1 Corinthians 12:1

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles carried away unto these dumb idols even as you were led. Wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit. Now there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. There are differences of administrations but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations but the same God which works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given unto every man for the profit of all. (1 Corinthians 12:1-7)

The Corinthians had every spiritual gift, yet were dangerously ignorant of where those gifts came from and how to discern them—a confusion that still divides churches today.

An Oasis That Turns Out to Be More Instruction

For some time now I have been looking forward to this section of 1 Corinthians. As we have spent almost a year dealing with division, immorality, idolatry, marital problems, licentiousness, and legalism—the list goes on and on of what the Corinthian church faced—I looked to chapters 12 through 14 as a refreshing oasis. The reality, however, is that this next section, dealing with spiritual matters, is just as exhortative and instructive as the previous sections, and perhaps more so.

The root of the problems the Corinthian church faced were spiritual issues. The Corinthian Christians, like so many in our day, were ignorant of spiritual matters. Paul had instructed them in such things when he established the church, but they deviated from his clear teaching and allowed pagan ideas to invade and influence them.

It's important to recognize the Corinthians were not lacking in spiritual gifts. In 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul said that very thing: they were not lacking in any spiritual gift. But while they were not lacking in gifts, they lacked understanding of where the gifts came from, what they were for, and where, when, and how to use them.

Spiritual gifts are not toys to be played with. They're not trifles to pass over, nor trophies to take pride in—they're tools to be employed by the believer. It is a child who plays with them, a fool who neglects them, a boaster who parades them. But it is the wise steward of God who will utilize them for the building up of the body of Christ. That is the purpose of a spiritual gift: to build up and edify one another within the body.

"I Would Not Have You Ignorant"

The "now" in verse 1 takes us back to 11:17, where Paul said, "Now this I declare unto you, I praise you not, that when you come together, you come not for the better, but for the worse." Beginning there, Paul addresses issues in their public, corporate worship—problems disrupting what God had called them to. The first issue concerned the Lord's Supper; now he turns to the exercise of spirituality. It's like saying, "My second issue is this: spiritual gifts."

You may notice the word "gifts" in verse 1 is italicized, meaning it was not in the original Greek. The word translated "spiritual" is the Greek pneumaticos. The beginning, pneuma, we translate spirit or breath. The ending, ikos, means "characterized or controlled by." So Paul is speaking about those things characterized and controlled by the Spirit of God. The word pneumaticos appears 26 times in the New Testament, and 25 of those times it speaks of things dominated by, controlled by, or characterized by the Holy Spirit.

Notice that before he says he doesn't want them ignorant, Paul calls them brethren. That is important, because it reminds us that people within the body of Christ can be wrong and not exactly orthodox in their practices yet still be brethren. People come to Christ and don't have everything sorted out. It would be nice if you confessed Jesus as Lord and a switch turned on, giving you perfect knowledge of all things. That doesn't happen. Therefore discipleship is essential. We are babes in Christ at first; we need to be raised up and equipped. And we who are further along need to patiently instruct those who do not yet know.

The word "ignorant" is from the Greek agnoeo, from which we get our English "agnostic." Paul uses "I would not have you ignorant" several times, drawing attention to matters of supreme importance. He uses it about God's future plan for the Jewish people in Romans 11:25, about the second coming and the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, and here about spiritual things. Interestingly, 1,900 years later, the very things Paul emphasized as vital—God's future plan for the Jewish nation, Jesus' second coming and the rapture, and spiritual gifts—are still the things the church is confused about. These are the sort of things that divide fellowships and ruin churches.

"You Know You Were Gentiles"

In verse 2: "You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols even as you were led." You know your background—that you were Gentiles, literally pagans, heathens. Paul speaks to all of us, whatever our background before we came to Christ. The Corinthians understood their former life and conduct before their transformation.

