THE greatest gift—the “free gift” of Romans 5. 1 5— Eternal Life through Jesus Christ our Lord, is offered to us on certain conditions. Paul in Romans 6 explains that baptism is the symbolic death—”baptised into his death”–and also a symbolic resurrection after which we should “walk in newness of life”, a new creature,’ in other words, born again, out of the water.
Born Again
Jesus emphasized to Nicodemus that he must be baptized—born of the water—and also born of the spirit, a phrase which is often misunderstood, because the exact words used by Jesus are overlooked. Jesus did not say, “To be eligible for entrance into the kingdom of God”, but to actually see and enter into the kingdom2 And this is quite in harmony with Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 1 5. 50 : “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. But as we well know, we must be changed, we must be physically born again.
Note the parallel of verse 44 with Romans 6. 4. In the symbolic rebirth (born of the water), the “old man” is buried, and we rise to “newness of life”. In the literal rebirth,3 “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body”.
We can neither see nor enter the kingdom (as Jesus told Nicodemus) without being born of the Spirit in the manner described by Paul. Unfortunately, many have taken it for granted that “being born of the Spirit” means that, in some vague way, we become suffused with the Spirit, and a warm glow pervades our heart. Scripture, however, lends no support to this idea. On the other hand, as we have previously pointed out, the New Testament record reveals that notwithstanding their spiritual gifts, the disciples —including the apostles, were very fallible.
The need for care in interpreting references to the spirit is illustrated in Gal. 5. 25. One would naturally think that “living in the spirit” means living on the high moral plane which is supposed to be the attribute of those who are described as having been “born of the spirit”. But in this verse Paul says, “If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit”. It is therefore possible to “live in the spirit” without walking in it. It appears therefore, that “living in the spirit” means that, having been baptised into the hope of eternal life, we have eternal life, in the figurative, anticipatory sense in which Jesus said :4
“He that heareth the word . . . hath everlasting life . . . , is passed from death unto life”.
Only in this very figurative sense can we be said to “have” eternal life now ; only in this highly figurative sense can we be said to “have the gift of the Spirit” now ; and only in a figurative sense—figurative twice over —can we be said to “have the Spirit” now, if by the “Spirit” we mean the -Holy Spirit”. Perhaps now we should look more closely at the Spiritual gifts enumerated by Paul in 1 Cor. 1 2. Some of these appear to be a special endowment, while others may well be the spiritually directed development of natural talents. As rendered in the Authorized Version, some are difficult to understand. Does verse 9 mean that some had no faith in God, but were given it specially by the spirit ? Surely not ; and in verse 10, what are we to understand by “discerning of spirits” ? Does this refer to a spiritualist medium who claims to call up the spirits of the departed ? Again, surely not !
Here Weymouth is most helpful : “special faith” and “the power of discriminating between prophetic utterances” whichis very reasonable when we recall that “spirits” in the Greek are literally “breaths”. The idea is that some are gifted with the power of clear thinking, or logic, which enables them to correctly follow John’s instructions to “try the spirits” i.e. test the speeches ; or that which Paul gave in 1Thessalonians 5. 19-22 (quoting from the R.S.V.) :
“Do not quench the spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything, hold fast what is good, abstain from everyform of evil.”
This advice would not have been necessary if the “spirits” and “prophesying” were the utterances of the Holy Spirit. “Quench not the spirit (i.e. the breath)” really means,
“Do not interfere with freedom of speech. Therefore do not belittle the addresses of other speakers : analyse their words ; profit from what is good ; don’t encourage anything bad.”
Paul’s Catalogue
In 1 Cor. 12. 28, Paul gives a catalogue of the types of gifted persons which God had given to the ecclesias. They are not arranged in chronological order, but in what is presumably the order of importance. We note that the power to speak with diversities of tongues — claimed by at least one denomination as their foremost evidence of their possession of the Holy Spirit—is put absolutely last. We shall therefore say no more about it. Let us look at the others in order of importance.
First : “apostles”. An apostle is literally one sent forth. We today have none specially inspired and sent by God. We must develop our natural talents. It appears to the writer that the equivalent in our day is not the lecturing brother who eloquently addresses (in his own ecclesial hall) an audience who are not allowed to answer back, but the brother or the sister who goes out to preach the word, maybe distributing leaflets, maybe from door-to-door, maybe in other inconspicuous ways “ready always6 to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience”.
Second : Prophets. As we have already indicated, this does not necessarily mean ability to foretell the future, but rather the power to interpret God’s message—a power possessed by many brethren and sisters, not being reserved to the recognized lecturers and Bible Class speakers, nor indeed to the Exhorting Brethren. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise”, said Jesus.
Third : Teachers. There is no reason to assume that only the brethren should study the scriptures to improve their background knowledge so that they can lecture and exhort, but the Sisters can teach, at Sunday School, at home, and should be able to take an active part in the discussion which should follow our Bible Classes. (We may here explain that our impression is that a Bible Class is not an “ecclesia” at which sisters should keep silent. We think the “ecclesia” is the memorial meeting only. But many will disagree—it is a difficult subject, on which we cannot be dogmatic).
Fourth : Miracle-workers ; and fifth : healers. These two categories are very limited with us. They are represented perhaps by those brethren and sisters whose faith is so sound and their manner of living the truth is so realistic that it convinces others that “God is with us in truth”,—and so leads them to change their ways too. We cannot all heal literally as do those of us who are qualified physicians, but we can all strengthen and comfort those who are ill. As Moffat renders Romans 12. 8, “The sick-visitor must be cheerful”. We recall, too, that the healing of Isa. 57. 18, 19 is not literal but spiritual—forgiveness of sins and a new life. We can do much to encourage others. As Paul puts it in Romans 15. 1 (Moffat) :
“We who are strong ought to bear the burdens that the weak make for themselves and us. We are not to please ourselves ; each of us must please his neighbour, doing him good by building up his faith.”
