Spiritual Gifts Introduction –
Part 3
Permanent vs. Temporary Gifts
Romans 12:3-4
The last couple
of lessons we've gone through spiritual gifts so this is the third lesson by
way of introduction. I'm just giving a summary here. Then as we get into the
exegesis in the next couple of verses it'll go fairly quickly because we
understand the Biblical framework. As we'll see tonight, there are three basic
passages in the Scripture that talk about spiritual gifts. They're easy to
remember if you can remember the number 12. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and
then Ephesians 4 which is 12 divided by 3. You've just got to remember that and
then you've got it. Okay, Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 are your main passages
and they're both 12 so that's an easy way to remember it.
The last time
we got through the sixth point on spiritual gifts, which was that spiritual
gifts are not earned or deserved. The gift is given at the point of salvation.
The gift is not developed or learned but using it effectively may be learned, depending
on the gift. We become more effective in our use of the gift. I used the
example last time of a pastor-teacher. A man receives the gift of
pastor-teacher at the instant of salvation but he still has to go through
seminary, still has to go through classes related to teaching, education, and
Bible study. He has to learn the languages. He has to learn theology. He has to
learn how to think critically.
I'm
always amazed when I run into people who think that if someone has the gift of
pastor-teacher they can just pick up the Bible and teach it. No, it's not a
gift of knowledge. It's a gift of communication and pastors have to go through
education. There was a time in this country when pastors held a high standard
and no church worth its salt would hire a pastor who was not well trained in
the original languages. I don't know if I've told this story or not but in my
first church, which was down in LaMarque. LaMarque is the last little city on
the mainland before you cross over to Galveston. The pastor of that church who
had been pastor there from 1933 to 1973 was a graduate of Moody Bible Institute
and Austin Presbyterian Seminary. When he was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor
in 1933 he had to pass reading exams in Greek and Hebrew. He had to answer oral
questions from his ordination council relating to the exegesis of the passages
in the Greek and Hebrew that he had just read and translated as part of his
exam. If he wasn't competent in Greek and Hebrew, then he would not get
ordained.
Now in many churches
all you have to do is have the gift of gab and be able to gather a crowd of
people together or recite what some pastor has taught you and you're ordained.
You don't have to demonstrate competency. This is why in the last thirty years
pastors have become some of the least respected among the professions in the U.S. Now that's due to some other factors as well but
part of it is that they have lost the professionalism that was once there
because churches no longer require the high standards that was once there. In
many denominations they brought that on themselves because rather than teaching
content in the seminary they teach them a lot of "how-to" courses
related to management, people skills, counseling, and everything but the Word
of God. This leads to a dilution of the integrity of the pulpit. So we need to
demand quality.
This is just an
example that spiritual gifts are given to us. We don't learn a spiritual gift
to get it but you have to develop and mature in your ability to utilize your
spiritual gift. In the seventh point there are two categories of spiritual
gifts and we'll probably spend most of our time tonight and sometime next week
talking about this issue. It is an extremely controversial issue in some
circles, not as controversial as it once was. Some places just quit having a
controversy over it but we have to explore what the Word of God says.
The best
classification of these two categories coming from the way the Scriptures talk
about them is to call them permanent gifts and temporary gifts. Sometimes
people talk about "sign" gifts but the Bible doesn't necessarily
classify all of these as "sign" gifts. But the Scripture does
indicate that some of them are temporary, that they were not designed to be
part of the life of the Church throughout its history. They were temporary in
nature. So two categories we're going to talk about a little bit.
It helps to be
able to compare the passages that list the gifts. In Ephesians 4:11-12 it lists
apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers. Apostles and prophets are also
listed in 1 Corinthians 12: 28 and in Romans 12:6-8 you have the gift of
prophecy mentioned. 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 at the beginning of the chapter gives
a list that includes all temporary gifts. Some of these we're not sure how they
function or what they were because this is the only mention of them in the
Scripture and there's not even a reference given anywhere else. Due to the
influence of the charismatic ministry, such as the more extreme Word of Faith
heretics on the extreme end of the charismatic movement, they really defined
for contemporary culture "word of wisdom" and "word of
knowledge." They didn't get their definition out of the Bible. They
generated it out of their own experience. That's not how you do Biblical
theology.
