New Thoughts (08/12/17-08/18/17)
Paul’s Disclaimers (08/13/17)
We have a bit of difficulty facing us with this passage, and it’s something that will come up again. What do we do with Paul when he says he’s not speaking from the Lord? This is the mildest case of it. He doesn’t explicitly state that he’s just tossing out his own opinions, but reducing from commandment to concession has something of that idea in it, and several commentaries pick up on it. Clarke points us back to a tendency amongst the rabbis to distinguish what they pronounce as coming directly from Torah and what they offer as opinion. He suggests that Paul is doing the same here in his comment: This is not Law, it’s opinion. From this, he builds the case that what we have in this section (whichever section that is) is not written under holy inspiration. Granted, this is stated as making a case that wherever Paul doesn’t explicitly state that he is voicing opinion, it is written under holy inspiration, but this seems to me to tilt the argument to an untenable position.
If, as Scripture insists, all Scripture is God-breathed (2Ti 3:16), then surely, this must be included, right? If it is not God-breathed Scripture, what is it doing in here? How do we decide? Were those who first determined the texts that would constitute Scripture err? Was God not sovereignly governing those decisions? To admit the possibility that something in Scripture got in there by accident, or is not in fact God’s Word, opens the whole to question. It’s not so far different as the issue we have with more liberal theological traditions. If you accept that some part of Scripture is myth, where do you stop? Who decides which is which? On what basis? It’s a fool’s game producing unholy fools.
That same general stance, for what it’s worth, is the primary concern that more conservative theologians have with the excesses of the Charismatic movement. If God speaks through so and so directly, where is the authority of Scripture? If God speaks through so and so today, saying the exact opposite of what He spoke through somebody else last week, how do we decide which is true and which false? Oh, and by the way, what’s wrong with God that He can’t keep His messengers in line? Somehow that never comes up. And I can assure you from experience that it is no uncommon thing to hear one thing receive an amen today, and hear the opposite of that thing receive an amen from the same people tomorrow. Amen loses meaning. Prophecy loses meaning. Scripture loses meaning. God loses meaning. What’s left is just emotional excitements and self-guided efforts at holiness.
All of this being said, I find an almost equal and opposite concern if I accept that Paul was writing under divine influence and didn’t know. Paul was keenly aware of his office, keenly aware of the Holy Spirit and His work. If we are to accept the popular view, Paul had been taken up into heaven, at least in spirit, on some occasion or occasions for a more direct training session. I’m going to leave aside the question of what we should or shouldn’t make of his description of the third heaven, beyond saying I don’t think we want to take that too literally. But, that’s not my topic, nor is it the text.
But, Paul, if he was so in tune with the Spirit, and so directly taught of Jesus, must surely have a sense of whether he’s writing Scripture, or just dropping a note, right? If he was aware of the Spirit working with him for the rest of this letter, shouldn’t he have stopped when he was no longer aware? But, he didn’t. And yet, he makes these disclaimers. This isn’t from the Lord, it’s from me. I think it’s right. It’s hard to hear that without hearing an added, ‘but I might be wrong’. Is it possible? I will maintain this much: It may have been possible that he was, but if he had been, it wouldn’t have made it in. Even if he wasn’t feeling it at the time, he remained under the guiding hand of the Spirit. God did not leave Scripture to chance. It’s too important. I have to conclude thusly: That whether Paul delivers a commandment from God, or a permission granted in his opinion, it remains God’s Spirit-inspired, Holy Word.
This has implications. If it is God’s word, it must remain self-consistent with the rest of Scripture. God being all-knowing and true, will not claim one fact today and a different one tomorrow. He may speak of changing His mind, or repenting of His plan so as to accommodate Himself to our way of thinking about things, but in plain point of fact, God has never changed His plans. He’s never needed to. He has tended to lay out the consequences of disobedience so that His children could choose the wise course, and on that basis ‘repented’ of those consequences when they repented of their disobedience. But, that was the plan all along.
Come back to Paul, though. If his words are divinely inspired, wittingly or not, they shall stand coherently with what he has written elsewhere, with what Peter and John have written, with what Moses and the Prophets have written. When God speaks, He speaks truly, and truth does not change, for He does not change. That being the case, when we seek to understand Paul at his most difficult, we must turn our attention on the less difficult passages that touch on the same subject. It is unthinkable, then, that Paul is offering, as a general principle, that celibate singleness is ever and always to be preferred to marriage, except where the flesh is weak. The ‘concession’ is not to the weakness of the flesh. It cannot be! Shall Paul declare unclean what God declared clean from the beginning? May it never be!
