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Spiritual Gifts and the Trinity
BD25-02© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)
We’re looking at spiritual gifts and the
Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Satan is seeking to frustrate the production
of divine good in the life of the individual believer. We are seeking to explain how God works in
service in this day so that you will understand what Satan is trying to
do in your life in order to frustrate this—to get you active and
running around and very involved in church things and Christian activities, all of which God
rejects because it’s nice and it’s good but it’s human good
and not divine good, and there is a great, great difference.
Spirituality
The church age is unique in several respects. It is total distinct from the
age of the law. Spirituality in the church age is
being filled with the Spirit, and I trust you understand that now. It’s the result of confession to the
Father of all your known sins. The Word of God
tells us that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive
us all our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness which covers the
unknown sins too.
So, spirituality is the result of being filled with the
Spirit and that comes from the confession of all known sins. Spirituality and carnality, therefore, are
mutually exclusive. You are either spiritual or you are carnal. You are not
part one and part the other. Now the
emotions of joy may result from this status of spirituality, but your
emotions of joy are not the means to spirituality. When
you are in the plan of God, there will be joy
in your life. Everything will not be pleasant in your life,
but there will be a sense of joy and of satisfaction and of blessing in
that which you’re doing. We don’t
mean to imply that there are no emotional aspects to the Christian life. But we are saying that your emotions are not
the criterion by which you judge whether you are spiritual. Some people think they’re spiritual
because they are happy. Well anybody can go out and take a shot of some drug and get happy. Does
that make him spiritual? Not at all.
Spirituality is not the result of something the believer
does, something the believer says, or something the believer wears. Some people are forever confusing the results
with the cause of spirituality. You are not spiritual because you do certain things, like go to prayer meeting
and teach Bible classes and so on. You are
not spiritual because you say something, like “praise the
Lord,” and “God bless
you,” and “amen,” and “hallelujah,” and
“right on, brother.” That will not make you spiritual. It might be the
expression of spirituality, but it will not make you spiritual. Nor
will you be spiritual because of what you wear. Your
spirituality will have an expression in what you wear, but that will not make you spiritual.
So, Christian service is producing divine good in this unique
church age in which a spiritual believer exercises his spiritual gifts. We distinguish, therefore, between
spirituality and your spiritual gifts. You are not spiritual because you’re on the
job exercising your particular spiritual gift either. It’s necessary
for you to be spiritual if your spiritual gift is going to produce
divine good. Christian service is producing
divine good in the unique church age as spiritual believers exercise their spiritual gifts.
Ignorance
1 Corinthians 12: 1, we found last week, expressed the fact
that the greatest problem in the Christian life is
ignorance—ignorance relative to spiritual things. In this particular
concept, it’s ignorance about spiritual gifts. The
mind is to act as the aggressor of our souls. It
is to act as the aggressor toward our
emotions, and our emotions (like a right woman toward her right man)
are to act as responder. When the emotions act as
aggressor, the directive mind has to follow. Then,
instead of our minds being the leadership of
our soul, our emotions have taken over the leadership. So
Christian service and living is perverted under
this condition into human good, and into emotional controls and expressions, and into
improper use of spiritual gifts.
When you find people running around and saying, “I talk in
tongues,” and when you find people running around and pretending
that they are miracle healers, you know immediately that you are dealing with someone
whose emotions have taken over his mind and the emotions have taken over
leadership of the soul. That emotion is being led
by the old sin nature. Out of the old
sin nature pours, remember, not only sin, but also all of this human
good. Now if you will get hold of that, it
will enable you to look at big name religious leaders in our society who are
miracle healers and who produce vast enterprises that are very successful in
terms of human success. You will be able to
understand that they are producing good, but not good which God accepts. It is good that God rejects, because it is
good coming from the strong side of the old sin nature. God says that all of that is of human
righteousness, and in His sight it is a filthy rags, and He rejects it.
1 Corinthians 12:1 says that all that is possible is
frustrated by ignorance in the directive side of our minds. That’s why learning Bible doctrine is
the greatest virtue of the Christian life. Don’t
ever let anybody tell you that anything else is more important. Nothing is more
important than learning Bible doctrine on a daily basis. This is how
you come to the mind of God. When you have that, everything else falls in line. When
you don’t have that, you’re going to fall right back onto the
production of your old sin nature.