We don't know
what a "word of wisdom" was. We don't know what a "word of
knowledge" was. It has to do with some sort of message. It might be that
it's not even a revelatory gift. They may be gifts related to wise application
of Scripture, a message related to wise application of Scripture, or a message
related to knowledge in terms of understanding or insight into Scripture. The
fact that they're called "a word of" indicates that they may be
related to some sort of special revelation. Since special revelation ended at
the end of the 1st century, then these would no longer continue. So
they're more than likely related to revelatory gifts and that would mean they
would have a certain authority. Since it would be revelation derived from God
then it would have the same level of infallibility and inerrancy as any other divinely
enabled utterance. Therefore it's not subject to error so someone can't have a
mistake. This would violate a number of principles. We'll get into that as we
look at the prophecy gift.
Faith is
listed, healing, that's obvious, miracles, again obvious, prophecy, we'll
discuss some of the things related to that so prophecy is listed in every list.
Discerning spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Later in 1
Corinthians 12 there's another list, apostles, prophets, teachers, healing,
miracles, tongues, administrations. A better translation of that Greek word
might be leadership. Helps which uses the word ANTILUPSIS, which means giving assistance to someone. That's a
different word from the word in the Romans 12 list for helps, which is service.
Service and helps in English may be very close to one another. The Greek words
may even be synonyms but they're not the same words so it's not the same gift.
Then Romans 12
mentions the gift of leading. The Greek word has the idea of management there,
as well, so it's probably very close to the idea of administration. Romans 12
also mentions mercy, exhortation, and giving. So that's all the spiritual gifts
that are listed in Scripture and I'm not sure that this is even meant to be
exhaustive. There may be other gifts. As I pointed out before, it's not really
necessary to know what your spiritual gift is to function in your spiritual
gift. If we have the attitude as believers to serve the Lord and to serve in
the local church in whatever way we can then over the process of our spiritual
growth and maturation then our spiritual gifts will be manifest in whatever we
do. We'll be strengthened in those particular areas.
Now, we break
these categories down into temporary gifts and permanent gifts. The temporary
gifts were distributed initially to the apostles and certain disciples who were
closely associated with the apostles. They served as giving credentials and
authentications to the message of the apostles during the time that the Canon
of Scripture was being developed. Since the Canon was incomplete and revelation
was incomplete, Scripture was not sufficient. An incomplete Canon of Scripture
could not be thought of as sufficient so during the New Testament period from
when Jesus dies in A.D. 30 you don't
have the first epistle, which was probably James. It was probably not written
until the late 40s, 15 and more years after the crucifixion. Most of the
Pauline epistles are not written until the late 50's, say around 58 to 68 and
then you have several others written during that period. The Petrine epistles
are written during that period. The Johanine epistles and the Gospel of John
are not written until the late 80s and completed by A.D. 95 so during much of the New Testament period, about
25 years after the crucifixion, less than half of the New Testament has been
written and these books had not had time to circulate among the churches at
that time. So they're operating on a foundation of insufficient revelation
about the new dispensation of the Church, the new dynamics of the spiritual
life related to the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, so it is through the gifts
of prophecy, and possibly the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom that believers
are taught the truth about what is going on until the Canon is complete. These
gifts functioned during that particular time.
The permanent
gifts are given and distributed throughout the body of Christ for the on-going
mature ministry of believers to one another within the body of Christ. If you
think about the different gifts, whether its evangelism or teaching,
administration, helps, service, mercy, exhortation, and giving these also
represent responsibilities that should be carried out by every believer. Every
believer is expected to give. Some believers have a spiritual-enhancement in
that area. Every believer is expected to encourage one another. We're commanded
to encourage one another but some people are specially gifted in that area.
We're also to teach one another, not necessarily in a formal sense but we're to
teach one another. Some are given a special enhancement in the area of
teaching. Same thing in areas of helps and service. We're to serve one another.
We're to help one another but some people are given special spiritual
enhancements and giftedness in those particular areas. So those gifts are
permanent gifts for the edification and maturity of the body.
Now there are
two other terms you often hear when talking about the permanent versus the
temporary gifts. One is to classify or differentiate between the temporary
gifts and revelatory gifts. Gifts of healing and gifts of miracles are not
revelatory so revelatory is not a perfect synonym for temporary gift.
Revelatory gifts are those that involve some form of special revelation from
God. That would include prophecy, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge,
and I believe in my opinion, the gift of apostle. I believe the apostles had
all the gifts. That was part of their foundational ministry in the early
church. I can't prove that but I think that when you look at what they did,
they seem to exhibit many, if not all, of the gifts in their ministry.