It may be his thelo, his wish, but for the present situation. To wish otherwise is to wish an end to the Church before it has its beginning. God sets forth man and wife, and says, “Here is the complete human. This is good.” God says, “Here is the epitome of human relationships; flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.” Is Paul then going to say, “Sorry, God, You got that bit wrong. We’re really better off single. Marriage is just too distracting, too difficult.” No, he is not. He is speaking to a season in the life of the Church, and possibly a season specific to the Corinthian church, although I’m not aware of any specific trial they faced beyond their own propensities.
But, the general season was hard enough, wasn’t it? Here was the birth of what was effectively a new religion, spreading in the face of harsh resistance from what had gone before, plagued by infiltration by those who would twist it into something else, and largely opposed or at least misunderstood by the governing forces of those nations in which the Church was planting. What happens to the old gods? What happens to us if they become angry with us for chasing this new god? Think about some of the practices around Greece at the time, and you can sense the danger. If some natural disaster has transpired, we need a sacrificial victim to appease the gods. These folks are worse than atheist, they’ll do.
Before I drop out of this topic, I’ll turn to Barnes’ comment on the matter. He points to these disclaimers as evidence of Paul’s honesty. An imposter, he notes, would claim inspiration even where inspiration was not clearly present. He would seek to bolster his claim and authority, particularly as he knows he’s an imposter. That’s a valid point, certainly. Again, it doesn’t lessen Paul’s authority in what he writes, but he is honest about his sense of things. It’s opinion. I rather like the idea that what’s happening in these cases is simply that Paul is moving things down a notch. This is not a commandment required of all by a perfectly holy God. This is an advisory, somewhat stronger than merely a suggestion, but it is for those for whom God has prepared it. We keep getting pointed back to that discussion of eunuchs that Jesus undertook. “This is for those who can hear it.” He’s not talking about understanding in this case. He’s talking about those who have been granted the gift to pursue such a course. If you have not the gift, don’t try this. It’s not for you.
It’s kind of like those points that sometimes arise in the sermon that you may not get. It’s not for you. That was for somebody else. Would you deprive them because you didn’t get it? You shouldn’t. Jesus, on that occasion spoke to all, but delivered a message that was for only a few. This was no slight upon those to whom it didn’t apply. Somebody there needed to hear it, and did. Somebody, thinking about what Clarke mentions of Jewish views on reproduction, perhaps needed to hear that those who had made themselves eunuchs, so to speak, were doing as God called them to do, just as those who married and bore children were. But, the message was for those who needed it. Do not use where not applicable.
Making Commandments Out of Gifts (08/14/17)
This is actually a particularly apt bit of advice in regard to spiritual gifts more generally: Do not use where not applicable. This holds true in a number of ways, but I’ll save most of them for later. For now, let’s stick with the message we have here: All don’t have this particular gift. The same is of course true for any gift. If everybody had it, it wouldn’t be a gift so much as a defining feature of humanity. Since that is clearly not the case, the nature of gift as gift remains. And yet we see that over and over again the Church is beset by those who would insist their gift is law. What has been given me to do, all must do. Whatever gift I have, everybody MUST have, else they’re just not a complete Christian. But, here’s the thing: No matter how hard you try to alter the point, no man can receive anything he hasn’t been given. These are gifts of the Spirit, from the Spirit, as determined by the Spirit. That is to say, God is firmly in control of their distribution and duration. By the same token, if it has not been given, you are not free to pursue a course of action that would require said gift.
This is not godly longing. It is ungodly coveting. It is testing God. Consider the matter most immediately at hand in this passage. We are discussing celibacy, and in particular, celibacy amongst those who have known the pleasures of sex within the bond of marriage. If you don’t think you need a particular assistance from God to undertake such an action without falling headlong into sins of the worst sort, you don’t think. And yet, down through the ages, we have had those churches which would insist on a celibate clergy. I grant you that this is something other than celibacy amongst marrieds, but as all of us have been single at one time or another, we all know that the urges are no less powerful prior to marriage. That’s kind of Paul’s point about marriage, isn’t it? Here is the remedy for this temptation. Why would you not avail yourself of it unless you have this gift of abstinence? What do you expect will happen?
If you have not the gift, it is worse than folly to attempt the trial. You are not just setting yourself up for failure, you are rushing headlong into failure with eyes wide open. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.” And yet, here you are jumping into the path of temptation and saying, “Go ahead, God. Save me.”
Let me shift focus for a moment, to some of the other ways this issue plays out. We have the AG church, in which I came to faith. It maintains a doctrinal stance that tongues are a required evidence of faith, and none shall serve as officers of the church who cannot give said evidence. But, if it is a gift not given to all, on what basis shall we demand that all have it? And make no mistake, it’s not just officership that requires evidence of tongues, it’s membership. From their perspective, if you don’t speak in tongues you are not a Christian. They may reject it when stated in that fashion, but in practice this is the declaration. What does it lead to? It leads to the belief that you can teach folks how to speak in tongues. Most such teaching consists in teaching folks to babble nonsense syllables until some interesting noises emerge, and this is declared to be tongues. I’m sorry, but there is no biblical support for this practice. None. The nearest you get is the apostolic laying on of hands, and even there, there is nothing to suggest that they advised the recipient to keep trying until it happened. There is a pretty clear supposition that if they laid on hands to impart tongues it was because they already knew tongues were in the offing. I.e. they were pursuing what God was doing, not asking God to pursue what they were doing.
