Spiritual Gifts Introduction: Why the Ascension. 1 Cor 12-14

The subject as we get into 1 Corinthians 12 is on spiritual gifts. Chapters 12-14 describe for us the basic principles governing the use of spiritual gifts. Chapter 12 focuses on the importance of spiritual gifts. The source of spiritual gifts is God the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts are given to every believer at the instant of salvation, and their purpose is to minister to other members of the body of Christ. The context is corporate worship, the public assembly of believers, it is not talking about the use of spiritual gifts necessarily outside the church, although some of those gifts do function outside the public meeting of the body of Christ, for example, mercy, evangelism, would function outside of the local church. But seen through the grid of the revelation of God in 1 Corinthians 12 the primary purpose of spiritual gifts is to minister to members of the body of Christ. As is stated again and again we are members of one another, so one of the important factors in looking at the whole image of the body of Christ is that we are one body. That emphasizes unity, that we are members of one another. On the other hand there are differences in gifts, so that indicates and emphasizes individuality.

As we get into the study of spiritual gifts we will see why there has to be a balance there. We always have to struggle and fight against human viewpoint emphasis on whatever it is that we are teaching and in spiritual gifts one of the human viewpoint factors that influences American Christianity is the idea of rugged individualism. This idea so emphasizes the individual and the importance of the individual that when it comes over to Christianity and we start emphasizing spiritual gifts people are always asking what their spiritual gift is and how do they use it. Some people push it to extreme and they don’t even get involved in a local church very much, which, it is recognized, is sometimes very difficult today. Many modern Christians think that spiritual gifts are something that should be sought after, something that should be emphasized, that some should be emphasized more than others. For example the charismatic gift of tongues or healing, or something like that. That was the problem the Corinthians had but Paul said that what is more important than spiritual gifts are the virtues, especially faith, hope, and love, and the one that is the greatest is love. Chapter 14 deals with the regulation of gifts in the local assembly and understanding the purpose for these gifts.

The question we need to ask before we get into the whole subject of spiritual gifts is, why are there spiritual gifts and what is the significance of the distribution of spiritual gifts in the church age? Remember, spiritual gifts did not exist prior to the day of Pentecost. There were no spiritual gifts in the Old Testament. There were certain enhanced capacities in the Old Testament that were certainly the product of the work of the Holy Spirit but remember He neither indwelt nor filled believers in the Old Testament, they were not baptized by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and they weren’t sealed by the Holy Spirit. None of the ministries of God the Holy Spirit functioned in the Old Testament. There were abilities such as prophecy but it wasn’t a spiritual gift, that terminology is never utilized in the Old Testament. There were prophets through whom God revealed His Word but it wasn’t a spiritual gift. Furthermore, there was healing. Fr example, Elijah healed the widow’s son. There were some miracles that were performed at times by Moses, by Elijah, by Elisha and by a couple of other prophets, but these were not spiritual gifts. Remember, by definition a spiritual gift is an ability provided at salvation for every believer by the Holy Spirit. Actually, all three members of the Trinity are involved in the distribution of spiritual gifts. A spiritual gift as given is an especially enhanced ability, not a natural talent, provided at salvation by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of benefiting the body of Christ in terms of spiritual growth and encouragement. Remember, before Pentecost there was no body of Christ. After the Rapture occurs, at the end of the church age when all believers living and dead are taken immediately to be with the Lord in the air, there will be no body of Christ. Therefore spiritual gifts as such are limited to operation in the church age. They are unique to church age believers.

Why is it that in the church age that God is giving individual believers these special abilities? We get a hint in Ephesians 4:7-12. These verses give us an indication that the giving of spiritual gifts is directly related to the ascension and session of Christ; it is related to the fact that Christ had to ascend before He could send the Holy Spirit. So we have to address the whole subject of the ascension and session of Christ and its relationship to the church age before we can ever answer they key question: Why spiritual gifts?