Now I want to talk
a little bit about why we classify these gifts as temporary. There's a lot of
debate over this. This really didn't bubble up to the surface in the history of
Christianity until the beginning of the 20th century. There were
people who were seeking some of these gifts, gifts of healing, gifts of
tongues, interpretation of tongues, by the late 19th century. That
primarily grew out of a revival movement that began in the middle of the 19th
century and is usually classified under the terminology of the "holiness"
movement. The holiness movement had its start within a Methodist background in
the mid-19th century as a desire to reform the Methodist Church from
the inside out due to a misguided perspective that somehow the Methodist Church
had lost its passion, lost its drive, and some of this was based on the fact
that many of the churches in America were growing smaller from what they had
been at the beginning of the 19th century.
We now have
historical perspective. They were shrinking because people were listening to
the advice of Horace Greeley and they were going west. So people were leaving
their home churches on the Eastern seaboard and they were heading west. So the
churches in the east were shrinking to some degree as people left and headed
for the west. Whenever you see churches shrink and churches all go through ebbs
and flow of church life. At first membership comes along for a while, the
church grows and then something happens. A lot of people have to move or they
get older, whatever the cause is, the population of the church drops a little
bit and we go through these ups and down.
What happened
was, they asked the question "What are we doing wrong?" Well, they
really weren't doing anything different or doing anything wrong, there were
demographic factors, American expansion factors that were affecting the
demographics of the local church. Once you start asking "what are we doing
wrong" if you're not doing anything wrong, you often come up with the
wrong answer which is exactly what they did.
This was
particularly traced to a woman Bible study teacher in New York City who was the
wife of a physician there. Her name was Phoebe Palmer and they began to go back
to the perfectionist teaching of Charles and John Wesley, that somehow they had
missed the boat and they needed to have a "second work of grace" that
came after salvation. So this dedication or second work of grace was identified
with the Baptism of the Spirit. So now what they've done is that you have one
work of grace at salvation when you trust in Christ as Savior but you have to
have a second work of grace for spiritual blessing, for spiritual growth which
elevates you to a higher level of spiritual experience, whether you call it
dedication or yieldedness or whatever it is, that's what they labeled it.
By the end of
the 19th century they began to associate the possibility of speaking
in tongues as the sign of that experience. No one was speaking in tongues. The
first modern example of anyone claiming to speak in tongues was on New Year's
Eve, 1900, as you were shifting into a new century, 1901, when a young Bible
college student in Topeka, Kansas by the names of Agnes Ozmon suddenly started
speaking what she claimed to be Chinese. It's interesting that in the early
stages of the charismatic movement, they assumed that on the basis of the Bible
that when the apostles spoke in tongues they were speaking in legitimate
languages. It's only after a while that they realize in the early 1900's that
the people doing this weren't speaking Chinese or Arabic or Hebrew, that they
changed their understanding and interpretation of Scripture.
The problem is
they had correctly interpreted the Scripture that speaking in tongues is the
word GLOSSIA means a language, a known or recognizable language even though the
person may not have gone through the normal process of learning it. He had a
miraculous ability to speak in a normal human language. So that was the
beginning of the charismatic movement. At that time it was simply known as the
Pentecostal movement and it was marked by the idea that you had a second work
of grace after salvation that they identified as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit
and it was signified by speaking in tongues.
In the history
of that movement it changes again around the 50s and instead of being separated
out from other denominations they stayed in denominations so you had
charismatic Episcopals, charismatic Presbyterians, charismatic Baptists,
charismatic Methodists and that became known as the charismatic movement.
The terms
charismatic and Pentecostal are technically different although often they're
used together as the charismatic/Pentecostal movement. It was very
controversial in the 60s and the 70s and there were a lot of people who tried
to utilize linguistic studies and recordings of glossalaic utterances in order
to substantiate these as legitimate languages. Many of these studies were
conducted by people who were in the Pentecostal/ charismatic movement. A number
of these were published. A couple of years ago I read through a number of these
and found that no one could ever substantiate it. They never came up with any
documented evidence of someone speaking a verifiable language. So they often
came up with other ideas, such as they were speaking a Holy Spirit language, a
prayer language, or an angelic language but the reality was that a linguist who
examined any of these utterances would come away saying that they weren't
speaking any language at all. They said whether or not you could understand the
language was not necessary for linguistic analysis. Someone who is a specialist
in languages and linguistics can spot patterns and determine whether or not
someone is speaking gibberish or speaking a language. All of these turned out
to be simply gibberish. There's no miracle there.