We’ve seen a similar activity with prophecy. At least here you can find some precedent in the pages of Scripture, if not supportive precedent. Yes, there were schools of the prophets. With the possible exception of Elisha, though, I cannot think of a single graduate of said school who won God’s approval, at least so far as establishing Scripture is concerned. To be sure, there was a prophetic office, and there was a pool from which said prophets were drawn, at least during the dynastic period. But, it’s equally clear that there were far more charlatans at play than there were true prophets. It’s also clear that the charlatans found more receptive ears for the most part. Some things never change.
Now, we have schools of prophecy again. EVERYBODY can prophesy! But, Scripture says something different, doesn’t it? Men cannot receive other than what is given, and the gift given on demand is no gift. It’s a concession. The God who gives on demand is no god, either, but rather the slave of the one who demands. This quite simply turns the whole concept of divinity back to the age of myth. Gods are things to appease and manipulate, and the man who can’t control them must ingratiate himself to them lest they in turn manipulate him. But, that’s no god. That’s a demon. Again, Scripture has already told us this, and yet we have entire movements that want to insist the opposite is true.
Now, we have schools for dreams and visions. Again, everybody can do this. Everybody has the gift, they just don’t use it. Garbage! Dangerous, even deadly garbage! It is dangerous because it is enticing. It speaks to something in many of us, who want a return to the more mystical, supernatural aspects of things. There is, to be sure, something in us that recognizes there’s more to life than this material plane. Of course there is. It’s called our spirit. But, to leave that spirit free to chase after every supernatural occurrence as though the mere fact of its supernatural condition makes it godly, or a gift from God, is to completely ignore what God says on the subject. Not all spirits are from God. That’s pretty plain, I should think. The fact that they permit you to speak of Jesus while you play with them doesn’t ensure a thing. What do demons care if you speak of Jesus, so long as they command your attention? What do they care if you profess to be following Him if in fact you are following them? It suits their purposes just fine. Why should they complain?
But, dear Christian, learn this: You cannot receive what God has not given. It has been well said that there are those who seek God and say, “Thy will be done,” and those who seek to tell Him how things are going to be, to whom He says, “thy will be done.” Nothing can be more terrible. He may well give you what you seek, but if what you seek is not the good purposes of God, but rather power at all cost, riches regardless of His design, or what have you, nothing good is going to come of that. It may lead to a life of ease and pleasure for a season, but it leads to an eternal separation from what is Good and Lovely and True.
Making Commandments Out of Preferences (08/15/17)
If it is inappropriate to make a commandment of one’s gift, it is similarly inappropriate to make a commandment of one’s preferences. To offer a recommendation on that basis is fine, but it needs to be qualified as such. That’s what we find Paul doing. This is not a command, it’s a concession, a perspective offered by a godly man. It does, as I have already said, carry the full weight of divine inspiration, for it is Scripture. It does not, however, carry the weight of being binding on all men.
What causes this to be misconstrued as a stronger statement than it is is Paul’s use of thelo to indicate his thinking. “I wish all men were as I am.” That wish is taken by most to indicate a decision of the will, a selecting of the active option, if you will. It is as though Paul said, I don’t have the authority to make this particular advice a commandment, but I would if I could. Such a viewpoint comes of requiring each Greek word to have one and only one possible shade of meaning. I’ve seen this perspective play out as regards this passage, although it was in the context of understanding the later chapters in regard to charismata. Yes, you see, even here Paul’s wish bears the weight of active decision and should be taken as more nearly a command than he’s letting on. On the same basis, it is then concluded that everybody can have every gift because Paul wishes everybody would prophesy. It’s his active option, expressive of God’s active option, and therefore, in spite of his clearly concluding the opposite, it must be possible for all to do so. But, that demands too much from thelo.
Let’s look more carefully at what’s going on here. Even if Paul’s disclaimer in verse 6 points backward rather than forward, the viewpoint he expresses cannot bear the strength of command decision. First off, it has to be unthinkable to us that Paul would take up any doctrinal position that so thoroughly contradicts and opposes what God has already established. He and Moses wrote under the same inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, speaking therefore for the same Almighty God. They cannot be saying opposite things on the same subject. If Moses commends marriage (not to mention Paul commending it on other occasions, and not to mention the clear instruction in Hebrews), he cannot POSSIBLY be suggesting a universally applicable demand for celibacy here. He can’t even be suggesting a universally applicable advisory to that end. It would set him in opposition to the very God for whom and by whom he writes.
