1 Corinthians 12:10 Commentary and Bible Study

‘To another the working of miracles.’ What is the difference between the gifts of healing and the working of miracles? It isn’t terribly easy to determine, because most of the miracles we read about in the record, are miracles of healing, but there are certain other miraculous events that took place. There is the record of when Saul, or Paul, struck the sorcerer, Elymas, with blindness. There are the accounts of casting out of demons. Peter spoke one word of judgement given to him by God, and Ananias and Saphira consecutively died with the judgement of God upon them. Maybe it would include not only the discerning of prophets, but also the discerning of travelling preachers. Now we have the word. If somebody is going around the churches preaching, what gains them acceptance? There were many travelling preachers in those days. What gains preachers acceptance today? Well, the doctrines of the word: do they assent to them, do they teach them, where do they stand? But in the apostolic period, in the early stages of the church, some of those apostles, prophets, or others, had a gift of discernment, and God enabled them to know if a person was genuine or not. ‘To another prophecy.’ The temporary order of prophets; just perhaps two or three or four as at Antioch in each church, for the time being.‘To another discerning of spirits.’ We are going to read more about that later in the epistle, where Paul says that the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. In other words, there were some prophets who were enabled to speak the word to the congregation, but they weren’t allowed to do it unless somebody who had the spirit of discernment was also inspired by God to authenticate them, and authenticate that the message was from God. So that is the precaution that God took. There were prophets, and there were authenticators of prophets; godly and gifted people, and they had to operate together.‘To another diverse kinds of tongues’ – real languages which they had never learned at school. ‘To another the interpretation of tongues.’ We will come to that. There was a wonderful system in New Testament times, whereby the person who spoke in a real language – and it was a sign to convince Jews; presumably when there were no Jews present, there was no tongue speaking. The apostle says, it was a sign for the Jews, that they would believe. But when a person had the gift of tongues, somebody else would be given a gift whereby they could interpret that tongue, and say exactly what it meant, and any bystander who understood that tongue would affirm it also. The tongue speaker had to be authenticated, otherwise you mustn't speak. It is all set out; we shall come to it.