones like the heart that are unseen yet indispensable, so among the believers who make up the body of Christ there are outgoing members and also members who devote themselves unseen. That is why the church can be healthy.

The one who assigns these roles is the Holy Spirit, and the one who helps believers carry out those roles well is also the Holy Spirit. So the one who called us while we lived in the world without knowing Jesus, and made us one body with Jesus, is the Holy Spirit.

Let us think about this in a simple way.

Think of the Holy Spirit as a magnet, and think of the iron filings in the sand as believers: people chosen by God who are still in the world because they have not yet heard the gospel.

When a magnet passes once over sand, you can see the iron filings clinging to it. You almost wonder whether there really was that much iron in there.

When the Holy Spirit passes over the hearts of chosen people living in the world, they hear the Spirit’s call and become one with Christ. Just as many iron filings cling to a magnet, believers respond to the powerful call and power of the Holy Spirit and become members of Christ.

When the Holy Spirit works, believers will become one body with Christ, and they will live as children of God in the places where the Holy Spirit sets them.

In verse 14 Paul says, “For the body is not one member, but many,” and then says that if the foot says it will not stay attached to the body because it is not the hand, that does not make it detached, and if the ear or the eye said the same thing, that would not make them detached from the body either.

What this means is that the human body can be healthy when the hands and feet, the ears and eyes, and many other members are all together.

The body of Christ is the same.

Someone with outstanding wisdom cannot do God’s work just by resolving to take on everything alone, and the church’s work does not get done because someone with great wealth resolves to take on everything alone.

When Christ gives a command, the hand must move as a hand and the foot as a foot, and for the hand and foot to move, the eye must first see and judge. That is what this means: each member has its own role to play.

The Holy Spirit gives gifts to reveal Christ well, so that more souls may be saved. So if you have received gifts, you must know clearly that whatever power you exercise, it is not your own power, and you must not become proud.

Because everything is the work of the Holy Spirit, only those filled with the Holy Spirit can confess Christ as Lord, and only those who have received the grace of the Holy Spirit can devote themselves to the kingdom of God.

Paul said that there are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit; various kinds of service, and the same Lord; and various kinds of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all.

He is saying that whatever mission a believer has received and whatever gift they have received, it is for God.

In other words, it is a promise that God will bear all the responsibility for whatever believers led by the Holy Spirit decide and do.

Verse 8 records that to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit.

There are many kinds of gifts: there is the gift of wisdom and the gift of understanding the Word, and also the gift of faith, the gift of healing, the gift of working miracles, the gift of exercising the power of prophecy, the gift of discerning spirits, the gift of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, and a great many other gifts.

The one Holy Spirit distributes to each person the best gift, as he desires.

Gifts are not something people can receive just because they want to.

That is why, for believers who are wise, what matters is not longing for the gifts other people have received but knowing what gift they themselves have now received from the Holy Spirit.

If someone sees another believer speaking in tongues and interpreting, and complains that they have not been given the gift of tongues and interpretation even though they have received the more precious gift of love, nothing could be more foolish. For every gift is given by the one Holy Spirit.

If you value the gift you have received and carry out your mission, the Holy Spirit will grant you yet another gift to give strength to that gift.

That is, when you are thankful for the gift you have received and faithful with it, the Holy Spirit pours out more as it is needed.

Some gifts show, like tongues, but a full faith that cannot be seen is also a gift one can have only when the Holy Spirit gives it, so it is a very precious gift.

When you use the full faith you have received to discern the spirit of a believer who is weak in faith and to pray for them, God will pour out more gifts on you, who are carrying out a great mission.

If a brother is always interceding in prayer for another, that prayer cannot be seen, so it may look as though nothing is being done. But God hears that prayer and works, so the church and its believers will grow all the more, and the believer who prays will receive a great reward from God.

Our bodies have parts we adorn lavishly to look beautiful, but they also have very precious parts that are not seen.

In the same way, believers who treasure their one-to-one relationship with God will live a blessed life.

Deuteronomy 19:21-22

21You may say in your heart, “How shall we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?” 22When a prophet speaks in Yahweh’s name, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.

The fruit of a believer’s devotion cannot be seen right away, but one day it will bear fruit.

For example, when a kettle is full of water but its lid is closed, you cannot readily tell whether there is water in it or not. But if you put the kettle on the fire, the water inside boils over, so you can tell there is water without opening the lid.

