“Now concerning spiritual gifts…”

1 Corinthians 12:1a

Having admonished the Corinthians for their improper observance of the memorial to Christ’s death (11:17-34), Paul now turns his attention to the next order of business which required divine instruction and admonition: the Corinthian Christians’ misunderstanding and misuse of miraculous spiritual gifts (12:1-14:40).  Jesus (John 1:32-33; 3:34; cf. Matt. 3:16; 12:28; Lk. 3:22; 4:16-10; Is. 61:1-2; 11:1-4), his apostles (Mk. 16:20; Acts 2:1-4; 5:12; Heb. 2:3-4), and those within the first century church upon whom the apostles laid their hands (Acts 6:5-6, 8; 8:5-7, 14-18; 19:6; Rom. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:6) all had miraculous spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit.

Some within the church at Corinth had them as well, and yet were “uninformed” about them (12:1).  The apostle now wishes to help them have a better understanding about these miraculous gifts which they possessed and the divine purpose behind them.  He starts by saying, “You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.  Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (12:2-3).

Remember that Paul was writing to former pagans whom he had converted out of idolatry to the religion of Christ.  They were Christians who were living in a time when the New Testament was far from being completed, which meant that they did not have ready access to the complete written revelation of God in the Bible as we do today.  It was the Holy Spirit who guided and taught them, specifically by giving the miraculous spiritual gifts of prophecy, knowledge, and wisdom to some among their number (12:4-11; cf. Acts 2:4; Matt. 10:19-20).  Paul must have laid his hands on some of the newly baptized Corinthians before he had left them in order to give them these spiritual gifts.

He now writes to first remind them that no Christian who has these miraculous spiritual gifts and thus would speak to them by Holy Spirit inspiration would ever say anything derogatory about the Lord Jesus.  He also wanted to emphasize that the only reason any of them converted to Christianity and thus recognize Jesus as their Lord is because they had been taught the gospel by apostles or prophets who were inspired by the Holy Spirit.  To truly acknowledge Jesus as your Lord would require one to be completely willing to obey any and all commands that are proven to be from him (cf. Matt. 7:21-27).

These exhortations were likely given because the Corinthian Christians might have met people, perhaps from even among their own number (cf. Acts 20:29-30), who claimed to have a message from the Holy Spirit but were actually false prophets, perhaps false prophets who might have even been claiming that God would condone their returning to idolatry.  This is similar to the Old Testament warning against “a prophet or a dreamer of dreams” who “says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them’” (Deut. 13:1-2).  Even if he had given Israel “a sign or a wonder” which “comes to pass” (Deut. 13:1b-2a), they were not to “listen to the words” of that man; they were to consider him to be in “rebellion against the Lord your God” and their interaction with him to be God testing their love and dedication (Deut. 13:3-5).  In like manner, the brethren at Corinth were to reject anyone claiming to have a message from God that would instead incite rebellion against him.

To determine if this was the case, Paul’s point in the above passage was to give the Corinthians a kind of litmus test to determine the validity of anyone who claimed to have a message from God (cf. 1 Thess. 5:20-22; 1 John 4:1-3), a test very similar to the Gileadites’ directive to say “Shibboleth” in order to determine if an enemy Ephraimite was trying to sneak past them (Judg. 12:4-6).  Anyone truly speaking on behalf of the Lord would not teach anything that would in any way blaspheme Christ or try to sway the listener from giving their full allegiance to him.

That was true then, and it is true today also.  A message truly from God will be based solely on Scripture.

— Jon