1 Corinthians 12:2 spoke about the problem of spiritual ignorance
among unbelievers. It caused them to worship false gods. The communication of
sound doctrine enables us, as unbelievers, to be saved. Then the exercise of spiritual gifts, Paul
implies, is not to be patterned on the ecstatics of their heathen days when they worshipped these dumb idols.
1 Corinthians 12:3 tells about the work of the Holy Spirit
in removing spiritual ignorance. It says
He creates a receptive will by regeneration toward Jesus Christ so that
a person no longer calls Christ accursed. It also says that it gives him an understanding
concerning the deity of Jesus Christ, so that the person calls him Lord (and this word
“kurios” means deity). Satan seeks to keep the
Christian ignorant concerning the use of his spiritual gifts, and by
causing him to be ignorant on this during the church age—to be frustrated in
the Lord’s service.
Diversity
Now, this morning we are going to look at the diversity
among believers. There are personality differences among Christians. No two
Christians are alike, but all Christians share a common relationship to
God. All are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. All possess an
old sin nature which produces sins and human good. All are permanently in union with Jesus
Christ so they are forever saved.
Christians, however, have varied individual expression of
their common spiritual heritage. And, I’m
happy to tell you this morning that it is not the goal of the Christian
life to place every one of you into a common mold of conduct and practice. Anytime anybody attempts to get all of the
Christians acting and doing and wearing clothes alike and saying things
alike—anytime someone sets out to do that, he sets up a false basis of spirituality. That’s where the idea comes from that
spirituality is what you do, what you say, or what you wear. Spirituality is all known sins confessed and
being filled with the Spirit. That’s a condition of spirituality. What you do
with it is something else, but you are now in a condition usable to God
the Holy Spirit, when you are filled or controlled by Him.
Much training that we have for the Christian life that we
give our young people is merely teaching them about certain taboos and
certain conventions—certain things you don’t do, and certain things
that are acceptable practice. Anytime a new Christian comes
into a local assembly, maybe he’s just born again, he understands
he’s a Christian, and he’s looking around, and he spots what Christians
don’t do and what they do. The first thing that comes
to his mind is that that’s what makes a spiritual Christian. “I’ll just
watch the crowd. What they don’t do here, I won’t
do. The things they do, I’ll do.” Pretty soon he’s picking
up mannerisms and mimicking what he sees and avoiding what he sees that we don’t do. These things, however, are a matter of
personal choice, personal taste, and personal expression. It does not make you spiritual or
carnal. The taboos may represent commendable ideals, but they do not make you spiritual and they do not make you carnal.
What God wants you to do instead is to keep your personality
and its expressions. As a spiritual
Christian, you are to grow into spiritual maturity where your practice
conforms to the will of God. We are to keep our
natural characteristics, but we are to produce inner changes from the
filling of the Spirit. What God wants you to do
is to be your natural self, and to bring about certain inherent changes
in your mental attitude. That’s the thing
that the Christian life is out to do. It’s
not to change you outwardly. It’s to
change you inwardly in your mental attitude through doctrine. Now, when your mental attitude changes, your
outward conduct in many respects will indeed change. However, it will be a permanent kind of
change. It will not be trying to teach
you a false spirituality which will preclude you from using your
spiritual gift.
You need to understand the condition than enables you to function
with your spiritual gift. This is what Satan wants to keep you ignorant of. He
wants to give you a totally false picture of what is spiritual. Once you have that, you can’t do
anything that God accepts—not one thing, because you can’t get to
the first stage, which is spirituality. So, it’s essential
that you understand that this is an inward change of the mind. Furthermore, it is essential to the private
exercise of the believer’s priesthood that other believers mind
their own priesthood. When somebody gets nosy
about what you’re going to do with your priesthood, I suggest
that you put out smoke screens. Just send them right down
the wrong alley and let him stumble around and tell all of his friends,
and make him look ridiculous. That will
teach him, perhaps, to mind his own priesthood next time.
There are certain differences in the role that the various
members of the Godhead play relative to these spiritual gifts. Christians do have certain differences.
Beginning at 1 Corinthians 12:4, the apostle Paul tells us about these. First of all,
in verse 4 we have diversities and the Holy Spirit. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the
same Spirit.”
