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 hardly anyone who does not take vitamins.

Walk into a pharmacy and you will find countless kinds of supplements, along with a great many health products whose purpose is hard to make out.

Granted, someone who eats a well-balanced diet will not run into serious trouble for skipping supplements. Still, we are told, since even such a diet cannot meet the recommended daily amounts, supplements can be of some help.

Our bodies develop problems wherever a nutrient is lacking, whichever one it may be, so taking one particular supplement does not make us healthy.

The spiritual life is no different.

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 the word, hear it, and pass it on. For the word of God is spiritual food.

Someone who has lived in the world as they pleased feels the strain when they hear that they must now live according to God’s will.

But as they press on in faith more earnestly, they will also come to see that the only way to relieve that strain is to know God more deeply.

They will discover that praise is the way to overcome the desires of the flesh, and that when they worship in spirit and truth they grow stronger as children of God.

Just as we eat a balanced diet to keep the body healthy, so as believers pray, read the word, sing praise, and worship, their spiritual eyes are opened to see this dark world, and they become aware that they are growing in wisdom.

And as they come to know in their spirit that the Kingdom of God actually exists, they grow healthy in an ever firmer faith.

Simply going to church can bring spiritual growth, but the path that can be of great help toward spiritual maturity is the gifts of the Spirit.

When God’s people receive gifts from the Holy Spirit and are filled spiritually, their faith stands on the rock and cannot be shaken, and this is of great benefit to them.

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 on this earth who believe in Christ are members, together forming one body.

The body is a single whole, yet it lives in an organic bond with its many members; in the same way, Christ and his members are so closely bound together that they cannot be separated.

Christ the head and the many members have different roles, but the working of the Holy Spirit makes them perfectly one, which is why they cannot be pulled apart.

The body has many members, and each has its own role to play, so each needs only to fulfill that role well.

Some members can be seen, while others, like the heart, are hidden yet precious and indispensable. In the same way, among the saints who make up the body of Christ there are members who stand out and members who serve unseen, and it is both together that keep the church healthy.

It is the Holy Spirit who assigns these roles, and it is also the Holy Spirit who helps us carry them out well. In other words, the one who called us when we lived in the world without knowing Jesus, and made us one body with him, is the Holy Spirit.

Let me put this in simple terms.

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

Pass a magnet through sand once, and you will see the iron filings cling to it. You find yourself wondering whether so much iron could really have been in there.

When the Holy Spirit passes over the hearts of those who are chosen yet still living in the world, they hear the Spirit’s call and become one with Christ. Just as the many filings cling to the magnet, God’s chosen respond to the Spirit’s mighty call and power and become members of Christ.

When the Holy Spirit works, his people will become one body with Christ and will live as God’s children in the place where the Spirit sets them.

In verse 14 Paul says, “For the body is not one member, but many.” He goes on to say that if the foot says that, because it is not the hand, it will not be part of the body, that does not make it any less part of the body; and the same is true if the ear or the eye says it.

He means that a human body is healthy when hands and feet, ears and eyes, and many other members are all present together.

So it is with the body of Christ.

A person of great wisdom cannot do God’s work by resolving to take everything on alone, and a person of great wealth cannot make the church’s work happen by insisting on carrying it all alone.

When Christ gives a command, the hand must move as a hand and the foot as a foot, and for hand and foot to move, the eye must first see and judge. Each member has a role that is its own.

The Holy Spirit gives gifts so that Christ may be clearly shown and more souls may be saved. Those who have received gifts must therefore know clearly that whatever power they exercise is not their own, and they must not become proud.

Because all of it is the work of the Holy Spirit, only those filled with the Spirit can confess Christ as Lord, and only those who have received the Spirit’s grace can give 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; various kinds of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all.

Whatever calling we have been given, whatever gift we have received, he is saying, it is for God.

To put it another way, it is a promise that God himself will bear the responsibility for every judgment and every action of a believer who is led by the Holy Spirit.

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: the gift of wisdom and the gift of understanding the word; the gift of faith, gifts of healing, and the gift of working miracles; the gift of prophecy, the discerning of spirits, the gift of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, and a great many more.

The one Spirit distributes to each person the gift that is best for them, as he desires.

No one can receive a gift just because they would like one.

So if we are wise, we will not hanker after the gifts others have received. What matters is knowing which gift we ourselves have received from the Spirit.

