let me rise
Had tea with Mark Buchanan today. Good times.
Many of my friends keep asking me to teach them about the Spiritual gifts. I think there is a lack of solid teaching about the Spiritual gifts. Most teaching is biased and skewed; either towards a fundamentalist (cessationist, no more gifts) or a charismatic (focus on the "flashy" gifts such as tongues, prophecy and healing), view. Neither of these extremes are biblical or applicable, the truth is somewhere in the middle. For the record, I have at times been both cessationist and charismatic leaning, but now I tend to look at things in a balanced way:
- all the gifts are important and can be used today (except, of course, apostleship, considering the prerequisite for that gift was being alive during Christ's earthly ministry... See Acts 1)
- Each gift is distributed amongst the church under the will of God
- There is no single gift that everyone is called to have
- All the gifts are divine
- Some gifts should not be valued over others
- Each gift should be practiced under the biblical specifications regarding it (and some gifts have far more specific regulations, notably the gift of tongues which has an entire chapter explaining its proper usage)
Anyway, I do intend to teach a thorough study to my Young Adults' Group, so when I make notes for that I'll probably post them. Not promising anything soon (or neccessarily at all) though.
4 Comments:
"...I tend to look at things in a balanced way"
Who sets the scale?
Steve
I could use a refresher myself, so please post those notes when you get that stuff done. Keep up the good work, and enjoy your Young Adults time. :D
Tea is for sissies.
I say balanced in reference to my previous views in either direction (eg. Fundamentalist and Charismatic).
I think that in order to hold either the fundamentalist or charismatic positions one has to either explain away or completely ignore some extremely clear passages that contradict that specific view.
The best examples being:
1. Fundamentalists say that the gifts have ceased, yet there is no verse stating this, aand there are verses that say that God will not take away the gifts he has given us and ones that say that each gift is needed for the edification of the church
2. Charismatics teach that everyone should speak in tongues and that speaking in tongues is the sign of Spirit baptism. However, even a cursory reading of 1 Corinthians 12 makes it abundantly clear that 1, every believer is baptized in the Holy Spirt; 2, Spirit baptism is unrelated to tongues; and 3, Not every believer is called to speak in tongues nor should they all desire to.
Both of these beliefs which ar consistently promulgated by Fundamentalists and Charismatics are completely false and easily proven wrong with clear and unambiguous bible verses.
So when I say "balanced," I mean NOT believing these extreme positions that are a detriment to the true blessings of God.
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