1 Corinthians 14:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This great 14th chapter is so frequently misunderstood, and interpreted in a most bizarre way often today. The 12th chapter is about the body, and about how the ministry of the word of God is for the benefit of the entire body, and that theme really continues through chapter 13 right into chapter 14. The gifts that will be described in this chapter are for of the benefit of the whole body of Christ, the whole congregation, and the church at large. We are going to be reading about gifts that in some cases have passed, and they were intended to communicate truth, God's truth. The word of God was not yet complete when the apostle wrote this epistle; the New Testament was still in formation, and while the New Testament was still incomplete there were prophets functioning. We read in Paul's letter to the Ephesians that prophets are, with apostles, part of the foundation stage of the church. The New Testament teaching is based upon the foundation of the apostles, and New Testament prophets. With the completion of the word of God, we have everything; we have the whole body of inspired knowledge. Yes, God, by his Spirit, still inspires Christians today, but in a much lesser way. It may well be from day-to-day that you are reminded by the inner working of the Spirit of God of certain vital spiritual duties, and things might be laid upon your heart. It occurs to you, and you are moved to do something for someone, or to speak to someone. So yes, in that form the Spirit of God is still at work within individual Christian believers, prompting them to good, prompting them with Scripture that they know, helping and guiding in answer to prayer, but not in terms of revealing extra truth, things additional to those found in the word of God, special doctrines, revelation of new things. That was all been completed. Today, the word of God is complete: nothing may be added to it; nothing may be removed from it. But we are reading of a time when there were still prophets functioning in the church at Corinth. ‘Follow after [giving love]’ – our King James translators choose the word ‘charity’, because it isn't just love. This is out-flowing love, active love, giving love. ‘Follow after’ this form of giving love, ‘and desire’ – be zealous for, is the original – ‘spiritual gifts.’ The two things go together. We've already learned in chapter 12 that the purpose of the gifts is the edification, the instruction, the upbuilding of the whole body of Christ – never for individual benefit. Today, people say that they speak in tongues; they do it privately, and they say, ‘Oh it lifts me up’ or ‘it edifies me.’ I am not sure how, because they don't understand what the language means, but they think it's of benefit to them and they get some kind of emotional experience from it. Yes, but in chapters 12 to 14 it is very evident that the purpose of the gifts was to impart meaningful knowledge to the whole body, not to give some mysterious emotional gift to the individual only. We see how today there are many earnest believers too, who have departed a long way from the word of God in these things, and they don't read this chapter and understand it, and they don't let it test what they are doing, but we must. ‘Follow after love.’ Giving love is the test. It was the test even in those days, of every gift, and it still is today. There are two families of gifts. There are the revelatory gifts where God was revealing truth, because the word of God was not yet complete. So the tongues speakers and the prophets both had a similar ministry at the end of the day; they were imparting inspired words, truth, to the people. There were revelatory gifts and along with the revelatory gifts go sign gifts. They were to authenticate God's messengers, such as the apostles who had the sign gifts which authenticated them as God’s special appointees and spokesman. But those gifts – the sign gifts and the revelatory gifts – have passed, and we know they have passed. The word of God is now complete. To prove this you can turn to 1 and 2 Timothy, the pastoral epistles, where the apostle Paul instructs how the ongoing church is to proceed after the foundation stage, how they are to appoint officers – elders and deacons, preachers, proclaimers of the word – and what the standards are, what the qualifications are. There is not a word about appointing a prophet; not a word about recognising a tongues speaker, because they did not form part of the structure of the ongoing church and so there are no instructions about their future at all. ‘Follow after [giving love].’ It's one of the tests. Every gift, even the gifts that haven’t passed – such as pastors, teachers, evangelists and numerous others – are not for individual benefit; they are for the whole church to impart truth and comfort and succour to the people of God. The rule of love [giving love] applies to every gift. ‘Follow after charity and desire [be zealous for] spiritual gifts.’ Not individually, personally zealous: as if every one of us has got to desire to be an apostle, say, in Paul's day, or a tongues speaker, or a prophet. No, the apostle in chapter 12 has gone out of his way to say that not everyone is an apostle; not everyone is a prophet. There is only a select, small number. We turn to the book of Acts, for example, and we see how the church at Antioch sent out Paul and Barnabas, and it tells us exactly how many prophets and teachers, inspired and uninspired, there was in that large church: very few. They reduced their numbers from 5 to 3 by sending two of them out on a missionary journey. The data in the New Testament is not as it is sometimes presented. ‘Don't you know’, we are told, ‘in New Testament times everybody was a prophet; everybody spoke in tongues; everybody healed.’ But you look at the pages of Scripture: it isn't true. It's very limited: the spreading of these gifts. ‘But rather [especially] that ye may prophesy’ – the key gift is that of prophecy, and the apostle is going to say why.