I remember when
students at Dallas Seminary would memorize the Lord's Prayer in Greek or Psalm
23 in Hebrew or some other passage. At the time there was a huge conflict over
a Baptist Church in Dallas. They would go over there to their evening service
and recite something from the Hebrew or Greek text and get a myriad of
different interpretations. It was just a field test to see if anyone actually
had the gift of interpretation or were even performing according to the
standard of Scripture and of course they weren't.
So this is a
problem. The issue comes down to understanding what the Scripture teaches. In 1
Corinthians 13:8 it's very clear that the Scripture itself recognizes these
distinctions between temporary gifts and permanent gifts. It also ultimately
comes down to a recognition of the growth factor, the maturity factor, in the
church. We'll look at that before we finish.
1 Corinthians
13:8 comes at the end of Paul's remarkable explanation of the wonders of love
in 1 Corinthians 13:1-7. We will notice in our passage in Romans 12 that once
Paul discusses the gifts he's going to come back because they have to be
balanced with love. One of the weaknesses with spiritual gifts is that people
get all self-absorbed and full of themselves in terms of what their own
spiritual gift is. This is one of the things that was manifested a lot within
the charismatic movement. It's also been manifested a lot in other churches
where they put a lot of emphasis on training people in terms of their spiritual
gift. So it always has to be balanced with love.
Paul makes the
point in 1 Corinthians 13:8 by saying, "Love never fails." He's
making a contrast between the permanency of love and the impermanence or the
temporary nature of some of the gifts. Now if you look at 1 Corinthians 12
you'll note that Paul begins with a blanket statement that love never fails and
then when he ends this discussion he says that faith, hope, and love abide but
the greatest of these is love. Why is love the greatest? Because love is
permanent. Everything else is temporary but love is permanent. So your topical
sentence shapes our understanding of this section that love never fails.
He's going to
give three examples of things that are temporary: prophecy, tongues, and
knowledge. He says in 1 Corinthians 13:8, "Love never fails; but if {there
are gifts of} prophecy, they will be done away; if {there are} tongues, they
will cease; if {there is} knowledge, it will be done away." When he says
knowledge will be done away [vanish away], he's not talking about knowledge per
se that will vanish away because in the eternal state there will be a lot of
knowledge, a lot of things to learn. We will not be mindless in eternity. It's
not going to be just an absence of intellectual activity. He's talking about
the gift of knowledge or the word of knowledge mentioned earlier in the
context.
The first thing
he mentions in verse 8 is prophecy. Now how in the world are we to understand
prophecy when it's mentioned in the New Testament? The frame of reference should
be the Old Testament but in recent years you have two erroneous views of the
New Testament gift of prophecy. One has been around a lot longer than the
charismatic movement and that is the view that prophecy in the New Testament is
equated to preaching or the proclamation of the gospel. Prophecy is never to be
identified as preaching. There are a lot of people, non-charismatic,
evangelicals, as well as others, who try to identify prophecy in the New
Testament as preaching.
Prophecy must
be understood in terms of its Old Testament reference. There's no change.
There's no place anywhere in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Acts where the
writer comes along and says, "Ah, we're talking about prophecy now but
it's not what you've heard before. We've spent 4,000 years where prophecy meant
one thing and now all of a sudden it means something else." There's no
place where there's a re-definition of the term or the concept. So prophecy
must be understood in terms of that Old Testament reference. It's also not some
lower-grade guess at what God's going to do.
Now I'm making
a little bit of fun of this and I'm going to give you some documentation in a
minute but in the mid-80s there was a scholar that came out of Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School near Chicago by the name of Wayne Grudem. Today he's the
president of Phoenix Theological Seminary. He's a well-respected scholar in a
number of areas. A few years ago he published a systematic theology which is
highly recommended and touted by a number of people. I have serious problems
with a number of things in that theology. This isn't the least of it but a lot
of people talk about him as if he is really great. His claim to fame, what put
him on the map, was his doctoral dissertation where he claimed that the New
Testament gift of prophecy was not the same as the Old Testament gift of
prophecy.