We need no “gift of the Holy Spirit” to do this.
Sixth : helpers. What a wide scope there is here : the young brethren who come early to sweep the hall and put the chairs right, the one who sets the table for the Memorial ;the one who takes care of the cash or writes the ecclesia’s letters ; the workers who prepare our fraternal teas, the one who looks after our library ; the doorkeeper—and a host of other enthusiastic workers—all using the natural talents in God’s service, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit.
And (except for tongues)—last of all— the “Governments” — better “administrators” (R.S.V. and Moffat), “powers of organization” (Weymouth). In modern Christadelphian language : the arranging brethren.
What a sobering thought! Unless an arranging brother is engaged in some other ecclesial activity such as those listed above, he, as an arranging brother only, is less important than the other “serving” brethren and sisters who so often are expected to take their instructions from him. True, we honour them for their work’s sake, but so we should honour the work of all those comprised in Paul’s catalogue.
Faith, Hope And Love
Paul emphasizes that the Spirit-given gifts would cease—but faith, hope and love would still remain as the driving force of the true Christian.
It is interesting to note that although the apostles had the gift of the Holy Spirit,7 they were unable to “move mountains” because of their lack of faith.8 We have no Spirit-given gift to enable us to move literal mountains, but we can certainly move figurative ones, if fired by the faith of the Hope of Israel.
But all these will be futile, says Paul, without Love—the greatest of all. There are two words translated “love” in the New Testament. “Phileo” has the sense of friendship or fondness and is used many times in compounds, such as philanthropy (kindness towards one’s fellow men), philosophy (love of wisdom). It does not imply the depth of feeling expressed by the word “agape” (the “e” pronounced as in cafe), which is used to express Christian love. It is different from “liking” a person—you can, in the Christian sense, “love” a person you dislike. The essential idea is a bond of unity. Primarily, the bond consists in the fact that we are all human beings, and all have weaknesses. We tolerate another’s faults, because we realize that they are the consequences of human nature, we realize that we, too, have our faults. When the bond is more than human nature, but the common bondservice to Christ, the “agape” is stronger. In Ephesians 5, Paul uses the love-unity of husband and wife to illustrate the oneness of Christ and the ecclesia ; as he puts it in verse 30, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones”. Jesus can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, therefore a “bruised reed he will not break, a smoking flax he will not quench”. Of God, Jesus9 said, “He is kind to the unthankful and the evil”. In this sense, God loves sinners though he cannot tolerate sin.
Unless love pervades all our actions, the exercise of our talents—whether specially spirit-inspired as in the days of the apostles, or natural born or developed, as in our day —will be an empty show.
Conclusion
We have seen that the word spirit is essentially a Latin word, used to translate the Hebrew and Greek words for “breath” or “air”. Unfortunately, the translators of the King James Authorized version have often misled us. For example, in Luke 8. 55, of the dead daughter of Jairus we read, “her spirit came again”. The correct translation is, “she began to breath again”.
Spirit is used figuratively to translate the breath which carries words : “try the spirits” means to test speeches. It is used in a further figure for the thoughts which prompt the words carried by the breath—thus we speak of the mind or spirit of Christ—or we speak of a person prompted by a Christian spirit. In modern English, we see figurative uses of the equivalent words in such expressions as : “The religious atmosphere of the meeting”, or “He wore an injured air”. Unfortunately, readers are too willing to accept the idea that “spirit” in the Bible means either something similar to the popular understanding of a “soul” or a ghost; yet they have no such illusions when they see a shop “licensed to sell wines and spirits” !
The “breath” or “spirit” figure is transferred in the Scripture to denote that force emanating from God in which we live and move, and without which all flesh would perish ; in a special sense it is called the Holy Spirit when directed by God for a special purpose.
The apostles and many disciples are described as having one of the special gifts, reinforced by the spirit of God for a special purpose, usually to prove that its bearers were men of God. These powers were normally bestowed by the laying on of the hands of the apostles. When they died, the power of giving it died with them.
We in our day do not need this power, because we have the New Testament word of God. Only in a very highly figurative sense can any one claim to “have” the Spirit now ; therefore, because the use of the expression is so misleading and may “cause our brother to stumble” by giving him an impression that it is not a figure but something real we are claiming, it would be better not to use the expression at all. The Gift which the Holy Spirit will give, referred to by Peter on the day of Pentecost, is identical with the Gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is preceded by the remission of sins consequent upon our being “born again” in the waters of baptism, and its manner of bestowal is the process of being “born again”- born of the Spirit, when we shall be changed—from “flesh and blood” to a “spiritual body”.
In the meantime, we must “consecrate our bodies a living sacrifice” in the service of Jesus ; we must use our natural talents to the utmost. Nevertheless, no matter how brilliant may be our innate gifts, unless they are clothed in humility and motivated by Christian love, we are but empty vessels (which make most sound !).
“Now abideth faith, hope, love—these three ; but the greatest of these is love”.
References
1-2 Cor. 5. 17
2—John 3. 3, 5
3-1 Cor. 15. 44
4—John 5. 24
5-1 John 4. 1
6-1 Peter 3. 15
7—Matt. 10
8—Matt 17. 20
9—Luke 6. 35
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One