There is a wonderful word for us here. The age of sign miracles is passed, but we covet this: the preaching of the word has mighty power to show people themselves, and by the work of the Spirit to bring them under conviction. You have a little picture of it right there. His conscience speaks to him, and he knows he is the sinner who needs a Saviour. He sees himself as God sees him, which he has never done before. ‘I never realised I was a sinner against God.’ ‘And so falling down on his face [on humiliation, he repents of his sin, and then] he will worship God’; he comes to Christ, and he acknowledges him. And he goes out and he tells his friends, ‘I have found this church; and God is among them, and I have found the Lord.’ It is a report of evangelistic ministry, blessed by the Lord, and therefore successful. ‘That’, says Paul, ‘will never, never come through speaking in a foreign language, which people do not understand, even when it is given to you by God.’
The spiritual gifts that were prevalent in those days, before the Scripture was complete, but the word is now complete. What a privilege we have, to have the word of the living God, to have everything we need to know in this life! It will never be added to while history goes on; it is all sufficient for us.
There is a foolish interpretation of this, which was popularised in the 70s and 80s by some of the charismatic teachers, and that is this: that the prophet in Corinth would be pointing directly to people and saying, ‘Your sin is this’; and by prophecy disclosing the personal sins of individual people. There was a teacher in the 80s, who would speak and write about how he would get on an aeroplane and he would find himself sitting next to somebody. God, he claimed would give him the power to look at his neighbour in the next seat, and say, ‘You are an adulterer, and you have done this and you have done that’, and to enable him to know exactly what that person’s secret sins were. What nonsense some of these people talk! What crazy things and claims they make! Some have said that that is about the prophets disclosing your personal secrets. No, what is happening here is the same as what happens by the power of the Spirit of God when the gospel is preached and people are saved. ‘He is convinced,’ persuaded; ‘he is judged’, questioned, literally. The evangelistic preacher effectively questions. He may be preaching on a parable, but what he is implying is, ‘Is this you? Are you the sinner? Is this your sin? Do you know that you are going to meet with God? Are you forgiven?’ The evangelist – maybe not as openly as that – is asking lots of questions of people, making people think, getting them to respond in their minds.