Here are some
of the things he said about it. He said, "Prophecy in ordinary New
Testament churches was not equal to Scripture in authority." See in the
Old Testament, prophecy which is speaking "this is the word of the
Lord" is equated to Scripture. But he says that the New Testament gift
doesn't have to pass the same quality standard. It doesn't have to pass the
same test. He continues, "[This prophecy] was simply a very human and
sometimes partially mistaken report of something the Holy Spirit brought to
someone's mind." In other words you have an idea just pop into your mind
and you say, "Ah, the Lord put this on my mind so I'm going to say it and
attribute it to the Lord." But it may not be true. You may get it wrong.
That's okay, but he says that's New Testament prophecy and has nothing to do
with the Old Testament standards. He says, "New Testament prophecy is
telling something God has spontaneously brought to mind." In another place
he says New Testament prophecy is an unreliable human speech act [note that he
says it's unreliable] in response to a revelation from the Holy Spirit. Finally
he says, "This is a somewhat new definition of the nature of Christian
prophecy." He recognizes that no one else has ever defined it this way in
all of Church history. Further he says, "Much more commonly prophecy and
prophets were used of ordinary Christians who spoke not with absolute divine
authority but simply to report something God had laid on their hearts or
brought to their minds."
The trouble
with this is that there's no place in the Scripture that uses that kind of
language. He goes on to say, "There are many indications in the New Testament
[I want to know where because I've never found them] that this ordinary gift of
prophecy had authority less than the Bible or less than the recognized Bible
teaching in the early church." So he is basically saying that the Holy
Spirit puts a perfect thought in your mind but when you're reporting on it you
just get it all messed up and make mistakes about it and so it's not exactly
accurate. I treat this kind of lightly and I poke a little humor at this
because I just find this so absurd. I just see the contradictions in this to be
so self-evident. The trouble is this has become a dominant view among
evangelical Christians today.
But it just
flies in the face of all kinds of evidence, not only Biblical evidence, but
also evidence from the early church. From writings we have, such as one
particular writing we have called the DIDACHE which is a short form which was the teaching of the
apostles. There were even some teachings of the early church fathers who
thought that the DIDACHE was so beneficial to people that it should be included in the Canon of
Scripture. Dates as to its origin differ. Some think it's as early as A.D. 60. Some think it's A.D. 80 but it was clearly written during the early
apostolic period when the Canon of Scripture wasn't closed. So in the DIDACHE they recognized that there were people who still
claimed prophetic utterance. They claimed they were speaking by means of God
the Holy Spirit and according to what was said in the DIDACHE, they were held to the same high standard as prophets,
as anyone who claimed to be saying, "thus sayeth the Lord" from the
Old Testament.
There are other
examples that I could go into from early church writings that demonstrate that
in the early church they did not view prophecy functioning in the early church
as anything less authoritative than the Scripture itself or than the Old
Testament so this is clearly a problem. When we come to the New Testament we
have to recognize that the New Testament gift of prophecy is not redefined in
the New Testament. It means the same thing it meant in the Old Testament.
Second, New
Testament prophets were seen as equal in divine authority as New Testament
apostles, according to Ephesians 2:20 where it states that "apostles and
prophets are the foundation of the church". Third, early church writings
from the late 1st century understood the New Testament gift of
prophecy to be identical with the Old Testament gift.
Finally, we
must recognize that New Testament prophecy died out with the closing of the
Canon and the passing of the last apostle. The ultimate group that you would
appeal to for validation of your claim that God had revealed something through
you was to the apostles. Once the apostles were no longer on the scene, there's
no one to appeal to, there's no board of verification to go to anymore and when
the Canon was closed the content of the Canon, then, became the standard or the
rule of faith in the early church.
Now Paul
recognizes that these three gifts, prophecy, tongues, and knowledge, are
temporary. When you look at the way the text is written, two of these gifts,
prophecies and knowledge, are said to be nullified or abolished. The same word
is used in the Greek to describe what will happen to them. It's a future
passive indicative. The future means that at some point in the future this will
be abolished. Passive means that something is going to happen to cause it to be
abolished. It's going to be the recipient of an action. It doesn't state what
that will be but something will happen to cause prophecy and knowledge to be
abolished.
Tongues,
however, is treated a little differently. Tongues uses
a different word, the word PAUO, which
indicates cessation. This means it will cease, it will die out on its own. It's
used in a middle voice, which would intensify that and it indicates that
whatever causes knowledge and prophecy to be abolished is not the same thing
that causes tongues to die out. There's an indication that that could be
related to the purpose of tongues which is what we get from 1 Corinthians 14.