Ephesians 4:7 ^NASB “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Grace here is given “according to the measure,” so it is going to differ, it is going to be proportional. Not everybody is going to have the same spiritual gift. [8] “Therefore it says.” He is going to go back and pull a quote from Psalm 68 that is going to provide a rationale and a background for understanding spiritual gifts. Principle: You can’t understand the New Testament unless you understand the Old Testament. What we will see as we go through this study is that the whole doctrine of the ascension of Christ is embedded in a number of Old Testament passages. It may not be precisely clear how they relate in the Old Testament to the original hearers but the New Testament writers under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit are going back and are pulling from these psalms and other events and trying these things together for us to provide for us the insight necessary to understand the purpose for spiritual gifts. “‘WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.’” What we will see is that this verse is slightly different from Psalm 68:17. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul changes it because he is going to take the principle, the idea, and tweak it and apply it in a different way. This isn’t giving us an interpretation of Psalm 68:17, he is applying a principle. The basic principle is the giving of gifts. That is the key idea here at the end of verse 8. He gave gifts to men, whereas the difference is in Psalm 68:17 that it is talking about “received gifts from men.” Then from quoting that passage all Paul is doing is focussing on that one phrase, “He ascended.” He is going to comment on that and derive a principle from it. [9] “(Now this {expression,} ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?” He looks at the verb in v.8, ‘when he ascended,’ stops and says: What does that mean? Ascend means to go up. e always say that what goes up has to come down, but in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ who is not bound by gravity, when He goes up He had to first come down. That is the point that Paul is making in v. 9. [10] “He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)” There is the doctrine of the ascension of Christ. [11] “And He gave some {as} apostles, and some {as} prophets, and some {as} evangelists, and some {as} pastors and teachers, [12] for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”

So the main point to be made in these verses is that the ascension was necessary before Jesus could send the Holy Spirit and distribute spiritual gifts. So something is going on in the heavenlies with Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of God the Father that has to do with the distribution of spiritual gifts, and the distribution of those spiritual gifts is related to the unique purposes of the church age and what God is doing in the life of believers in the church age today. Before we can intelligently discuss the issues of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 we have to answer the question: What is going on with Christ’s ascension? This involves the question: Why did Christ have to ascend? Many theologians, many people, believe His purpose was primarily to dies on the cross for sins. That is primarily within the camp known as Reformed or Covenant theology. Well He died on the cross for sins, He was buried, He rose again the third day. So why did He ascend? Furthermore we have to answer the question: Why did Christ ascend before sending the Holy Spirit?

What happened to God’s plan when Jesus Christ died? What was to be the next item on the agenda? From the Old Testament perspective at least it looked as if God’s plan was ended. The prophecy was a prophecy of the coming of Messiah, yet Messiah came, sins were atoned for, He died on the cross, buried, rose from the grace the third day, yet that didn’t end history. When Jesus came He offered the kingdom to Israel. That offer was rejected. He as the Messianic King, the promised Messiah, was rejected. So we have to ask the question: What did that rejection do to the kingdom program of God. This is important.

There are basically two views that are competing to day, especially within our camp which is the dispensational camp. One of the idea that Jesus came and offered the kingdom and it was rejected, so there is a gap, and then Jesus will return at the second coming at which time He will inaugurate the kingdom, and there will be a literal 1000-year rule of Christ. But there is another influence that has come in in recent years and it is really borrowing a lot of material from covenant theology and amillennialism, that the kingdom wasn’t just offered and rejected at the first advent, in fact it was inaugurated but didn’t fully come in, and there is this gradual coming in of the kingdom until Jesus returns at the second coming and then it is fully here. The terminology is: It is already here but not fully here. These are important issues that underlie a lot of crucial doctrines. This is what underlies the understanding of the kingdom that is fuelling a lot of Pentecostal-charismatic theology today. It is this understanding of the kingdom that was under girded the whole concept of the signs and wonders movement, that if we are already in the kingdom then we can expect certain manifestations of the kingdom such as “old men dreaming dreams” and “younger seeing visions, and healings” and all of that. It was used as a rationale to try to throw the in sign gifts of the early part of the church age and make them normative throughout the church age. It is also used in many other ways to try to change the concept of the kingdom, and if we are in some form of the kingdom now then that affects the church and our understanding of the church.

