On Obedience

The Second Sunday after Christmas

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

 Having identified a number of charisms, which is to say gifts, given by the Holy Spirit, the question then becomes one of why they are given, who receives them and what they are to be used for.

Last week’s discussion focused on the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit and ended with some consideration on the topic of how gifts are to be used, in reference to St Paul’s instructions in I Corinthians 14 that the gift of tongues ought to be accompanied by interpretation. Those were not the only instructions provided by St Paul, and the other Biblical writers, on how and why charisms, that is to say gifts of the Spirit, are to be used.

The first clue indeed comes from earlier in St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians where he says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the Common Good… All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills,” (I Cor 12. 7, 11). From this first point, St Paul begins to hint at a complete answer to some of these questions, though primarily addressing the question of why. In this, he suggests it is God’s will that determines what gifts we might receive. It is always important to bear this fact in mind, as it reminds us that these gifts are not available for our own use as we want, but are free gifts given to us by the Spirit. This nature, that it is given by God’s will and not our own, also hints towards how we are to use them.

As to who receives gifts of the Spirit, St Paul also comments in chapter twelve that while one is given the figt of wisdom, the other knowledge, another faith. In making this statement he notes quite clearly that not every Christian receives each gift. This aligns with his previous comments that gifts are given based on the will of God. But it also makes clear that any Christian may receive. To some who are unfamiliar with gifts of the Spirit, they may think that only some Christians receive gifts of the Spirit. That you must, perhaps, be particularly pious, or devote yourself to prayer. Yet St Paul’s words in Holy Scripture make it quite clear that it is not the case and that any Christian may exercise gifts of the Spirit. Indeed St Peter makes it more explicit when he says that every Christian receives the gifts of the Holy Spirit (I St Pt 4. 10).

St Paul expounds on the why of this in his epistle to the Romans when he says, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us,” (Rm 12. 4-6). Here he makes clear that each is given the gifts, in accordance with God’s will, that would be useful for them to serve out their callings. Being members of the Body of Christ, each member receives what is needed, such that the whole body is well-equipped.

Therefore in these collective statements, St Paul and St Peter have largely addressed the question of who receives charisms and a bit on why they are given, leaving the larger question of how they are to be used.

Ultimately that question is to a degree answered in the same way. St Peter specifically calls on Christians to use their gifts, “to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ,” (I St Pt 4. 10, 11). St Paul similarly writes, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” (Eph 4. 11, 12). Here he is again speaking of equipping, but elaborates on the goal of such equipping, that those individual members use their gifts to build up the body of Christ. It should be noted, that there is a dual meaning to building the body of Christ. This can be viewed both as encouraging and building up the faith of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and also bringing new people to faith in Christ.  Another way of looking at this is to suggest the dual purpose involves building up the faith of others and being a witness to non-Christians.

This raises the final, and perhaps most important question. Once you understand what spiritual gifts are, to whom they are given, why they are given and for what purpose they are given, the question is how to respond. The answer is simple enough: loving obedience.

Faith in Christ calls us to act out our faith as we are told in Scripture, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled”, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” (Jas 2. 15-17). It is the Holy Spirit that equips us to, figuratively, clothe and feed the poor in Spirit.

When St Paul exhorts young Timothy saying, “Do not neglect the gift you have,” (I St Tim 4. 14a) he is speaking of a Spiritual gift. So just as faith calls us to act in love, gifts of the Spirit call us to repond by using them for the purposes they have been given. We are to respond in obedience.

Immediately after identifying gifts of the Spirit in that well-known passage from I Corinthians 12, St Paul immediately ties the use of gifts of the Spirit to love. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing,” (I Cor 13. 1, 2).

It is the combination of these two passages that gives us the clearest and simplest response to gifts loving obedience to God, manifested through loving service and witness to others.

On Charisms

The Feast of St John the Apostle and Evangelist

MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Sunday After Christmas Day

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Nativity of our Lord in Octave

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

St Paul tells us that, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” (Rm 5. 5). This love takes not simply the form of adoption through Christ into an intimate and personal relationship with God, but also through a number of gifts of the Spirit.

The Greek word charis is most commonly translated as a gift of grace. As we are told in Holy Scripture, it is the Holy Spirit who pours these gifts of grace upon us, so when we think of the Christian term charismatic, which is derived from the root charis, we can define it as a person who has received the gift and anointing of the Holy Spirit.

In its modern Christian context, charismatics are a particular type of Christian, but when considering the origin of the term, if you are not charismatic, it means you have not received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in that sense all Christians should strive to be charismatics! In the ancient Church, those who received the Holy Spirit were known as the anointed ones, in Greek Christos, from which we derive Christian.

There remains in modern Christianity a lack of familiarity with the Holy Spirit, and gifts of the Spirit, but there is a treasury of information available, both in Holy Scripture and through the witness of saints in every age.