So just a
couple of observations that prophecy and knowledge are both abolished but
tongues stops. Secondly, we see that prophecy and knowledge are both partial.
This is very important in 1 Corinthians 13:9 which states that we know in part
and we prophesy in part. In other words these are viewed as having some element
of incompleteness or insufficiency to them. Prophecy and knowledge are both
considered to be partial and these partial gifts are
what is abolished. So the second point is that prophecy and knowledge are both
partial but the gift of languages is not said to be partial. I would say that
is because prophecy and knowledge are both related to the giving of revelation,
and tongues was not a revelatory gift.
Third, Paul
states that the partial prophecy and the partial knowledge are abolished when
something called the "perfect" comes. We're going to have to figure
out what in the world the "perfect" is. Look at 1 Corinthians 13:10,
"But when the perfect comes, the partial will be done." What's in part?
Knowledge and prophecy? The word "done away" there is the same
word used in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that prophecy be done away." It's all the
same word even though it's translated differently in the English. It's all the
same in the Greek.
Fourth, Paul
specifically uses this verb KATARGEO a final time down in verse 11 when he's giving an illustration to make
sure the reader realizes that the putting away or the abolishing of
childishness is related to the cessation of prophecy and knowledge. It's important
if you're doing Bible study to tie these things together because by using that
same word throughout this section the Holy Spirit is bringing our attention to
it so we understand the thread of his argument.
In fact, Fred
Toussaint, professor at Dallas Seminary for many years, has said that KATARGEO means to render inoperative or to supersede. In the
active voice KAO means to
cease. Why is there a change? Toussaint says, "The change of verbs cannot be
accounted for by saying that Paul does this to avoid repetition." You
often find that among scholars. They'll say, "Well, that really doesn't
mean anything. It's just a stylistic change." The problem is that the Holy
Spirit doesn't function according to rules of modern English writing. Modern
English writing says to change up your words and don't use the words too often
or the reader will get bored. Sometimes the Holy Spirit uses the same word
again and again and again because He wants the reader to connect the dots. The
way they did that was to repeat the word again and again and again, something
that the Holy Spirit would be graded down on by a modern English teacher in an
American school.
Paul did not
fear overuse of a word as seen in this passage because he uses KATARGEO four times in verses 8, 10, and 11 in order to make
this particular point. So in 1 Corinthians 13: 9 and 10 he says, "For we
know in part…" The spiritual gift of knowledge is partial. Partial is a
term related to completeness. That's the opposite. It's incomplete or it's
complete. It has to do with quantity. He says also, "We prophesy in
part…" Prophecy gives us a little bit of a picture here, a little bit of a
picture there, but it doesn't give us the complete picture. It's partial. So
knowledge and prophecy are both partial. Then he says, "But when the
perfect comes, the partial will be done away [abolished]." Again that verb
KATARGEO means
rendering it to no effect. Now the thing we have to really pay attention to is
this concept of "in part." In Greek that's EK MEROUS meaning something is partial or incomplete. Now
that's going to be contrasted by that which is "perfect". The word
perfect in the Greek is TELEIOS. Usually it means complete as compared to incomplete. In one or
two places it means perfect in the sense of flawless. Flawless is a qualitative
idea. If it's not flawless, it's imperfect so it's not the same quality. If
it's complete it's a quantitative idea. If it's incomplete it doesn't have
enough quantity there.
So I'm going to
use this term qualitatively and quantitatively. If perfect is contrasted to
partial, do we have a qualitative idea or a quantitative idea? We have a
quantitative idea, incomplete versus complete. So what we're talking about here
is that something comes along that completes that which is incomplete. Well,
prophecy and knowledge have to do with giving of revelation. Giving of
revelation has to do with giving a "little here and a little there."
It was incomplete until the Canon of Scripture was complete so the term
complete has to do in context most likely with the completion of revelation.
Now as we look
at the structure here we see that prophecies which are incomplete will fail or
be abolished. Knowledge will be abolished. They will be abolished according to
1 Corinthians 13:10 when the perfect comes. So it's the arrival of this thing
called the perfect that's going to end these gifts. Now some people have come
along and come up with all kinds of ideas of what the perfect means. Completion
is one view and it's either the complete Canon or the mature Church. I argue
these are two sides of the same coin.
