COPYRIGHT BY W ILLIAM EVANS
FIRST CORINTHIANS Continued
I N our previous' studies of Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians we have taken up the Introduction (i. 1-9) ; Party Fac tions (i. 10-iv. 21) ; Social Purity—Failure to Exercise Discipline in Moral Affair's (chaps, v and vi ) ; Marital Problems (chap, vii ) ; Christian Liberty (viii. 1-xi. 1) -; Church Decorum—Abuses in Connection with Public Worship (xi. 2-34) ; Spiritual Gifts—Their Use and Abuse (chaps, xii.- xiv, in part). We now proceed to the lat ter section of the sixth main division of the book: VI. SPIRITUAL GIFTS—-THEIR USE AND ABUSE (Chaptèr xiv) 3. Edification is th e Final Test of the Value of a Spiritual Gift (chap, xiv ). Two gifts were particularly manifest in the Corinthian church-Snprophecy” and '“tongues”—and are dealt with at some length in this chapter (xiv ). By prophesy ing is meant not so much, if at all, “fore telling—.dealing with prediction—as forth- telling—an announcement of the gospel of the grace of God and the riches of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The gift of prophe sying was about equivalent to the gift of preaching: the proclaiming of the gospel to the salvation of the lost and the edifica
tion of believers. The prophet, in this sense, is the man who is able to express himself in language understood by all, for their edification, and exhortation, and comfort” (ver. 3), that which has been revealed to him by God either in an ecstasy or in the written Word, provided always, of course, that the revelation given in spiritual ecstasy agrees with the revelation contained in the Word (cf. Isaiah viii. 19, 20 ) . (a) What Is Meant by the Gift of Tongues? It may be that the gift of tongues was an ecstatic experience through which a believing person passed by the peculiar and unique operation of the Holy Spirit upon his spirit that led him to utter things not understood by his auditors fnor, even at times, by himself, unless he had the gift of “interpretation of tongues” (xiv. S) also. He was in a real sense edifying himself rather than others (xiv. 4), and spoke to God rather than to men (xiv. 2); The edifications that came to one .possessing the gift of tongues did not consist in ¿he fact that he understood the revelation given him, but in the fact that his spiritual expe rience was built up and quickened by reason, of the consciousness that he had been a vessel that God had designed to use, for no man could surrender himself really, truly, and fully to the full purposes of the Holy Spirit and his whole nature not be edified and blessed thereby. Has not some
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