The word “diversity” means differences which arise from the
distribution of something to different persons. Here
the issue is different spiritual abilities to
different Christians. The word “gifts”
here in the Greek is “charisma.” “Charisma”
means gift, spiritual gift, and different Christians have different spiritual
gifts. The word “charisma”
comes from the word “charis,” which means “grace.” This means something that is a favor,
something that’s received apart from
any earning or deserving on the part of the recipient. The word “charis” is part of the word
“charisma,” because spiritual gifts are grace gifts. These
are things that God the Holy Spirit gives the
individual believer at the moment of salvation in order that he may have the means whereby
he may engage in Christian service. These are
not rewards, but they are presents of grace. They
are simply spiritual abilities that you receive
at the moment you receive Christ—when you accepted Christ as your personal savior. You are not spiritual because you possess
these gifts or because you use your gifts. These are not your natural abilities. You were
born with natural abilities and natural capacities. We shall see that
your natural capacities come under certain spiritual gifts—that
God the Holy Spirit will use them for spiritual service. However,
your natural abilities with which you were born are not what we’re
talking about. This is something you did not possess until the moment that you came into the new birth, the new
life. At that moment, God gave you one of maybe 20 different
spiritual gifts, some of which continue in this age and some which do
not. We’re going to look at them in the next few
weeks, one by one.
Please don’t fall for some spiritual success story that
tells you how someone got or successfully exercised a spiritual gift,
in the process of which he got famous and maybe rich. You
should get pretty tired of those stories. God
will use you with your spiritual gift to
maximum production if you meet the conditions. You
need to get over the idea that there was
somebody who had some characteristic, some temperament, or he found some key. And because he did that, he became something
stupendous in the Lord’s work. That is not true. God the Holy Spirit gives you
this gift, He directs this gift, and He controls this it entirely. The problem is to understand and to be
cooperative with Him.
Identifying Your Spiritual Gift
Now it is necessary that you identify
your spiritual gift. This will allow maximum use of it,
and you won’t be wasting time on the wrong service. This is a tragedy—for you to not know your
spiritual gift and to go all of your life doing Christian service that
is not commensurate with your gift, and you’re wasting your time. Serving the Lord is a matter of knowing your
gift. It’s wrong for you and me to
encourage somebody to serve in a way in which they do not evidence a
gift. It is bad for someone to stand up
and speak in a testimony meeting, for example, and they try perhaps to explain a
portion of the Bible, and they confuse you, and everything comes out backwards: It’s wrong for you to go up to that
person and say, “It was so nice to hear a word from you tonight.” Instead, it would be kinder for you to tell
them, “Listen, I didn’t understand what you were saying
tonight. You confused me. I was bored, and I’m sorry I came.” You
would advance the cause of the Lord’s work. But you want to be popular, you
see, so we don’t want to do that. We encourage Christians to serve the Lord in some capacity where they lack
the spiritual gift required to do that.
Serving the Lord, incidentally, is not arrived at through some
momentous decision. You may go to churches where the preacher has a mellifluous voice, and he is giving a
great exposition that constitutes nothing more than some devotional
inspirational ideas. Or, if he has a good speaking
voice, one of the biggest tricks of the professional preacher is to get
up and recite Scripture. Right away we think here’s an authority. However, we go
home and wonder what we learned—what do I know of my personal life
that advances me in my relationship to God? Absolutely nothing. However, at the end of that
service, after the emotions (what were preached to and what were
appealed to) have been manipulated, then you are called to raise your hand, to come
forward, and to make a great decision. “How
many of you will now dedicate your lives to the Lord? How
many of you from this day forth will
dedicate yourself to doing the will of God?” Are you going to go on with God because you did that? Are you going to be called to a place where
you are to give your life to full-time Christian
service—you’re going to go into the ministry? Some churches have
services where young people are urged down the aisle to stand before
the congregation and say, “I’m going to the seminary. I’m going into the ministry.”
I remember a man visited this church one time, and I sensed
that there was something disturbing him, and after a while he said,
“You know, I’d like to go home, but I hate to go home.” I asked him why. He
said, “Oh, we had a life commitment service back there and they asked some of us to
go into the ministry and dedicate our lives to the Lord’s service. I got up and I committed my life, and I spent
a year in seminary, and I hate it. God doesn’t want me to be a preacher, and I hate to go back and face the people.”