The other
meaning is perfection and under that some say this happens when we die and
we're face-to-face with the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 13:12 we read, "For now
we see in a mirror dimly but then face-to-face." See, that's face-to-face
with the Lord. Some people say it's at the Rapture which is similar to death
and we're face-to-face with the Lord. Then we're going to have clear insight.
Others say it's the Second Coming or the eternal state or if you just want to
be nebulous or academic enough you just call it the sometime in the future when
we'll see perfectly. None of those actually work, as I'll show in a minute.
Now in James 1
the Word of God is referred to as a mirror. A person looks in a mirror and you
see a self-reflection. You get up in the morning. You've got bed-head. You
haven't shaved. You need to comb your hair and shave because you're paying
attention to what you see in the mirror. You respond to it. So the Bible is
compared to a mirror that you look in the Word of God and it reflects what you
see. Now the King James Version didn't translate it in this manner. It said,
"Now we see through a glass darkly." Well, glass and mirror are different
things. If you're looking through a glass you're looking to something on the
other side. But is the glass is a reflecting glass or a mirror then you're not
looking through it at your own reflection.
The word used
in James 1:23 is the Word of God being compared to a mirror. In James 1:25 it
describes it as a perfect law of liberty, so what we have here just to review
is that love is permanent but some of these spiritual gifts are temporary. In
fact there's a lot more than spiritual gifts that are temporary. Prophecy and
knowledge are incomplete type of spiritual gifts and when something that is
complete comes it's going to end those incomplete gifts.
Now he's going
to give two illustrations. In 1 Corinthians 13:11-12. In verse 11 he says,
"When I was a child I used to speak like a child, think like a child,
reason like a child but when I became a man I did away [abolished] with
childish things." Using that word KATARGEO again, he connects it back to the abolishment of
prophecy and knowledge, making us understand that what we're talking about here
is that when you move from immaturity to maturity some things that were
necessary at the immature phase are done away with and set aside when you hit
the mature phase. Now the question we need to ask is what is it that is thought
of as making us mature? The hint is it's a complete Canon of Scripture, the
completed revelation of God. That's what makes the Church historically mature.
Then in 1
Corinthians 13:12 we see this "now" and "then" comparison.
"For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face-to-face to…" Some
people think this is face-to-face with the Lord but that's looking at someone
else. That violates the mirror analogy. What we see in a mirror, we see
ourselves. We come face-to-face when we look in the mirror of God's word.
You're face-to-face with yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning.
So Paul is talking about that there's a current situation where we see
ourselves but it's an incomplete thing. But in the future it will be complete. Is
that a future in time, right now in history in our life or is that future when
we're face-to-face with the Lord? We see that now we speak in tongues, now
there's prophecy and there's knowledge. But when the perfect arrives, these
temporary things are set aside and as we become an adult the characteristics of
childhood, that is the necessity for these gifts was removed.
In the second
part of I Corinthians 13:12, Paul says, "Now I know in part." That
word "now" is important. There are two different Greek words for
"now". One word means right now in the immediate sense. The other
means now in a general sense. When we look at 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul says,
"And now abide faith, hope, and love..." The "now"
there is a different word than the "now" used in verse 12. That's
really the key to understanding this passage. What Paul is saying is that right
now in this period of history in his lifetime because he didn't have a complete
Canon of Scriptu4re this is what it's like. He didn't see the whole picture because
he didn't have the whole Word of God yet. Then he says but what will abide in
this age is faith, hope, and love.
Okay let's look
at this. The "now" that's used here is the Greek word ARTI and it's used in both of these sentences, indicating
an immediacy, meaning now, right now. He says we see in a mirror dimly. This is
the Greek word AINIGMA where we get our English word enigma, which refers to something that
takes a certain special insight in order to understand it because it is
expressed in a somewhat puzzling manner or it refers to something that's
indistinct as the mirror is incomplete. When it talks about face-to-face this
could easily relate to the imagery in Numbers 12:6 because there God is
speaking face-to-face with Moses. It's a situation where God has appeared to
Moses. He says, "I don't talk to those other guys mouth to mouth like I
talk to you." In other words, "I get in your face and I'm talking
directly to you but I don't talk to any of the other prophets that way."