Romans 12 describes that we, when we become Christians, are transformed. But sadly, that transformation had not been as dramatic as one might hope for the Corinthian church. They had divisions over personality and philosophy, carnality, immorality, worldliness, lawsuits, rebellion against authority—even Paul's authority—a lack of discipline, licentious behavior, marital problems, idolatry, selfish pride, abuses of the Lord's Supper, and now abuses of spiritual matters. It's for this very reason that Ray Stedman used to call this book First Californians. All of these were a carryover from their previous life. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are not instantly perfected. We come into the body of Christ, with God's arms open to us, warts and all.

Our world today is no different from Corinth's rampant idolatry. We may not have little silver statues, but idolatry is not done. There are different kinds of idols and temples today, but they survive, because man was created by God to worship, and he will worship something. Even an avowed atheist or agnostic who says there is no God still worships something—generally himself. Self-idol worship is huge in our culture.

Slaves Carried Away, Captives Set Free

The word "carried" or "led away" speaks especially of one carried off as a prisoner or led away as a slave—apart from their choosing. It is extremely important to understand that those who don't know Christ are slaves to sin, as Romans 6 says. When you share the gospel, they may say, "I'm not ready to follow Christ because I like my freedom." But it's a false sense of freedom. They are caught, shackled, dragged away to dumb idols. They are not free; they are prisoners.

But Jesus Christ came to set men free. We who have come to Christ have understood this freedom. John 8:32 is true: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." One of the ministries of the Messiah revealed in the Old Testament is that He came to set the captives free. Isaiah 42:7 says He came to open blind eyes and bring prisoners out of the prison house. Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1 at Nazareth in Luke 4: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me... to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound."

We who now know Christ have been set free, and we are called to share that freedom. As 1 Peter 2:9 says, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." That is our call—to proclaim to those still in darkness the way out. And God, in calling us to that work, also gifts us for that work. He enables us to do what He's called us to do.

So Paul says: you were pagans, you are no longer heathens, so let go of your heathen ideas and practices. Do not allow your new life in Christ to be influenced by your previous philosophies. But the sad reality is we often do, just as the Corinthians did.

The Babylonian Roots of Pagan Worship

The Corinthian Christians came out of a culture oriented toward the pagan mystery religions. Revelation 17:5 tells us these things would rise again in the last days under what is called the Babylonian system. These mystery religions began in Genesis 10 at what we now call the Tower of Babel. After the flood, as men multiplied again, Noah's great-grandson Nimrod sought to establish a city in the valley of Shinar—modern-day Iraq—and to build a tower reaching into the heavens. Its use was religious. They established the first organized counterfeit religion.

Nimrod married a woman named Semiramis, who became the first high priestess of that Babel religion. She is said to have been miraculously impregnated by a beam of sunlight—a counterfeit of the virgin birth. Back in Genesis 3:15, when God said the seed of the woman would crush the serpent, Satan understood and began to counterfeit it very early. Semiramis named her son Tammuz.

When God disrupted the tower by confusing the people's languages, they were dispersed, and the mystery religion continued under different names. Semiramis became the "queen of heaven," a goddess of fertility, sensuality, and war—Ishtar among the Assyrians, Asherah among the Phoenicians, Isis among the Egyptians, Aphrodite among the Greeks, and Venus in Rome. It is all the same false god under different names. She was said to have come down from the moon in an egg called Ishtar's egg—pronounced Easter. Her child Tammuz is Baal among the Phoenicians, Osiris among the Egyptians, Eros among the Greeks, and Cupid among the Romans. Tammuz was said to be fond of rabbits and became a great hunter like his father; when he was gored by a wild pig, his death was remembered annually with a 40-day fast from meat. Lent did not come from Christianity.

Satan is an incredibly good counterfeiter, and he has done a very good job bringing these pagan practices into the church. These pagan religions observed baptismal regeneration, feast days and fastings, self-mutilation, penance and flagellation, pilgrimages, public confession, and offerings given to pay for sins.