St Paul in his epistles listed many of the gifts of the Spirit. These include the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, the gift of healing, the working of miracles, prophesy, the ability to distinguish between spirits, speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues, (I Cor 12. 8-10), service, teaching, exhortation or evangelism, generosity, leadership, mercy (Rm 12. 7, 8), and to this could also be added the fruits of the Spirit which are also gifts of grace granted by the indwelling of the Spirit (Gal 5. 22, 23, 25).

Some of these gifts have fairly straight-forward meanings and interpretations. The gift of leadership, for instance, or even the gift of teaching. We all know what it means to be a leader, and all Christians understand the Holy Spirit’s role in inspiring the teaching we receive when we gather to hear God’s written word. Yet some of the other gifts are a bit more complex. What is the difference, for instance, between the gift of knowledge and the gift of wisdom? What is a prophet and the gift of prophesy, and how does that relate to the office of Prophet?

These types of questions are all natural for anyone who lacks instruction and familiarity with these parts of Holy Scripture, and as with any part of Scripture we must always keep in mind the response of the Ethiopian Eunuch, who asked, “How can I [understand], unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8. 31).

While there are no universally accepted definitions for the exact nature of all gifts—and it should be understood that the Spirit gives these gifts as he wills and does not need to be conformed to earthly definitions—there are some general understandings that can be helpful.

The historic Prophets of the Old Testament were given particular words for God’s chosen people, and were commanded by God to proclaim them. They would preface their statements by saying, “This is what the Lord says,” to make clear that they were messengers for God. For most, their words were not so much prophetic as we think of it in terms of foretelling the future, but rather their words were warnings. They would call God’s people to repentance, pointing out where they had fallen away from God’s law, and explain what calamities would fall upon them if they did not return to God. Whereas the Prophets of the Old Testament received very specific words to say, the gift of prophecy today may involve less specific prophetic words. There has been no accepted or recorded instance of someone being given the specific words of God since the time of Christ. Indeed, some of the prophetic aspects of the office of Prophet have been split into multiple gifts. Some of the references to the gift of prophecy also suggest it may simply refer to the collection of other gifts related to supernatural revelation from God, rather than a specific gift relating to foretelling the future.

The gift of knowledge and the gift of wisdom relate to the office of Prophet. They are other gifts that require some level of explanation as they seemingly refer to the same thing, however there are important distinctions. In both cases they refer to something supernatural and beyond ourselves. In the case of wisdom, it is wisdom from God that cannot be explained as simply the application of our own God-given wisdom. It refers to wisdom for a particular situation, and it can be for ourselves or more often for the situation of another person. Conversely, the gift of knowledge refers to some form of supernatural knowledge. Again the gift of knowledge is often for someone else, and because of that, it can be a complicated gift in that the knowledge does not necessarily make sense to us.

The Rev. Can. Gene Packwood has described a situation in which he received a word of knowledge for a particular woman, “God likes your french fries.” This seemed to him, and indeed to anyone else, a silly word of knowledge. Yet when he shared this word with the woman, it bore deep meaning to her, encouraged her and brought healing to her. She had been moved by the efforts of a youth group and had sought to show her appreciation for them by buying them some french fries. Others within her church had reacted negatively, saying she had sought to draw attention to herself for her charitable act, yet the word given to Gene encouraged the woman to know that God had seen the charity and love in her heart.

The gift of healing and miracles are more easily understood gifts, that involve simply supernatural occurrences of healing or some other unexplainable phenomenon. While it is only natural to level some amount of scepticism towards these events, thinking that they are merely natural phenomena we don’t have the scientific understanding to explain, there are also occurrences in which God’s hand is at work. Holy Scripture tells us to expect them and we should remain open to accepting that in his sovereignty, God continues to intervene supernaturally in our lives.

The gift of tongues is probably one of the gifts the most associated with charismatics due in large part to the Pentecostal movement, and is also a gift that can be misunderstood. Among Pentecostals, it has been the belief in the past that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was predicated on the gift of tongues. In the historic context there have been two forms of the gift of tongues, both in the speaking of an Angelic language, which we are most familiar with today, or the speaking in other human languages which the person does not know. This is the historic first example of the gift of the Spirit when the Apostles began to speak in all tongues after the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

What should always be noted about the gift of tongues is how St Paul explicitly pairs it with the gift of the interpretation of tongues, and even later goes on to say, “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit,” (I Cor 14. 2) and continues on explaining the need to pray for interpretation.

St Paul’s instructions on the use of the gift of tongues and interpretation in that chapter form a key practical example of the purposes and uses of gifts of the spirit, which ultimately helps further to explain what they are, and will be explored in the next part of this series on the Holy Spirit.