So this idea of
"seeing in a mirror dimly but then face-to-face" is an illustration
of prophecy. I Corinthians 13:11 is an illustration related to the ending of
knowledge. In Numbers 12:6 God says "Hear now My words. If there is a
prophet among you I, myself shall make known to him in a vision, I shall speak
to him in a dream but not so with Moses. He is faithful in all My household.
With him I speak mouth to mouth even openly and not in dark sayings."
That's the word enigma which is where Paul gets it and uses it in 1 Corinthians
13. Though he's contrasting this. God is speaking through visions to the other
prophets but He says that's not as clear as mouth-to-mouth or face-to-face so
there's it's related to giving revelation.
So the child
has partial knowledge, partial prophecy, and has an incomplete reflection from
the Word of God because the Word of God is incomplete. But when the perfect
come the characteristics of childhood are removed and we see face-to-face. So
now in this current age when we don't have a complete Canon of Scripture Paul
says he knows in part. See that's knowledge. "But then I shall know just
as I am also known." When is this knowledge going to be?
Okay, let's
wrap this up. As a child we know in part, as an adult we know fully. It doesn't
mean we're going to know exhaustively. It doesn't mean we're going know
omnisciently because we never will, even a billion years into eternity we won't
know everything God knows. We're still creatures with finite knowledge. But
this is talking about complete understanding of who we are as described in the
Scripture. So in contrast to the incomplete nature of prophecy and tongues,
Paul concludes by saying, "But now…" He changes the word for now to a
word that has a broader sense, NUNI, which means
now in this age. "But now what continues is faith, hope, and love. These
three. But the greatest of these is love."
Now let me tell
you something. A lot of non-charismatics and most charismatics say that the
face-to-face is face-to-face with the Lord. All of the gifts will continue,
knowledge, prophecy, and tongues, will continue until we go into the eternal
state and then they won't be needed anymore is what they believe. But the
contrast here is between prophecy, knowledge, and tongues that are going to
stop at some point and faith and hope and love will continue beyond prophecy,
knowledge, and tongues. Now will faith, hope, and love continue into the
eternal state? That's the model from the Pentecostal side, that prophecy,
knowledge, and tongues all continue until the eternal state and faith, hope,
and love continue.
It's obvious
from the passage that faith, hope, and love continue beyond knowledge,
prophecy, and tongues. The problem is that when we're in heaven there won't be
faith. Because now we walk by faith and not by sight but then we walk by sight.
We'll be face-to-face with the Lord. Faith ends when we're absent from the body
and we're face-to-face with the Lord. So faith doesn't continue into
eternity. Not only that but hope doesn't continue into eternity. Romans 8:24
says, "For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope;
for who hopes for what he already sees?" When we're face to face with the
Lord there won't be hope because we're seeing it. So that means that if faith,
hope, and love continue beyond prophecy, knowledge, and tongues then prophecy,
knowledge, and tongues have to end at some point in history and faith, hope,
and love continue beyond that point throughout the rest of the age and then
when we're face-to-face with the Lord the only thing that continues into heaven
is what? Love. Because love never fails.
So what we see
here in terms of a time line is that now in this early pre-Canon period,
prophecy, knowledge, and tongues are operational. But then something comes
along and stops that. It's the completed Canon of Scripture. Then faith, hope,
and love continue through the rest of the Church age and into the tribulation.
They are the dominant virtues. Quit worrying about prophecy, knowledge, and
tongues. The issue is faith, hope, and love. Then when we go into eternity
whether at the time of death when we're face-to-face with the Lord or at the
Rapture or whenever what continues into eternity is going to be love.
So based just
on understanding of the passage and Scripture it's impossible to have the
temporary gifts continue beyond the early Church Age. Now some people have said
that there's prophecy in the Tribulation. There is. There's prophecy in the Old
Testament. But those are not spiritual gifts by definition. We're talking about
spiritual gifts which are enhancements given by God the Holy Spirit to the
Church, the body of Christ. The Church began on the day of Pentecost. The
Church ends at the Rapture. What happens during the Tribulation is related to
the same thing that happened in Israel in the Old Testament. It's prophecy but
it's not a spiritual gift.
That's what
we're talking about in these passages, spiritual gifts related to the body of
Christ. Not God's ability to raise up prophets as He did in the Old Testament. Those
weren't spiritual gifts, by definition. So that establishes our boundaries.
We'll come back and cover that a little bit more next time and then finish out
the introduction and then talk about our passage in Romans 12.