In the same way, even when we believers have received gifts, people and the world may not know it, but that faith will be revealed through the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So we must live by faith, so that the gifts we have received from God become fruit in the saving of souls.

Believers who have received the gift of prophecy in particular receive words directly from God, so it is important that they understand Scripture deeply and deliver what they hear exactly as they heard it.

The reason is that the words of prophecy God gives may run contrary to the reasoning of the world, and it must not happen that someone hears the word but, not understanding God’s will well, delivers it wrongly.

God told the people of Israel that he would raise up a prophet from among their brothers and put his words in that prophet’s mouth, and that they were to listen to what the prophet commanded. And he said that whoever did not listen to his words, which the prophet spoke in his name, would be punished.

And he went on to say that if a prophet, though commanded by him, grew proud and did not proclaim the word in his name, that prophet would be put to death.

Receiving the gift of prophecy is, like the other gifts, not something people receive because they want it; the Holy Spirit gives it, so even someone who has not fully understood Scripture can receive it.

If a prophet had a worldly outlook and had not been born again, then even on hearing the voice of God they would mix their own thoughts and feelings into the word and would not deliver God’s will in full. For they might suffer disadvantage for delivering the word.

That is why God pronounced a curse, saying that he would put to death anyone who received the word and yet, out of pride, did not fully proclaim his will.

The command to obey without fail the word a prophet proclaims is also a fearful word. When people hear the word and do not obey it, it is because they do not believe God. However much they excuse themselves by saying they do not know God’s will, they have already heard it, so they will not be able to escape God’s judgment.

When God said he would raise up a prophet and they were to listen to that prophet, the people wondered how they could know whether what the prophet said was Yahweh’s word.

God, reading their thoughts, said that if the word a prophet proclaimed in Yahweh’s name did not follow and did not happen, it was not a word Yahweh had given; the prophet had spoken it presumptuously, and they need not be afraid of that prophet.

With the gift of prophecy received from the Holy Spirit, the word must come to pass in the world.

If it does not come to pass, that prophecy is human thinking and a word that has nothing to do with God, so those who heard the prophecy need not be afraid.

For the prophecy has not come true in life.

But if you hear a prophetic word and that word is coming true in your life, you must fear the one who delivered the word, and you must obey the word.

If someone does not obey God even though the prophecy has come true in their life, they will be severely rebuked by God.

And this word is a very fearful word, not only for those who have received the gift of prophecy but for anyone who has received any gift at all from the Holy Spirit.

For the gifts the Holy Spirit gives carry responsibility.

Believers have the responsibility to live according to God’s will and the mission to preach the gospel. So when they carry out that responsibility, the Holy Spirit takes responsibility for the life the believer has lived by faith and helps them not to be put to shame.

But if believers do not believe God and his word, and so do not act according to the Word, the Holy Spirit cannot help them, even though he wants to.

When you made a decision in the name of God, by the grace the Holy Spirit gave, with faith in Christ, did that work come to pass?

Have you ever, trusting the Holy Spirit who helps you spiritually, made a decision even at a physical loss, and received not only spiritual victory but even physical blessing?

If you acted in faith, you will surely have received the help of the Holy Spirit. That is, if you actually lived out the Word.

For the Holy Spirit is the one who helps so that none of the matters believers decide in order to exalt the name of Christ become stumbling blocks.

If a stumbling block has arisen in your life because you did not live by the Word, turn back from the way you were going, obey God’s word, and pray, relying on the Holy Spirit. Then God will help you for the sake of your faith.

It has been nearly thirty years since I received the gifts of tongues, interpretation and prophecy. When I first received tongues, like the Corinthian believers I did not meet a pastor who could explain the gift to me in detail, and I wandered a great deal.

Then, when I saw in the Bible that tongues must be interpreted, I prayed thirty minutes at a time, seven or eight times a day, to receive interpretation.

If the tongues were not interpreted during thirty minutes of prayer, I would get up again and work, and then pray again; I prayed like this for a long time.

Then one day, suddenly, I came to know through interpretation what the tongues meant. I was even surprised to learn that they meant something entirely different from what I had thought as I spoke in tongues.

Then, as I read the Word, I began to pray about what God wanted me to understand through the events that happen in the Bible. The answers I received as I held on in prayer over the many events recorded in Scripture are the very sermons I am preaching to you.

Then one day my mother was crying, and suddenly I felt I wanted to pray for her.

