How are we to view all that Paul has been saying in 1 Cor 12?
The church is not a tour bus, with one driver plus a
tour guide, who comments on the scenery and the sights as the tour members
travel along.
Rather, the church is a symphony orchestra, with a
conductor and a manager and possibly a soloist singer or performer - but every
member has an instrument to play and a job to do. You don’t have members of the
orchestra who sit and do nothing, and just watch and listen while the others
play their instruments. Some instruments in an orchestra are numerous, with
many players - like the wind section and the strings; for others there are only
one or two - like the percussion or the harp. Some instruments are playing
continuously or almost all the time; while other instruments are only involved
occasionally in playing. But every orchestra member has a task - there is some
skill or another which they have - and when the music requires it, they are
there to perform.
That’s the analogy that appeals to me. But those of
you who are into football might relate more to the picture of a team of
football players in a match, where every player on the field is there because
he has a role to fulfill and a skill to use.
Certainly we can all relate to Paul’s picture of the
members of the church, the body of Christ, being like parts of the human body:
each part has an indispensable role to play in the optimum functioning of the
entire body. And not only an indispensable role but a unique role - one part
does not attempt to take over the proper role of another part. And all the
parts are needed.
In some areas of the church today we have certainly
got this mixed up. In numerous places some “parts of the body” - with certain
God-given endowments, functions, and roles - are seeking to (or at least
wanting to) take over other roles, which need different skills and gifts.
Or, alternatively, like tourists on the tour bus, they
are content to be just going along for the ride, enjoying the sights.
Johnson 220, comparing
the pattern of the involvement of all Christians in the life and worship of the
church as Paul sets it out here with what is often found today, says, "greater emphasis on the
multiplicity and diversity of the Spirit’s ministry is needed in many churches,
where the congregation’s role has been severely reduced to being spectators to
the 'dance of the clergy'."
What are to be our responses to all these truths? We
are to have a threefold response:
Firstly, we need to identify,
and train and develop, and use, our own gifts for the benefit of all, as God
intended.
Secondly, we have a
responsibility, as a church, to help others do the same. So we need to mentor
people to find their gifts, and then ensure that, as a church, we provide them
with training and practice, and opportunities to use their gifts.
And then, thirdly, we need to recognize
the “more excellent way”. The Corinthians were vainly chasing after what they
considered to be “higher” or “better” or “greater” gifts. “No,” says Paul. “I
will show you something far better and far more important than that!” And he
writes for them - and us! - about a way of living, a way of life: chapter 13,
“The Way of Love”. It is as if he is saying here, “Pause and ponder: Fruit is
more important than gifts - any gift. And fruit is something for all Christians
to cultivate.”
Paul now interrupts his discussion of “gifts and the
Corinthians” to explain the Way of Love. But really it is not an interruption
of his theme: it is a clarification of it. For Paul is not disparaging gifts in
these chapters - to the contrary, he has been emphasizing how vital, how
indispensable they are. And he is not setting up here some kind of conflict
between gifts and love and saying, “Choose love.”
He is saying that love is for every
Christian to have and show, whereas gifts are each only for particular
individuals. But far more than this: he is showing that love is the sphere
within which a gift - any gift, every gift - is to be exercised.
Whichever view we adopt concerning 12:31a - whether we
accept it as an imperative, “But seek for the greater gifts” or take it as an
indicative, “But you are seeking for the greater gifts” - it is concerned with
the seeking of gifts. And so Paul’s response now to this situation is, “And I
will show you a still better way - a way more surpassing, more outstanding,
more superior than any gift in itself can ever be, a way which far surpasses
all others.” He then speaks to them of the way of love, and in the first stanza
(13:1-3) of what some have called a poem to love he emphasizes that any gift
and every gift without love is pointless and useless and valueless. This is followed,
in his second stanza (13:4-7), by the setting forth of the intrinsic excellence
of love, and then by a final stanza demonstrating the eternal value of love
(13:8-13E).
The chapter personifies love, giving it a life and
dimension of its own. In fact we can see how what Paul writes is fulfilled in
Christ, so that it can be said of him: “Christ is patient and kind; Christ is
not jealous or boastful”, and so on throughout. Or perhaps, even better, we can
see how it is really Christ’s love which fulfils all that Paul says here.
But more than this: chapter 13 is an unconscious
self-portrait. When in his introduction in 12:31 Paul says that he is going to
show the Corinthians the most excellent way, his choice of verb is interesting.
Significant. He uses δεικνυμι (deiknumi). Present tense, “I
show”; or alternatively, “I exhibit or demonstrate”. This is usually taken to
mean that he “will tell” them of the “more excellent way”, and then he does so
in the chapter which now follows.
And I do not doubt that this is so. But he does not
use here the future “will tell” - he uses δεικνυμι (deiknumi). He
is saying, “I am showing you the way.” And I would say that
whether he had this point consciously in mind or not, he did indeed show them,
and present to them, and exhibit, this love in his own life and dealings with
the Corinthians: for he exemplified this love.
That is, I take it that in describing how love behaves
he is speaking out of his own understanding and experience. Because in this, as
he says in 11:1, “I follow Christ.”
So that when we are (as Paul says in 14:1 that we are)
to pursue after love, it is to love like Christ himself that we are to seek.
This love, God’s own love, is poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit whom he has given to us (Romans 5:5).
(This is one of the “Practical and Pastoral Reflections” upon Paul’s Epistle, taken from
--
[Click for "First Corinthians Commentary" contents, overview or order info.]
[Click for "Ministry of Women" contents, overview or order info.]
[Click for "Marriage and Divorce" contents, overview or order info.]
[Click for "Learn to Read the GNT" contents, overview or order info.]
[Click to go to the Ward Powers Home Page.]
No comments:
Post a Comment