Furthermore, even taking divine inspiration out of the equation, it makes no sense for the propagation of the church, or even the species. If Paul is seriously advising that all Christians in all times ought to remain single in holy fashion, and if he simultaneously desires that all people come to Christ, what he pursues is the end of humanity, not the growth of God’s kingdom. If we all cease to procreate, the result is inevitable, isn’t it? All scientific progress notwithstanding, the species comes to an end. Game over. The limits of possible church growth have just been established. Calvin reaches the same conclusion, as I should think any reasonable consideration of the topic must. “This wish does not hold good absolutely, else the extension of mankind and of the Church would cease.”
We can take a wider application from this; two, actually. For the first, as the section heading indicates, let us be very careful of our preferences. They are ours. If they are godly, then praise God for them, and be pleased that He has given you such a desire for what pleases Him. But, recognize that the application is limited to you, unless He chooses to impart it to others such that they, too, have said preference. Your preference, in brief, is not Law, and it certainly isn’t Gospel. It is simply personal application, and intended solely for such use.
Here is our rule for freedom of conscience, as Paul applies it elsewhere. God hasn’t ruled. He has led different people to different conclusions at different seasons of life. If your convictions aim you one way on the topic, heed them. But, don’t suppose it binds others to do likewise. Don’t condemn your brother for being differently convicted either. So long as conviction doesn’t convince of heresy, let it be. If God so moves as to shift your convictions later, by all means follow God. But, don’t try and make a law of it. By the same token, don’t suppose this freedom of conscience is so wide a freedom as leaves you essentially free to do as you please in all respects in your worship of God.
Returning to thelo, we can begin to approach a second application. This is more concerned with proper handling of the Word, and focuses primarily on attempts to apply definitions too rigidly. First off, we need to bear in mind that terms as applied to God are almost of necessity going to be differently understood than when applied to man. A godly man, however advanced in holiness, is never going to be God. God remains absolutely and infinitely greater than man. There is a conceit running around these days that, as I read it the other day, “because we are in Christ, we can be wherever He is.” That’s patent nonsense. You cannot be in heaven just because He’s there. You cannot enter into the depths of the earth on a whim, just because He’s there, too. You cannot, to take the most obvious case, know my heart, yet He does because He is there. To claim you can must leave you once more opposing the clear declaration of Scripture, which ought to be a pretty good clue that you’re wrong. But, that requires thinking, and most advocates of such a perspective aren’t terribly keen on people thinking. Feelings are so much easier to manipulate, after all.
So, with thelo, when it applies to God, even if it does express His wish, His preference, the power of it differs. What He wishes, He wills. What He wills He is able to bring to pass, because He is all-powerful God. Ergo, His will must necessarily transpire. First, there is no chance of His will opposing His will. There is no chance of His will being contrary to His purposes. As such, there is no matter of wrong that would require Him to oppose His own will. Second, as He has made this His active choice, He is active in pursuit of it, and His will, like His word, cannot fail of accomplishing all His purpose. If we cannot have an insistence upon the certainty of His will coming to pass, we cannot have the certainty of faith, we cannot have assurance, and we cannot have hope. If this does not hold, then we are wasting time here.
Now, as already hinted at, there is another thread to this particular application. Where we attempt to maintain a more rigid definition to a term than is rightly applicable, we will come away with an understanding of the text that diverges from the author’s intent. How could we not? If Paul is expressing a preference here and we take it as command, we have violated his intent. If his wish is for a specific time and situation and we take it as universal, we have violated his intent. If we apply it to celibacy, but he’s merely discussing self-control, we have violated his intent. If we have violated his intent, we have violated God’s intent, for again: God has very carefully overseen the production of His Scriptures, and He doesn’t make mistakes.
What happens if we diverge? It may seem a small matter to have gotten something a bit wrong. But, a bit wrong leads to dangerously wrong. A bit wrong leads to taking a minor point, misunderstood to boot, and making it a major tenet. These are the seeds of heretical movements, the initial injection of the lie of the enemy. If he can get us to focus on some curiously understood bit of minutia, we will lose focus on Christ. If we lose focus on Christ, and instead pursue some unauthorized course of belief, we shall be rendered less useful, if not entirely useless, to the purposes of God.