Now that’s pathetic. That’s exactly the kind of misery that comes when somebody gives you the idea
that your spiritual gift is a matter of some dramatic decision. It’s not that at all. It’s
a matter of a lot of little individual
decisions that you keep making as you move toward the plan of God in
your life. That’s why, in this church, we
don’t convey to young people the idea that the epitome of the Christian life
to be a missionary, or to be a preacher, or to be something in the Lord’s
work. If that’s the epitome of God’s life for you,
that’s exactly where he will lead you by a series of decisions. It is our business to keep you so informed of
the Word of God that He’ll be able to lead you in those decisions. We don’t con young people in the place
into making decisions that embarrass them and which they regret and which
distort their lives. Can you imagine what can happen to somebody who gets into the ministry who doesn’t belong
there? Why, they’ll tear him to shreds. He’ll be a prime candidate
for the nut house before the first six months are out. The
same goes for being a missionary. I have
a suspicion about that a lot of people who go to the mission field. You would be shocked if you know the
statistics of how many go to the mission field and come back home. I have a feeling that a lot of those people
who are out on the mission field because somebody kicked them into an
emotional jag during a life commitment service. They didn’t have enough doctrine in the
directive minds to be able to make the decision relative to how God wanted them to exercise their
spiritual gifts, and where.
Verse 4 says that there are differences of spiritual gifts
among believers. You are given this gift
at the point of salvation by the sovereign ministry of God the Holy
Spirit. Differences of gifts, but the
same Spirit. You are not given this gift
because you have a commendable family that you come from, or because
you have a commendable background, or because you have some natural talents. This business of natural talents causes some
trouble for a lot of Christians. Some people who
don’t feel they have very much in the way of natural talents, so
they equate that with not having much to offer in the Lord’s service.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t care if you’re the biggest
dud, or if you sound like you have a mouthful of marbles when you talk, or if
you’re an old crow when you sing, or if you can’t say two sentences in a
row and remember what you said. That has nothing to do
with serving the Lord, because that’s a matter of spiritual
abilities. The person who may be the most
unimpressive and unimposing personality when it comes to natural gifts, may be a
prince in the Kingdom of God when it comes to spiritual gifts. So, please don’t undersell yourself. There’s a difference between your
natural abilities and your spiritual abilities. And
don’t keep trying to serve the Lord on the basis of your natural abilities. And don’t keep trying to carry on in the
Lord’s service under factors that you were born with rather than those which
He gave you in order to perform that work.
Remember that Paul was the worst of sinners (1 Timothy
1:12-15). Yet the apostle Paul, who was
the worst sinner, was given the very highest gift at the time—the
highest gift in the New Testament was the gift of apostle, the gift of pure
spiritual authority, absolute spiritual dictatorship. We
don’t have apostles today, but this was the
highest gift, and the apostle Paul, who was the worst of sinners, received the highest gift. It has nothing to do with your background,
nothing to do with what you were, and nothing to do with you have done
with your life up to this point. You have gifts. Your business is to find out what
they are and how to function under them.
The Holy Spirit
So, we have the same Spirit, referring to God the Holy
Spirit, who is the source of all these gifts. Sameness
among Christians, relative to the Holy Spirit, has to do with
spirituality. What is different among Christians is that He gives them different spiritual gifts.
Jesus Christ
In verse 5, we go to another person of the godhead. “And there are
differences of administrations, but the same Lord.” The
words “there are” connote a continuous fact, and
diversities are the same as used in verse 4. Now here we have
another word. This word is “administrations.” The Greek
word looks like this: “diakonia.” “Diakonia” means ministry, or a
service. The best word is probably service, as performed by a
servant. This is the same word that we have in
Ephesians 4:12 that explains to us what purposes of the pastor-teacher
gift. Ephesians 4:12 says, “For the
perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry.” There you have the same word,
“diakonia,” the work of the ministry, the work of service; and, that is the work of the
production of divine good through your spiritual gifts in your
Christian service. Christians with the same spiritual gift are called to different uses of this gift as they
produce divine good. They operate the same gift in different situations.