Ecstasy, Enthusiasmos, and Counterfeit Spirituality

The mystery religion dominating Corinth was filled with ecstatic, euphoric experiences brought about through pagan rituals. They would enter a trance-like state called ekstasis and enthusiasmos—from which we get "enthusiasm," though it meant something different. One writer explains enthusiasmos was a state induced through contemplative vigil, fasting, tense religious expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, contemplation of sacred objects, stirring music, and the inhalation of fumes and incense.

William Barclay, the commentator, explains that the worship of the goddess Cybele and the god Dionysus was accompanied by loud clanging cymbals and blaring trumpets. This constant dissonant noise was used to bring people into an ecstatic state where they would check out, empty their minds, be led by their emotions, and it would always result in an immoral orgy. That's why in 1 Corinthians 13:1 Paul says, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I have become as a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal." These things dominated the pagan landscape, and through ignorance they crept into the Corinthian assembly, where people couldn't discern right from wrong.

This letter was written around the mid-50s A.D.—less than 25 years after Jesus ascended. Already Satan had begun to taint and counterfeit the Spirit's work in the church through false manifestations and selfish use. One of the chief evidences of spiritual immaturity is a lack of discernment—when we take anything that seems spiritual and assume it is genuinely of God. That is pragmatic spirituality: "it seems good, so it must be of God." When the church incorporates yoga, contemplative prayer, prayer labyrinths, and eastern meditation to induce some spiritual experience, all of that is paganism coming into the church.

The First Test: How You Speak of Jesus

Because the Corinthians could not discern true from false, Paul gives the first test in verse 3: "Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit."

He gives it first in the negative: no one speaking by the Spirit calls Jesus accursed. It's hard for us to imagine someone standing up in the church saying, "I have a word—Jesus be damned." That is literally what is being said. Yet apparently there were such people. The gatherings were degrading into an ecstatic frenzy where almost anything could happen and everybody assumed, "It must be of the Lord," judging the utterance by the experience itself rather than its content.

Several commentators agree this likely came from someone of a Jewish background, since the Greek anathema has Jewish origins, but it is also related to the earliest forms of the Gnostic heresy. The Gnostics, who rose in the second century especially from Alexandria, believed in a dualistic universe—a good God who was spiritual and a bad God who oversaw all things physical, which were therefore evil. They taught that Jesus the man was a common wicked man, and at His baptism the "Christ consciousness" came upon Him, leaving before His death so that only the cursed man died on the cross. This is the same thing espoused by Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle—the "Christ consciousness." She says, "I believe in Christ and Jesus," but means something entirely different. It is absolute paganism; don't be deceived.

These people likely pointed back to Deuteronomy 21:23, "He that is hanged upon a tree is accursed of God," separating Jesus the man from the Christ spirit. I believe Paul confronts this head-on in 1 Corinthians 16:22: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema." Jesus the man is Lord—kurios, connected with God. Jesus is God, the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one.

The Positive Test: Confessing Jesus as Lord

Paul then gives the positive form: "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit." No one spirit-filled can speak damnation to Jesus, and no one can confess Jesus as Lord apart from the Holy Spirit. But Paul is not merely talking about verbally saying it. In Matthew 7:21, Jesus says, "Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of the Father."

Then comes perhaps the scariest verse of the New Testament. Verse 22: "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works?" The word "wonderful" is dunamis, the same word Jesus used in Acts 1:8—"you shall receive power." "And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity"—those who practice lawlessness, present indicative, continually doing wickedness.

So no one can truly acknowledge Jesus as Lord in their life, conduct, and practice but by the Spirit of God. When someone curses Jesus, that is sufficient evidence they are not of the Spirit; when someone confesses Jesus by their life and conduct, that is sufficient evidence they are of the Spirit. That is why Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." So ask: who is Jesus? What is your confession about who He is?

Test Every Spirit

John gives the same test. In 1 John 4:1: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world." There are other spirits able to come into the body of Christ and make professions and cause experiences that are not of God. So test every spirit.