The problem that Israel had at the first advent was that they didn’t understand the relationship between the cross and the crown, between the suffering Messiah and the glory of the Messiah. This distinction was not made clear in the Old Testament. By the time that Jesus came at the first coming the distinction between these two events was not clear at all and this led to a certain dilemma. When Jesus was on earth at the first advent the people that saw Him and heard Him were not thinking in terms of two advents, they were thinking in terms of one appearance of the Messiah. Unfortunately they didn’t understand that the cross had to come before the crown, and so they thought that the crown should come before the cross. They didn’t understand the relationship between the suffering of the Messiah and the glory of the Messiah, and as a result the Pharisees and other religious leaders tended to diminish the significance of the suffering of Messiah and put all the emphasis on the glories of the Messiah and the political agenda of a reigning Messiah because they wanted to throw off the rule and reign of the Roman empire.

We can get some indication of this from Scripture. For example, 1 Peter 1:10, 11 ^NASB “ As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that {would come} to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.”

Before Jesus could bring in the kingdom certain things had to happen in relationship to sin and evil and human good, but there was no comprehension of that by the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. 1 Peter indicates that the prophets clearly understood that there were two aspects to the Messiah’s coming, the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow, but not all of those who came subsequently to the prophets. The theme of suffering is clearly evident. For example, Isaiah 53:3-7 where there is an emphasis on the suffering of the Messiah. ^NASB “He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being {fell} upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.”

Then there was the glory aspect of the Messiah, His reign, the Messianic kingdom that would come in. Isaiah 40:3-5 ^NASB “A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for the LORD [Yahweh] in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley; Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, And all flesh will see {it} together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’” Notice: “Clear the way for the LORD [Yahweh] in the wilderness.” John the Baptist applies that to Jesus, so when people come along and say that the New Testament doesn’t really teach the deity of Christ it is clear that again and again and again the passages in the Old Testament that relate to Yahweh, the God of Israel, are applied directly to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. One thing that we should notice in these three verses and that is the announcement that someone preparing a way for Yahweh in the wilderness is linked to the revelation of the gory of Yahweh in verse 5. So we see that these prophecies of first advent and second advent are all jumbled together.

In the life of Christ as it is given in the Gospels we have pretty much a same pattern, i.e. there is a period where the Messiah is presented to the people which probably took place during the first two years or so of His public ministry. The whole time He was in His public ministry, both in Judea and in Jerusalem, there is this growing and gradual dissent that is coming from the religious leaders. This opposition to Jesus becomes more and more intense and builds to a point where there is a break with the national leadership of the Jews. This occurs in Matthew 12, and is seen in 12:31 where Jesus talks about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in this confrontation with the Pharisees who had just accused Him of performing miracles by the power of Satan. (The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in context is a historically-conditioned sin. It was a national sin. He is talking about what happens in context in Matthew that Israel as a nation, focused into the leadership of the nation, the Pharisees, are rejecting Him) That doesn’t mean that every Jew rejected Him, but the designated leaders of the people rejected His messianic offer. That is what Jesus is focusing on here as the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. All these miracles, the healings, were there to demonstrate His messianic credentials. They signified that He was who He claimed to be, the Messiah, but the Pharisees rejected it and so Jesus tells them this is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and it won’t be forgiven them. And it wasn’t forgiven them, that generation was judged and went out under divine discipline in 70 AD because they rejected Jesus Christ’s claim as Messiah. That is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. This is not talking about a soteriological forgiveness for individuals, it is talking about God’s plan and purposes for Israel.

Matthew 12:34 ^NASB “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? [They can’t] For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” Notice how Jesus doesn’t recognize the goodness of man. They have a sin nature, it has not been dealt with through salvation; they are evil; they are corrupt. What comes out of the mouth reveals the soul. So in Matthew 12 the leadership rejects the Messiah, and then in chapter 13 Jesus changes His whole strategy in terms of reaching people. He begins to address the disciples in parables. The reason He does this is to go into almost a secret code to take to His followers because He is no longer making a public offer of the kingdom. The offer of the kingdom drops out at this point and the message changes.