You may have the gift of teaching. You may have the spiritual ability to explain
the Word of God so people understand it, they receive it, and they act
upon it. You may use that gift as a youth club leader. You may use that gift of
teaching as a Sunday school teacher. You may use it as a Bible class teacher. You
may use it by simply standing on the street corner and talking to
people who come by and are interested in discussing the Word of God. You may use it when you invite your friends
over to talk about the Bible. You may use it with your unsaved neighbors. There
are different situations and different services for the same spiritual
gift. Not everybody who has the gift of teaching uses it within the same context. That’s
the point here. Christians with the same spiritual gift are called to use it in different
situations. This does not therefore mean that one technique
is the only technique that everybody should use. This
is a bad mistake to make with your spiritual gift. Because you see someone
with your spiritual gift, and they are using it in a certain technique
in a certain situation, with fruitfulness, so you say, “That’s
how I should use my gift.” So, you try to imitate the situation that person has. People
respond to different techniques and to different types of communicators. Therefore, you should use your gift
commensurate with your own temperament and personality.
Christians, all of them, are to glorify the Lord with these
different approaches, and they do, under the filling of the Spirit
(John 16:14). Since every Christian glorifies
the Lord in these different services of the same gift, there is no
ground for one Christian to view himself and his technique as superior. This is bad when some Christian thinks that
he has a technique that is superior to that of the other believers. Who is behind these varied techniques?
Verse 5 says there are different services,
but “the same Lord,” and this refers to God the Son. Jesus Christ is the administrator of the
various expressions of Christian service—the various specialties. So, sameness among Christians relative to
Jesus Christ has to do with their union with Him, but what is different
is their kind of service, under which they exercise their gifts.
Being in union requires all of us to do certain things. We are all called to be
witnesses, to pray, to worship, to give, to study the Bible, and so on. All Christians in the church age are in
full-time service, but you have different expressions, different
services, through which you use your gift.
So, point number one this morning has been that God gives
every Christian certain spiritual gifts. Secondly,
the expression of those gifts will find a
variety of services—the same gift used in different ways. Verse
6 says, “And there are diversities of operation.” Again, we have “there are” and
“diversities.” This is an
absolute condition (“there are”). This
is the normal condition during the
church age. Here, the differences are
called “operations,” and the Greek word is
“energema.” This means the
effects of your particular gift. The effects which result when you
exercise your spiritual gift. The same
spiritual gift will produce varying results.
Here’s another thing that
Christians need to get some peace
about. Suppose that you have the gift of
teaching. You exercise it within the
context of a specialized service to which the Lord Jesus Christ has
directed you to use that gift which the Holy Spirit gave you. However, you see another Christian, maybe in
one of your church clubs, who is tremendously fruitful. Or in one of the other operations in some
phase of the Lord’s work, many are being reached, truly
responding. However, in your operation not
so many are responding. What are you going to
think? Your old sin nature tells you
that you’re not as spiritual. You
don’t have as good a gift. You’re not
using your gift right. You’re not pleasing
the Lord. Don’t you believe it. God says that the Father decides how much
fruit is going to come from your gift, and it will not be the same for
every Christian.
In Mark 4:20, we read, “And these are they that are sown on
good ground.” This is the story of the
sower and the seed. “Such as hear the
word and receive it and bring forth fruit—some 30-fold, some
60-fold, and some 100-fold.” Now if these people
brought forth any fruit at all as a result of sowing the Word of God, they had
to be spiritual Christians, for one thing, and they had to have the gift to
sow it. And for any fruit to come from it,
they had to be spiritual and they had to sow it, but who determines how much
fruit would come from it? God, the Father
determines it, and some fruit was 30-fold, some was 60-fold, and some
was 100-fold (thoroughly and properly sown, but with different results).
So, don’t fall into the statistical trap to determine by
statistics whether God is using and blessing your service. Notice that it says again, “the same God who
works all in all.” The word “works”
means the active operational power in something. This
is the active force which is constantly
determining the results of spiritual gifts. The
grammar here is present, which means God’s
continual work, and the active
voice indicates that God is the one who is making these decisions. And, “all in all” here means
something in someone. After this word for “work,” the
word “all in all” is stressing the results. We have the word “work.” Then the
grammar has the word “all,” in the accusative case. In the Greek grammar, that means
results. So, what he is saying here is
that the Father takes the various effects and determines what is going
to come (the level of fruitfulness) to every man for every gift that he
exercises. Sameness among Christians, relative to the Father, has to do with
belonging to His family. They all belong to His family. However, differences among Christians result
in the Father’s bringing different levels of fruit from each
believer’s service. All of the spiritual fruit is
the result of the Father’s work in each believer’s service. He decides what returns are going to come
from your service—not your devotion, not your gimmicks, and not
your devices. This is one of the problems of
Christian education. There is sometimes
the impression given that you can increase fruitfulness by techniques
that you use. That’s not true.