Be assured of this: If you belong to God, He will not leave you on this path, but will in His time bring you back to the Truth. But, you will be coming back with an awful lot to be ashamed of. You will not forget your error. For many, and I would insist that these many do not now nor ever did belong to God, the power of shame will prove an insurmountable impediment to repentance. Like the old Tareyton commercial, they would rather fight than switch, even though they fight for death. We simply cannot safely bend Scripture to support our opinions. We must let Scripture bend our opinions to support God’s purposes. There is great reason to be careful with Scripture, and to heed those who are careful with it. There is great reason to turn aside from those who insist on new interpretations, claiming to have discovered truths God has kept hidden in His words lo, these many years. God didn’t reveal Himself to remain hidden. He caused Scripture to be written that we might know Him, that we might know ourselves, that we might live holy and walk humbly together with Him. What sort of perversity must we suppose in Him if He has caused preceding generations to die without truly knowing His will, leaving them to pursue false hopes in His name? I’m sorry. That didn’t apply to the Jews prior to Christ, and it doesn’t apply to the Christian Church either. All charges of Pharisaism notwithstanding, Jesus loves the Church, and guides her. Those who set themselves against her and strike out on their own, supposedly enlightened path, have in fact set themselves against the very God to whom they attempt to pray. They are not beyond redemption, but neither are they on course for it.
Again, I turn to You, Lord, to address the issue. I thank You for the little victories along the way; the pen that would not write, the failure of youTube this morning. Oh, God! You know the anguish of my heart, and the impediment of my own love in this. I know I am in Your way, and I know I am letting emotion stand in the way of truly loving, and yet I am, in myself powerless, and I know too well how my own state is likely to make a mess of any attempt to lovingly present the Truth of Your Word. I set myself, then, to walk humbly with You today, and I pray with every fiber of my being that You would in fact move, even miraculously, to rescue Your wayward daughter. For wayward she surely is, and yet, Your daughter who loves You dearly, she surely is as well. How this blindness has beset her is shocking to me in the extreme. It’s scary, and would be utterly disheartening if I did not know You so well as I do. I know You won’t leave her in this. I know it is tearing at us, but I know You are greater than the enemy that has sown these tares, and I know the risk of seeking to tear them out of the wheat. Save, O, Lord. Amen, and I know with utmost assurance that You will. But, may it be swift. may it be even today, that the joy of this vacation may be made complete in You.
Claims Without Gifts (08/16/17)
If it is wrong to insist on our gift in others, it is equally wrong to insist that we have a particular gift when in fact we do not. To do so doesn’t even make sense, as Calvin points out. Claiming you have the gift of celibacy will not make it so, and if you attempt to behave as if it did, you will sooner or later prove the point, to your great detriment. Like everyone else, you will be faced with a barrage of sexual temptation. Claiming celibacy, you have cut yourself off from the one remedy provided in marriage. The only other remedy is utter removal of the sexual urge. There are, as Jesus notes, three paths to that end, but not one of them reaches its goal through the art or effort of the one who would be celibate. If you are born without the requisite equipment, that’s one path, but not one in which you had a say. If others enforce a removal of said equipment, this has historically been not a matter of choice. Again you have no say. That leaves the third course, which is what Clarke calls ‘miraculous interference’. That’s a good a definition for the charismata as any.
But, here’s the thing about miraculous interference. It’s never to be expected, as Clarke concludes. I know there are whole sectors of the Christian universe today that would argue that he’s wrong. But, the very nature and definition of miracle should make it plain that they are right. Again, I know we have quotes from Einstein suggesting we should view pretty much everything as miracle. That’s nice. Einstein was not particularly known for his theology, though. And, in a fashion not so unlike Scripture, should be recognized as using figurative language, and as making his thought accessible to those with a lesser understanding of physics and such things. I think we must recognize that his sense of miracle is that of being astounded, and in that light I could certainly agree. All of creation truly is astounding. The fact of the waves crashing into the shore this morning, as I sit on the edge of Lake Huron is astounding. The nature of flight by which the seagulls outside can wheel around, and then take to those same waves to relax, should they so choose, is amazing. It is not, in strict definition, miraculous. Should one of those seagulls perch on the railing outside and begin quoting Scripture, that would certainly count as miracle.
But, the ordinary progressions of nature, while miraculous in their origin, are hardly miraculous in their continuance. I say that in spite of the recognition that all these things continue solely because God ordains it so and makes it so. But, it is the ordinary work of God, not miracle. Miracle is, by definition, a departure from the natural order of events. The feeding of five thousand would not be a miracle had there been a catering service involved. It would have been a grand feast, but utterly explicable within the bounds of nature as we know it. It is miraculous precisely because it cannot be explained by such means. It defies, or at least exceeds, the bounds of nature as we know it, and those bounds allow for some pretty astounding stuff.
Here’s something that’s out of bounds, though: The idea that a man can make himself something by saying he is something. That’s the point here. A man declares himself possessed of the gift of celibacy, and supposes this will suffice to make it so. After all, ask what you want in the name of Jesus, and it shall be done, right? But, here’s the problem. Jesus didn’t command this or even authorize it. You’re just assuming it. So it is with much of what passes for spiritual exercises these days. We never read of Jesus being sick, ergo we can assume He never was, and if He never was, we shouldn’t be, either. There is absolutely no basis for any of that chain of so-called reasoning, but here is the underpinning of an entire movement. And what happens as they promote their foreign gospel? True believers, supposing they are hearing truth, are led astray. Faithful, if suffering servants are now given reason to doubt their faithfulness, as well as God’s. If Jesus commands health, and I don’t have it, either I’m disobedient or He’s not all-powerful after all. Neither of those things are true, but logic demands that if the first premise is accurate one or the other of the conclusions must be. I will insist that the problem is entirely reversed: Since neither conclusion is true, it becomes patently obvious that however pious-sounding the original premise, it is false.