Now we have to stop and think in a broader scope of theology and how we understand the Scriptures, because what this is going to set up for us is an understanding of the differences and the importance of the differences between dispensational theology and covenant or Reformed theology. There are three things that are distinct to dispensationalism. The first is a consistent distinction between God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for the church, that God has made certain promises and prophecies to Israel in the Old testament, that He would give them a specific piece of real estate, they would have a specific political, geographical kingdom, a physical descendant of David sitting on a literal throne in Jerusalem, and that that never happened in human history, therefore for God to be faithful to Himself and to His Word that will happen in the future. So these prophecies are all taken to be literal and yet unfulfilled. There is a consistent literal interpretation. Second, there is a distinction between Israel and the church, that Israel is an earthly people with an earthly destiny, and that God has a plan and a purpose for Israel that is distinct from His plan for the church which is a heavenly people with a heavenly destiny. Also that Israel started with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and that God’s plan for Israel was disrupted with their rejection of Christ as Messiah at which point the time clock stopped on Israel and it left seven years. That last seven years comes in the form of the great Tribulation which occurred after the Rapture of the church. The third, and this is important, is that in dispensational theology there is a doxological purpose to history.

In covenant or Reformed theology they see the primary purpose of human history to be soteriological, that every thing relates to soteriology—salvation. This is a real problem and a real conflict in these two ways of looking at things. Covenant/Reformed theology is the most consistent form of what is called replacement theology. Replacement theology is the view that once Israel rejected Christ as Messiah that God removed Israel from His plan and purposes completely and replaces them with the church. They are now therefore spiritualised. The literal land that was promised to Abraham is no longer going to be a literal land but is now going to be heaven. That violates all kinds of hermeneutical rules because whatever God said to Abraham needs to be understood as Abraham understood it. Abraham always looked for a physical land, God did not change the terms of the contract—the Abrahamic covenant. In Amillennialism the church becomes synonymous with the messianic kingdom, the church is the messianic kingdom but it is a spiritual form of the kingdom. The term “thousand years” is not taken literally, it is taken allegorically, so we are now in the kingdom in some form or fashion. To have a kingdom you have to have a king. Where is the King? In amillennial interpretation the King is Jesus Christ and the throne He is sitting on is at the right hand of God the Father, and they would call that the Davidic throne. But the Davidic throne is a literal earthly throne with a literal earthly kingdom. That is the traditional amillennial interpretation of the messianic kingdom and the King and the Davidic throne. When you get into progressive dispensationalism, this new view that has come out of Dallas Seminary lately, they’re interpreting those passages as being applied to the church today. In other words, they’re taking the same rationale and the same teaching on the same passages that the amillennialists do and interpreting it that way and it is no longer a consistent literal application. It starts breaking down the distinctions between Israel and the church. The second coming of Christ is the next event in prophecy, and that ends history.

We believe in pre-millennialism. Christ came, offered the gospel and it is rejected. The church age began in 33 AD and is a distinct entity in God’s plan. The church age will end with the Rapture of the church, although not all pre-millennialists believe that, and this will be followed by a literal seven-year period of suffering and judgment on earth. All pre-millennialists believe that. They may differ as to when the Rapture occurs but they all believe that the church age is followed by the Tribulation which ends with the literal, physical second coming of Christ to the earth, and then that inaugurates the kingdom.

The question we are answering is: What happened to the kingdom? Matthew 3:2, John the Baptist shows up on the scene as the forerunner of Christ. The Gospels don’t start with Jesus/’ ministry, they start with John the Baptist because John the Baptist is the past of all of the Old Testament prophets and part of the function of the Old Testament prophets was to anoint or appoint the king. The king therefore is under the authority of the prophet. The Word of God has authority over government and state. The state is not autonomous, is not a god unto itself, it is under God. So there is always this pattern through the Old Testament that the prophets shows up first and the prophet anoints the king. The word for anointing in the Old Testament is mashcach, and the one who is anointed is called the mashiach or messiah. So anyone who is anointed or appointed is a messiah, but there is only one Messiah and that is the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. So before the Messiah shows up there is going to be a forerunner. The prophet is the king-maker and the king appointer, and John the Baptist shows up saying: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He uses a word, eggizo [e)ggizw] which means that it is near, it is approaching, it is at the door, it is right here on the scene. This is his gospel message. Notice he is not talking about redemption justification, he is not talking about salvation, because this isn’t really a soteriological message. To understand what he is saying we have to understand something about the kingdom. Notice he doesn’t define the kingdom. When John the Baptist shows up on the scene his hearers knew what the kingdom of heaven was because they understood the Old Testament and they knew what was coming.