So, in all three of these sentences we have an interesting
emphasis. At the beginning of the sentence is the word “diversities.” In
the Greek sentence, the most important thought is placed first. The emphasis is that while we Christians have
the sameness and a common heritage in one way or another to the three
members of the Trinity, we have differences. You
must recognize, when you deal in Christian service, that there are
differences among us. At the end of each of these
sentences comes the word “same.” The
Greek does not have to put things in a certain word order. So, God the Holy Spirit says that the first
thing He wants to emphasize is that there are certain differences among
Christians when it comes to serving the Lord. Then
He says that the second thing the He wants to
emphasize is that there is a sameness. Christians have a
common heritage, but they serve the Lord in a different way.
Now let’s look at the spiritual benefit to believers in
verse 7. “But the manifestation of the
Spirit is given to every man to profit.” The
word “manifestation is
“phanerosis,” and it means something that is
revealed or disclosed. Here is refers to
the spiritual gifts. It is the same
thing as what we found with “charisma” in verse 4—the
spiritual gifts that the
Spirit gives. So, the spiritual gifts of
the Spirit are given to every man to profit. The
“gifts of the Holy Spirit are given”
means it is supplied to the
believers in the church age, it’s present tense, and it is in the
passive voice which means that God the Holy Spirit gives them and you don’t
decide what gift you want.
Please don’t make the mistake by
saying, “Now how would I like to serve the Lord? Well, I would
like the gift of flower arranger” (if there were a gift like
that). Or, “I would like the gift of
door smiler, to greet the visitors” (if there were a gift like that). Some of you are good at smiling and some of
you are terrible at it. But if there were a
gift like that, you could become an effective door smiler or flower
arranger for the church flowers, just because you decided that’s what you
wanted. It is given. “And to every man” means to every
individual believer. Incidentally, here in this verse, this is
what comes first in the Greek sentence, “to every man.” This emphasizes that there isn’t a
Christian in this room this morning who does not have capacity and ability for
spiritual service. Some of you have one gift, and
some of you may have ten gifts. And I’ll
tell you that if you’re a ten-gifted Christian, you’re in
trouble. You better get with it. A lot more is going to be expected of you
than of the person that the providence has decided that you’re a
one-gift Christian. You’re responsible for every one of them. These are given, we’re
told, to each believer, to profit. The Greek word is “sunpatro,” and it means to bring things
together here for the benefit of all the believers in the local assembly. The Holy Spirit’s gifts are joined to the
individual believer for the benefit of the body. And, the active voice here indicates that
this is the continual benefit which results when a spirit-filled Christian exercises his spiritual gift.
The Goals of Spiritual Gifts
Now, here are the goals of the spiritual gifts: First there is
edification of the believers—building up of Christians. The goal of the
spiritual gifts is not to build yourself up. The Bible never indicates that. The Bible
indicates that you have spiritual gifts to build up the
believers. The point is to bring us to spiritual maturity.
In summing this up, please look in Ephesians 4:11. Certain spiritual gifts
are listed which we will look at later. Verse 12 tells us
that these gifts, particularly the pastor-teacher gift and the gift of
evangelism, both of which exist today, are for the perfecting (the
equipping) of the saints for service in order that they may do the work of the
ministry (to produce divine good) for the edifying (the building up of the body
of Christ), meaning to build Christians into spiritual maturity. You know that unless a pastor-teacher gets up
service after service and performs the first part of verse 12, the
second and third part of verse 12 will never be realized. If
you sit in a church where you listen to some preacher with a mellifluous
voice who spouts Scripture and gives you inspirational talk, you will
rob yourself of eternal rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Unless you are being fed doctrine on a
substantial regular basis, you will not be able to do the work of the
ministry, which is producing divine good, and you will not be able to build up
either yourself or anybody else into spiritual maturity.