What happens with this movement is what happened with attempts at unwarranted celibacy. It does not produce a greater piety, but a greater pride on the part of the perpetrator, and a greater fall for those who are prey to their nonsense. Spiritual psychosis is the least of the issues, as feelings are mistaken for faith, and one is left not with certain assurance but rather with constant doubts broken by occasional fits of frenzy. So, we see yet another round of sadly misguided believers wandering off with utter disregard for instruction from godly men. They pursue a course for which they have not the power, only the desire for the power. Here is a root of the disease, in all honesty: These have ceased to worship God and begun to worship power. Without clear evidence of power put into their hands to use as they see fit, they will abandon God in a heartbeat. The one certain hope that remains is the one certain hope that was theirs at the outset, assuming they are in fact believers in Christ. That one certain hope is that He will not abandon them, however far He may permit them to stray before calling them back.
The foolishness of claiming a gift not possessed is made clear by Calvin. He equates these unwarranted attempts at celibacy to claiming to be a prophet without the gift of prophecy, or claiming to be a teacher without the gift of teaching. Of course, there are plenty who do just that, and maintain a pretty good illusion of giftedness – enough to make a living, certainly. But, try this on: Go be a math teacher without any gift for math. Go teach others to speak French, while having no knowledge of the language. See how far you get. The point here is that attempting the same sort of thing in regard to spiritual gifts will inevitably produce the same sort of results. You can claim a gift of healing all you want, but if you don’t have it, that claim is a lie and makes God out to be a liar. That can hardly be thought a good place to put oneself.
Now, let me turn around and look at the one who has a particular gift. Does having the gift give you authority to use it any which way you please? After all, the gift having been given to you, it’s yours now, right? If you give me the gift of a t-shirt, and I opt to use it as a rag, I have not wronged you in doing so. I might cause some small offense, should you learn of it, but you gave it to me, and now it’s mine. I can do what I want with it. I could just throw it out without doing violence to your kind gesture. However, this analogy breaks down when we involve the gifts of the Spirit, because His gifts involve the power of God. Here’s something for the gifted to keep in mind: God does not let go of His power in giving it to you. He gives it for a reason, and He may very well give it for a season.
Impermanence of Gifts (08/16/17)
That’s another conceit of the charismatic community which needs correcting. The gift, once given, may not be given in perpetuity. It remains His and in His control, and as He has the right to give it, He also has the right to retrieve it. We might do better to look at these things as the loans of the Spirit. At least then we would look upon them with proper respect, and handle them a bit more carefully. This is a point Calvin brings out, and given that (so far as I’m aware, anyway) he had no particular concern with charismatics in his day, it bears perhaps a bit more respect in terms of consideration.
He is, quite rightly, concerned primarily with the issue of celibacy that Paul is discussing. This, at least, was an issue for his time. It was (and is) one of the errors of the Catholic church, that they insisted on celibacy amongst the priesthood. Now, I suppose one could attempt to argue that if a man wishes to be a priest, and this gift is a prerequisite, he should abandon his wishes unless granted the gift. But, it’s a demand not placed on the priesthood by God, so why should the Church think it right?
Calvin points us back to the generations after Abraham. Isaac and Jacob, he notes, possessed this gift for a season, at least so far as we are given to know. And, given that Scripture doesn’t generally bother to hide the shortcomings of its heroes, it’s reasonable to assume the point valid. But, a time came when the gift was removed and marriage advised – more than advised. Calvin speaks of them being called into marriage, and I find that idea of calling particularly worthy. To enter into marriage uncalled is as dangerous as entering into celibacy uncalled. To enter into any pursuit that is, or ought to involve God (which is to say any pursuit period) uncalled is to enter into danger. It’s to pursue that for which you have no gift and no real hope of obtaining a gift. It is to insist on telling God how your life should run rather than running your life after God’s design for you. Presumption is never safe. It is particularly unsafe when God is the one presumed upon.