As I held my mother’s hand and prayed, words came to my mind addressed to her, asking why she was crying now and what the meaning of those tears was.

And I delivered, without adding or taking away anything, the word that tears shed without fully believing in God were nothing but self-pity and had nothing to do with God.

That was the first time I delivered a word of God’s will.

After that, I fasted and prayed and strove to know God’s will in more detail, and to this day I have been delivering God’s heart to you as well.

As we have seen the Word fulfilled exactly as God revealed it, in each of your lives, your families and the church, my faith and yours have grown together.

The Bible states it plainly.

It says that whoever does not listen to the word spoken in God’s name will be rebuked, and that false prophets who presumptuously use God’s name to deliver their own thoughts will be judged, so we must fear the Word.

Now far too many people are selling God’s name and delivering false prophecies, though nothing they say follows or happens. So we must never ask someone to pray for us who has not rightly understood God’s will or does not know Scripture.

There are some who say that the tongues we speak now are wrong, and that because prophecy is already recorded in Revelation, it is a lie to say one has received the gift of prophecy.

Of course, every prophecy concerning salvation is recorded in the Bible, so there is no further prophecy. But the power of prophecy God gives us now is a power needed to convey God’s deep will to people and to build them up so that they can rely on God more.

Even now there are churches and pastors who forbid tongues and persecute those who have received the power of prophecy, branding them mystics.

But the Bible clearly says that the Holy Spirit gave tongues and also granted the gift of interpreting those tongues, and that there is also a gift of prophecy that helps believers not to be used by the world and Satan.

If the Bible says that there are all kinds of gifts through the Holy Spirit, then they exist.

Just because a person cannot speak in tongues or prophesy does not mean these gifts do not exist.

Believers who have received gifts and understand the Word do not tell lies for the sake of human flesh, as the fortune-tellers of the world do. That is why, even as I tell you to long for the gifts, I teach you Scripture diligently.

Every gift is given by the Holy Spirit, so it is for the spirit.

If you long only for gifts and neither read the Word nor pray, you may become a very dangerous believer.

If you first read the Word, pray and come to love God, then whatever gift you receive will be used for the glory of God and the building up of the church.

God has given believers gifts in order to use them as tools. If, in spite of that, they cannot love the members of the one body and cannot help those members have hope in the kingdom of God, that in itself is sinning against God.

Is there a brother near you who is spiritually weak? Teach that believer the words of Christ and set them on the rock.

Is there a foolish person near you who is leading the body of Christ into strife? Then pray for that soul, who may fall into hell.

Whatever gift you have received, it was given directly by the Holy Spirit, so no gift is greater or better than another.

In my view, the best gifts are the gift of faith and the gift of love. If you have faith and love, all the other gifts come along with them, and thanksgiving, patience, fullness and devotion are all within them, so you will be able to reveal the glory of Christ most greatly.

Even if someone prophesies, heals the sick and preaches the gospel, if they do not live out the Word they have preached, they will receive a greater rebuke from God.

That is why the place of a pastor is a fearful one, and the place of a believer who has received gifts is a fearful one.

1 Corinthians 12:18

18But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he desired.

I want to give a great deal of praise to Senior Deaconess Cho Chun-ja.

She is seventy, so it must be very hard for her, and yet she comes in during the week and carefully prepares ahead so that the believers can have a delicious lunch on Sunday. When I see this, I feel deeply grateful.

For the heart with which she devotes herself is sincere.

Of course, there are other senior deaconesses helping at her side, and that must be what makes her work possible.

Senior Deaconess Cho looks into the hearts of the believers one by one, packs up food for them, and even makes food at home and brings it to them. Watching this, and seeing the church grow warm through her faithfulness, I give thanks to God in prayer.

Even without her asking me to pray for her, I find myself naturally praying for her.

I think this may be what a beautiful church is: one body, its members helping one another.

Even if we sacrifice a little, if someone can be comforted and gain strength through our sacrifice, God will bless the precious believer who chose to sacrifice.

The Holy Spirit gives gifts so that the many members may care for one another without strife and build a healthy church together, and so that the church may build up the many people who will come to receive Christ.

What gift have you received?

You must know what gift the Holy Spirit has given especially to you alone.

What you are good at and love to do is likely the gift the Holy Spirit has given you.

Treasure that gift, and strive to use it to save souls.

God will see that faithful heart first of all, and he will help you through the armies of heaven and the angels, so that there are no stumbling blocks in your life.