Spiritual Immaturity
There are certain signs characteristic of spiritual immaturity:
1) This is what we’re trying to get away from with the use
of our spiritual gifts. What characterizes children? One thing is
instability. Nothing holds a child’s attention very long. He is forever
seeking new attractions. A Christian who
is spiritually immature is flitting from one service to another. He gets into some Christian server, gets his
nose out of joint, and then shoves off. He
finds himself something else to play with. He’s
a faddist. This year he wants to do this, and next year
he’s got the fad to do something else. And
the worst of all is when I see Christians when
they come to the year when the fad is to cut out, and to resign from doing anything, and to
destroy all effectiveness of their spiritual gifts. Has
it ever occurred to you that God hasn’t told you that He’s given you
a certain spiritual gift for a certain number of years? Do you know how long you have a spiritual
gift? You have that spiritual gift until
the time they pull that sheet up over your face. And
do you know how long you’re supposed to
exercise that gift? You should exercise
it until the very end. If you have a
gift and you’re retiring from it, you had better think that over
again, because God has not invited you to cut out. But
immature Christians, or Christians who know better but who start acting
like children, are unstable, and they flip.
2) Secondly, they are easily deceived. These are the Christians who are subject to
the cults and to the rationalizations of other Christians. They can be conned by what another Christian
comes along and says. Here’s somebody
who has finally gotten on the ball and they’re being a very
wonderful Christian now, and the only reason they’re being a wonderful Christian is
because nobody is bothering them in their carnality and facing them up to what they
are with the Word of God. Christians who are immature are patsies, easily deceived. When
you become mature, you will not be deceived. This is important if you’re going to
exercise your spiritual gift: More people will get you to exercise your spiritual gift in hopeless rathole operations
than you can imagine, and it will be because you are easily deceived.
3) Thirdly, children lack a sense of proportions. They will have a dispute over
trivial things, but they will neglect vital matters. Many
Christians will pour themselves into worthless
projects—human good operations that people applaud but that are worthless to God, because
they lack a sense of proportions. If you have children
at home, you know how they’ll argue about the most trivial matter
and leave important things undone.
4) Children speak in selfish terms. They’re preoccupied with themselves. Christians who are carnal are preoccupied
with self instead of being preoccupied with Christ.
5) They’re opinionated. They’re all-knowing. Here
comes somebody who has been in some spiritual situation for years and years,
and they really haven’t learned anything. They
haven’t really progressed spiritually. They
can’t really say what they have done for
God. For all the money they’ve invested and the
effort they’ve put in, they know that there’s a reward
waiting for them in heaven. But all of a sudden they begin
to realize that they’re not really doctrinally oriented to know
how to use their money and the time so that they are sure they are getting divine
good return. Now that’s traumatic for a
Christian to spend years and then begin to suspect that. So, you take a Christian like that and begin
leading them into some spiritual enlightenment, and they begin to get
into phase into God’s plan for them, and then they become opinionated. When you’re a child and you don’t
know much, you have strong opinions about everything, and you’re all-knowing
in spite of your short-term entrance into some insight.
6) Children gravitate toward carnal companions. Your friends are very
revealing about what you are. According to what you esteem,
you will gravitate toward people who esteem the same thing. Your friends will reveal worlds about
you. Children gravitate toward bad companions.
7) They lack respect for age and constituted authority. We have a lot of
that childish talk on college campuses, “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” Now some of the leaders are having to raise
that to, “Don’t trust anybody over 35,” because
they’ve gone over 30.
8) Children are alert to pleasure and dead to duty. They’re eager for fun,
but carrying out the garbage and practicing the piano, oh my no. But
we have Christians that really want fun—the beauty and the thrill and
excitement of serving the Lord. I could ask you, “Come and be a leader in summer camp, out on the
magnificent Lake Murray, under the stars, out there on the lake, skiing, riding horses,
eating lobster, and all that stuff.” This is
sometimes done in order to get you to think that it’s really
glamorous going to summer camp, sitting with those bugs, human and other kind. But this is a Christian education technique
again. Christian education specializes in the Tom Sawyer method of getting Christians to think it’s fun
so they’ll get on and serve the Lord. A lot of churches
are getting their fences whitewashed because they’re pulling Tom
Sawyer tricks on the believers. And the believers
think it’s really great fun to be doing it. But
you don’t exercise your spiritual gifts under those conditions. God’s
motivation is doctrine, and that’s all that carries your gift to fruitfulness.
Motivation for Christian Service through Spiritual Gifts
What’s the ultimate motivation for Christian service through
your spiritual gifts? We have it in 1 Peter 4:11, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of
God. If any man minister, let him do it as the
ability which God gives, that God in all things may be glorified
through Jesus Christ for whom be praised and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” That’s
the ultimate goal of spiritual gifts—spiritual maturity that
expresses itself in the glory of God.
John E. Danish 1971
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