Purpose of Gifts (08/17/17)
What shall we do? If these gifts are good gifts, then surely He expects us to use them. But, if He has given them to us for our good, why does it seem that they serve no purpose but to cause confusion and contention? For all that, and to focus more on the topic Paul considers, why deal with celibacy at all? How is it good if it results in reducing the membership potential? How is it good if it leads to pride and contention? Well, first we should understand that what the gift has led to in this circumstance is not the fault of the gift, but the faultiness of the receiver. Like the Law, these gifts are good. Like the Law, sin takes what is good and makes it a base for sin. This neither makes the Law and the gifts evil nor does it render them less beneficial. It merely demonstrates the severity of sin. What is a challenge for us today is that the proponents of the gifts fail to notice this similarity, fail to take into account the sinfulness of sin. So, they assume that any use of any gift must be good, because it’s from the Spirit and He’s good. Yes, but the Jews had much the same perspective on the Law, and where did it get them? It got them to the Pharisees, visited by the very author of the Law they so revered, and rejecting His interpretation of the Law. Today, I find little reason to doubt that were the Holy Spirit to come down in the midst of those who love the gifts so and explain to them how this was intended to be used, they would toss Him out, too.
In point of fact, it already happens. There’s not a practitioner of the gifts, I should think, who hasn’t read this epistle. But, it’s a rare bird indeed who comes away from it with any concern for edification, for using the gifts as designed. Rather, they come away as Corinthians. Look what I can do! See how spiritual I am. If you can’t do the same, you are clearly inferior. We should probably even question whether you’re really saved at all. Now, in practice you will not find too many who will put things in such clear words, but the mindset is just as clear in spite of the words. It’s like the spiritual pride that expresses in a very vocal, very insistent, “It’s not me, it’s Jesus.” Well, yes, but if that’s the case, why are you even in the picture? Why does everything you have to say about Him begin with you, and as often as not end with you? Don’t you see the problem here? No, you don’t. Pride has blinded you to itself. Pride is like that.
So it was with these proponents of celibacy in the name of a higher spirituality. They missed the point. They missed the terminology. It’s a gift. It’s not a power on demand, it’s a gift as God sees fit, so long as God sees fit, to whom God sees fit to give it. Why did He give it? He didn’t give it so you could prance about saying, “Look at me!” He didn’t give it to you so you could cudgel everyone else with your superior abilities. As with every other gift, this gift of celibacy is given to be put into use in service to the wider body of the Church. It is not, and here is another common bit of confusion, given to impress seekers, or to convince those who are currently subscribed to some other belief system. They are not, in fact, given to produce belief at all, so far as I can tell. Frankly, what Paul says of tongues applies pretty well to all of these things. People aren’t going to believe the miraculous nature of the gift in action unless God has already implanted belief in Him more generally. That is to say unless you already believe in God and believe God you’re not going to believe that the gifts are evidence of God. The corollary, however, will not hold. You can be fully convinced of God’s existence and God’s truth, and still not put any stock in the various claims of spiritual gifting today.
Personally, I don’t doubt that some portion of these claims are in fact real. I also don’t doubt that the greater portion of them by far are counterfeits and charades. Too many cases are readily to be found. But, even where they are real, there remains the problem of using them for their intended purpose, rather than as a peacock display of spirituality. They don’t say anything at all about their possessor. They are not badges of rank or merit. They are gifts. The only thing that will say anything about the one given the gift is how he or she puts it to use. If they are used as status symbols, what they say of your status is not pretty. If they are used for self-gratification, what they say about you is not good at all. Let us suppose you have a gift for prayer that far exceeds your peers. Your prayers seem to get answered more often and more readily than others. What do you do with this? Do you ask God what you should pray before praying, or do you begin to presume upon Him, that whatever you ask for, He is all but bound to provide? Do you find yourself praying for sunny days because you happen to like them better than rain? Do you find yourself praying for traffic to find some alternate route because it’s an inconvenience to your day? Look: He may very well answer according to your desire, but that doesn’t render your desire good. It renders Him more merciful and patient than we realize.
What has happened with the gift of celibacy in this case is also instructive. What has happened, we can surmise from Paul’s correction. Those who had said gift (or at least supposed they did) bore it proudly. Did they insist others should all be as they? That’s not so clear. But, they certainly advertised that it was a superior state – a point Paul might even agree with, up to a point. But, what happened for those who had not the gift was terrible. First, they became convinced that they ought to pursue it, regardless of present circumstance. Likely, many of them pushed for it so hard that they pursued it regardless of God’s will for them. If He has willed for you to be married, and you insistently plead for a gift of celibacy, how is God honored?
More generally, if God has gifted you in one regard, but you will not be satisfied unless He gifts you differently, what becomes of that? Does this display the contentment in God that Paul lays claim to elsewhere? Does this demonstrate trust in God? Does it even demonstrate concern about God? Or, does this set us back in the place of Simon the magician, seeking God’s power for fun and profit, but having little enough use for God Himself. Look, Simon may have truly repented and come to Christ in earnest. We don’t know for certain. You may wander down the path of similar error and yet truly love Christ. Our earnestness of faith is no guarantee that we shall not err. Christ’s earnestness of faith is a guarantee that we won’t err unto death. But, we are still capable of greatly embarrassing ourselves by the depths of our error and our insistence in pursuing our error.