John continues, verse 2: "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." The Gnostics denied that Christ came in the flesh. Verse 3: "Every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof you have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."

Just because something is done in a church context by Christians does not mean it is orthodox. There are loads of things done in Jesus' name today that are way out. When someone makes a profession against the Word—and remember, Jesus is the Word—it is not to be believed. Some say, based on 1 John 3:8-9, that Christians do not sin; that reveals an immature person who needs discipleship, because "commit" there is present indicative, speaking of someone habitually walking in sin—which a Christian will not do continually. When someone says true Christians don't get sick, Scripture does not support it; Paul himself had a thorn in the flesh that God did not remove. When someone says all believers speak in tongues, or that true Christians are always healthy, wealthy, and wise—that is false; it is not established in Scripture whatsoever.

Gifts Are Tools, Not Toys

Spiritual gifts are extremely important. We need God to work in us by His Spirit to accomplish the work He's called us to for His kingdom. The church is not just an organization or a social club; it is an organism, a living body brought to life by the Spirit and sustained by His power.

But the gifts are not toys to be messed with, as the Corinthians were doing, nor trifles to be neglected. There is a large group in the church today—men I highly respect, like Alistair Begg and John MacArthur, the cessationists—who say many of the gifts have ceased. I completely disagree with them on this. The gifts are not trophies to be paraded, either. They are divine enablements for ministry, given to every believer in some measure for the edifying, equipping, and building up of the body. They are to be used decently and in order to glorify Christ. Anytime they are not focused on glorifying Christ—if they glorify an individual—they are not of God, because Jesus said in John 14-16 that when the Spirit came, He would glorify Christ. If the focus shifts to a man, and the man says, "I've got the Spirit," on TV, he is false.

Your church cannot function and certainly cannot mature without faithfully using the gifts God has given. Satan will counterfeit the Spirit's gifts, induce believers to neglect or ignore them, and tempt us to misunderstand, abuse, or pervert them. Consequently, Paul's teaching here is incredibly important, and its importance is proved by how much the enemy is counterfeiting these things in our day.

A Request for the Journey Ahead

For the next three or four years we're going to cover chapters 12 through 14. We've made it through three verses today—pretty good. But I have to ask you to agree to do something with me: leave your preconceived ideas, notions, or opinions about the gifts of the Spirit at the door. We must bring our understanding to the Scriptures and allow the Scriptures to inform our experience, not our experiences to inform the Scriptures.

We believe the Bible to be the true and complete Word of God, which directs our daily life and practice—not our experiences. I guarantee I'm going to teach things from this passage you may not like, but I believe it is what the Scriptures say. We will go through it expositionally and carefully to see what God's Word actually says. Even as new believers we brought into the church certain experiences that are spiritual but not of the Spirit of God, and those things need to be set aside in favor of God's Word. His Word needs to inform our practice. So read through this passage carefully this week, and next week we'll cover one more verse—maybe more.

Closing Prayer

Father, it is clear that pagan ideas have influenced our faith. Lord, we can use the cultural things we hang on to in ways that don't bless You. Help us to come underneath the umbrella of Your Word and follow faithfully what it says. We need You to direct us by Your Spirit, because we have come from a fallen background, from a place where we are slaves to sin, from a world dominated by practices against You and counterfeit to the real. We want to know You truly and experience the reality of Your Spirit in our lives.

Father, I believe it is of You that we are in this passage for such a time as this, because the work You've called us to as a church cannot be accomplished without Your body here being directed and empowered daily by You. You've gifted every single believer in this room to accomplish a task for Your name, and each part is important as each joint supplies its need. The more visible and prominent are not always the essential; those things often unseen are of extreme importance—things we couldn't live without. None of us will ever see our heart, but without it we cannot live; we'll never see our lungs or our liver, yet all parts are needed. Work in us, I pray. Transform us by the renewing of our minds that we might prove what is Your perfect and good will. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.