Suppose a believer sees others speaking in tongues and interpreting, and complains that they have not been given those gifts, when they themselves have received the still more precious gift of love. Nothing could be more foolish, because every gift is given by the one Spirit.

If you treasure the gift you have received and fulfill your calling, the Holy Spirit will grant you yet another gift to give strength to the first.

When we are thankful for the gift we have received and faithful with it, the Spirit pours out more as it is needed.

Some gifts, like tongues, are plain to see, but a full faith that no one can see is also a gift we can have only if the Spirit gives it, and that makes it very precious.

When, with the full faith you have received, you discern the spirit of someone weak in faith and pray for them, God will pour out still more gifts on you, who are bearing a great calling.

Suppose a brother is always interceding for another. Because no one can see it, that prayer may look like nothing at all. But God hears it and works through it, so the church and its people will grow all the more, and the one who prays will receive a great reward from God.

Our bodies have parts we adorn to make them look beautiful, but they also have hidden parts that are very precious.

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

Deuteronomy 18:21-22

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.

What God’s people give of themselves shows no fruit for now, but one day it will bear fruit.

Take a kettle full of water. With the lid closed, you cannot readily tell whether there is water inside or not. But set it on the fire, and the water will boil over, so you know the water is there without lifting the lid.

In the same way, even when believers have received gifts that people and the world cannot know about, their faith will show itself through the fullness of the Spirit. We must live by faith, then, so that the gifts we have received from God bear fruit in the saving of souls.

Those who have received the gift of prophecy, above all, receive the word directly from God, so they must understand Scripture deeply, and it is vital that they pass on exactly what they have heard.

The reason is that the prophetic word God gives may run counter to the world’s way of thinking, and we must not hear the word and then, failing to grasp God’s will, pass it on 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 he commanded. And he said that whoever would not listen to his words, spoken by the prophet in his name, would be punished.

He went on to say that if a prophet, though commanded, grew proud and did not proclaim the word in his name, that prophet would die.

Like the other gifts, the gift of prophecy is not something a person receives because they want it; the Holy Spirit gives it, and so even someone who has not fully understood the Bible can receive it.

If a prophet still looks at things the world’s way and has not been born again, then even when they hear God’s voice they will mix their own thoughts and feelings into the word and will not convey God’s will in full. They hold back because proclaiming the word might cost them.

So if someone receives the word and yet, out of pride, does not proclaim God’s will in full, God has pronounced a curse on them: he will put them to death.

The command to obey what the prophet proclaims, without fail, is a fearful word as well. Those who hear the word and do not obey it do so because they do not believe God. Even if someone pleads that they did not know God’s will, they have already heard it, and there is no escaping God’s judgment.

When God said he would raise up a prophet and that they were to listen to him, the people thought, How shall we know whether what the prophet says is the word of Yahweh?

Reading their thoughts, God said that if what a prophet proclaims in Yahweh’s name does not follow and does not happen, it is not a word Yahweh has spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, and they had no need to be afraid of him.

A gift of prophecy received from the Holy Spirit must come to pass in the world.

If it does not come to pass, that prophecy is human thinking, a word that has nothing to do with God, and those who hear it need not fear.

What settles it is that the prophecy has not come true in their lives.

But if you hear a prophetic word and see it coming true in your life, you must fear the one who brought the word, and you must obey it.

If someone still will not obey God after a prophecy has come true in their life, they will be sternly rebuked by God.

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

For the gifts the Spirit gives carry responsibility with them.

We are responsible to live according to God’s will, and we have been charged to proclaim the gospel. When we take up that responsibility, the Holy Spirit takes responsibility for the life we have lived by faith and helps us so that we will not be put to shame.

But if we do not believe God and his word, and therefore do not act on it, the Holy Spirit cannot help us, however much he wants to.

Have you ever made a decision in God’s name, by the grace the Holy Spirit gave you, by faith in Christ, and then seen him work?

Have you ever made a decision trusting the Holy Spirit, who helps us in the spirit even when we lose out in the flesh, and received not only spiritual victory but blessing in the flesh as well?

If you acted in faith, I have no doubt you received the Holy Spirit’s help, if, that is, you lived out the word.

This is because the Holy Spirit is the one who helps his people, so that no decision they make to exalt Christ’s name becomes a stumbling block.

If a stumbling block has come into your life because you did not live by the word, I hope you will turn back from the road you were on, obey God’s word, lean on the Holy Spirit, and pray. 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, I, like the Corinthians, never met a pastor who could explain the gift to me in any detail, and I wandered a great deal.