There is a place for desiring the greater gifts, as Paul will lay out later. But, first we must understand what defines a greater gift, and it’s not display. It’s laid out plainly enough, so I’ll state it plainly: The greater gift is the one that edifies the body more. Ten words spoken plainly to declare the truth of the Gospel will far outstrip a lifetime of tongues. I can’t quite picture how to bring that back around to celibacy compared to marriage, but the same point stands: What you are given, whether celibacy or marriage, you are given not primarily for your own good, but for the good of the body as a whole. To use either gift selfishly is to abuse the gift and disrespect the Giver.
If we can keep this perspective in regard to whatever gifts and talents God has given us, it will go far toward keeping us from prideful error. They are gifts, not payments. They are gifts, not merit badges. They are to be used to benefit others, not self. They are to be valued based on their usefulness in supporting the growth of the body, not on their display of supernatural marvels. They are not about us. They are for others. They are not ours to direct, although we have our hands on the controls. They are God’s power, and therefore His to direct. We remain, if we are wise, humble servants. Servants don’t demand and direct. They hear and obey.
What’s Burning? (08/18/17)
I have probably already exhausted everything that needs saying on this passage, but as it’s still here, and I still have notes set aside, I shall go ahead and continue. Calvin provides a reminder, lest we take every least temptation as some irresistible challenge. As regards the cause for marriage that Paul has been setting forth, he notes that there is a significant difference between burning and merely feeling heat. That is to say, there are temptations we can and should resist, as it were, by main strength. Call this feeling the heat. You feel the urge, and you know the urge, but you are able to resist the urge. If this is where you are at, then pursuing marriage as a remedy is overkill, and potentially counter-productive. Recall the lesson earlier about reasons for getting married and probable results. Lust-control as a primary motivation is not likely to lend itself to satisfactory results.
And yet, the remedy remains: Better to marry than to burn. If you are so beset by sexual urges that you are assuredly going to fall prey to sinful thoughts and sinful acts, then far better you should do something about it before things go south. Does that mean you should go grab the first partner you can find and rush into marriage? No. It does mean you should be prayerfully pursuing a course that will result in a godly marriage, a marriage primarily intended to glorify God, in which desires can be pursued without sin, and in which you can practice the servant-life of the believer.
This is going to produce difficulties, as Paul notes. It will produce difficulties in that one’s loyalties are necessarily (and rightly) divided between serving God directly and serving your spouse. Let me help a bit with that: Serving your spouse is serving God, if done in godly fashion. Slavish devotion to spouse is likely to become a problem. Setting your spouse on a pedestal, idolizing him or her to the point of neglecting God is most certainly a problem. But, serving them, seeing to their needs, loving them sacrificially? No. This is service to God. It is every bit as honorable as any service you may do in the Church setting. It is assuredly as honorable as any service of labor given your employers in the vocation that God has designed for you.
The difficulties will remain, as they remain between members of the church body. Relationships of any sort bring challenges, because relationships always involve people with different perspectives and different priorities. Learning to work within those difficulties is part of being human. Learning to honor God in the midst is part of being Christian.
Now, a final aside on this section, and I shall call it done. There is question in my mind as to the marital status of Paul. Some look at this and insist he was clearly not married. Some go so far as to insist he wasn’t widowed either, but had been single and celibate all his days. I have trouble with this. I recall from some reading somewhere that the Pharisees required men to be married, and Paul would have been of sufficient age that this should apply to him who called himself a Pharisee’s Pharisee. Clarke mentions, as well, the prevailing Jewish opinion that the man who refused to marry was to be accounted a murderer. This more or less concurs with the comments I read in a Jewish study text on Genesis, indicating that the command to go forth and multiply was not counted as satisfied until a couple produced at least one son and one daughter. All of this suggests to me that Paul must have been married at some point. Was he widowed? Had he simply left Mrs. Paul back in Tarsus, cared for but left on her own? I don’t know. It seems clear enough that she didn’t travel with him, if she was around still. But, the question later in this letter, as to whether for some reason Paul and Barnabas were required to travel as bachelors while Peter and other apostles brought their wives would seem to admit at least the possibility of Paul bringing a wife, which would require he have one to bring.
I do not expect to arrive at any firm conclusion here, but I would suggest that at least at some point Paul was married. The state of that marriage cannot be clearly discerned, although I think we can safely rule out divorce. If we assume that Paul’s wish here has to do with celibacy and not just self-control, then it would seem clear that he was not married at the time, and indeed, his general course of life would seem to preclude that as likely. But, then, there’s Peter, and his situation doesn’t seem any more conducive to traveling with wife. Yet, here is Paul’s intimation that he did so, and Paul would have been in a position to know. I don’t see value in pursuing this further, but will simply leave this here as discussion point. And with that, I shall be moving on to the next portion of the text.