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

I would pray for thirty minutes, and if the tongue was not interpreted, I would get up and work, and then pray again. I went on praying like this for a long time.

Then one day, quite suddenly, through interpretation I came to know what my tongues meant. I was astonished to find that the meaning was entirely different from what I had imagined as I spoke.

And as I read the word, I began to pray about what God wanted me to understand from the events of the Bible. The answers I received as I held on in prayer to the many events recorded in Scripture are the very sermons I am preaching to you.

Then one day my mother was weeping, and suddenly I felt a desire to pray for her.

As I held her hand and prayed, words came into my mind, addressed to her: Why are you weeping now, and what do these tears mean?

Then came the words, which I passed on to her without adding or taking away: tears shed without fully trusting me are nothing but self-pity, and they have nothing to do with me.

That was the first time I delivered God’s will to anyone.

After that I fasted and prayed and strove to know God’s will more closely, and to this day I have been bringing God’s heart to you.

As we have watched the word come to pass, just as God revealed it, in your own lives, your families, and the church, your faith and mine have grown together.

The Bible says it plainly.

Those who will not listen to the word spoken in God’s name will be rebuked, and the false prophet who presumes to use God’s name to speak their own thoughts will be judged, and so we must fear the word.

Today far too many people are trading on God’s name and spreading false prophecy, with nothing that follows and nothing that comes to pass. That is why we must never ask for prayer from someone who has not properly understood God’s will or who does not know the Scriptures.

There are some who say that the tongues we speak today are false, and that since prophecy has already been written down in Revelation, anyone who claims to have received the gift of prophecy is lying.

It is true that every prophecy concerning salvation is recorded in the Bible, so there is no further prophecy of that kind. But the prophetic power 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 him more.

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

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

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

That I cannot speak in tongues or prophesy does not mean they do not exist.

So when I urge you to long for gifts and at the same time teach you the Scriptures so earnestly, it is because believers who have received gifts and understand the word will not tell lies to serve the flesh, as the fortune-tellers of the world do.

Every gift comes from the Holy Spirit, and for that reason every gift serves the spirit.

If you long only for gifts, without reading the word or praying, you could become a very dangerous kind of believer.

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

God has given gifts so that he can use his people as his instruments. If, even so, we cannot love the members of our own body, and cannot help them set their hope on the Kingdom of God, that in itself is sin against God.

Is there someone beside you who is spiritually weak? May you teach them the word of Christ and set them on the rock.

Is there someone beside you foolish enough to lead the body of Christ into strife? Then I hope you will pray for that soul, who may yet fall into hell.

Whatever gift you have received, the Holy Spirit gave it to you directly, so there is no greater or better gift.

In my view the best gifts are the gift of faith and the gift of love. Where there are faith and love, every other gift comes with them, and thanksgiving, patience, fullness, and devotion are all contained within them, so they can display the glory of Christ most fully.

Even if someone prophesies, heals the sick, and proclaims the gospel, if they do not live out the word they proclaim, they will receive a heavier rebuke from God.

This is what makes the pastor’s place a fearful one, and the place of any believer who has received gifts.

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 Senior Deaconess Cho Chun-ja a great deal of praise.

She is seventy years old, and it must be hard for her, yet she comes in during the week to prepare, well ahead and with great care, so that the congregation can enjoy a good lunch on Sunday. When I see this, my heart is full of gratitude.

I am grateful because the devotion behind it is sincere.

Of course, it must be the other senior deaconesses working beside her who make it possible for her to do all this.

Senior Deaconess Cho looks into the heart of each member of the congregation, packing food for some to take home and cooking at home to bring to others. As I watch her faithfulness warm the church, I give thanks to God in prayer.

Even when she has not asked me to pray for her, I find myself praying for her naturally.

I think this is what a beautiful church looks like: one body whose members help one another.

If, by my sacrificing a little, someone can be comforted and find strength, God will bless that precious saint who chose to sacrifice.

Many members caring for one another without strife and building a healthy church, and the church building up the many who will yet receive Christ: this is the very reason the Holy Spirit gives gifts.

What gift have you received?

You need to know what gift the Holy Spirit has given especially to you, and to you alone.

What you do well and what you love may well be the gift the Holy Spirit has given you.

I hope you will treasure that gift, and use it as you labor to save souls.

God sees that faithful heart before anything else, and through the hosts of heaven and his angels he will help you, so that nothing in your life becomes a stumbling block.