A Touch From Christ

 

Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Focus: Spiritual gifts

Function: to help people expect a real presence of Christ.

12:¹ Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant. ² You know that when you were gentiles you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. ³ Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.

⁴ Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, ⁵ and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, ⁶ and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷ To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸ To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Good Morning beloved of God!

I read a quote attributed to Oscar Romero that said: “Never stop preaching love…. He takes on the passion of John the Apostle.

We read 1 Corinthians 13 at most every wedding, it is a great chapter in the bible describing the essence of Christian love, or Charity according to the King James, and I like that better, because the word for Love, Agape, is an action verb requiring acts of love to express love itself.

In other words, it is more than a feeling of oneness or community, it involves taking action on behalf of others.

And love is also the focus of my preaching. You notice, I hope, that I always mention that this love is accomplished through us in the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us as she, the Holy Spirit, leads us inside of our own spirits to help our souls express Christ’s love to the world around and shine our lights against the darkness.

In this chapter which introduces the chapter on love, brother Paul gives us a teaching about the Holy Spirit, specifically, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And apparently it was necessary in the Corinthian Church because they were having a supernatural manifestation of the Holy Spirit in their midst and there were some who had one gift and thought it was more important than others and it was causing division.

Pride can get in the way of our spirituality. And that was what was happening so Paul straightens them out about the issue and it takes him the teaching about the Spirit in Chapter 12, through the Chapter on Love in 13, to practical ways to apply it in Chapter 14.

Apparently the division caused by pride was big and it got in the way of their love.

I went through the Charismatic renewal in the late 70’s and experienced and still experience some of these gifts. I believe they are real and do not want to quench the Holy Spirit. But I want to continue what Paul emphasizes here as the importance of loving others first.

Charismatics were named after this is short list of what is known as the Charis Gifts. Charis is the Greek word for gift. These gifts are manifestation gifts, or gifts that show God’s power. When I was a young Christian, I needed that to help me believe it was real. I saw God using the gifts to draw people to Christ.

These Charis gifts, these demonstrative gifts of power are not a complete list of Spiritual gifts.

Ephesians 4 and Romans 12 give us other lists and they are not the showy gifts, but they are just as real. Art, music, design, leadership, helping others, creativity, and then the most significant sign of being a believer from the Old Testament: hospitality. I gonna jump ahead for a sec and say that I believe it was the spiritual gift of hospitality demonstrated first by Delbert and Edna and then picked up on by everyone else when we worshiped at the Fourman residence and enjoyed all those meals together.

Now, back to the point about keeping pride away from our ability to love others. One emphasis of the Charismatic movement came from the Pentecostals who believed that if there wasn’t the manifestation by tongues, then a person didn’t actually have the Spirit. The Charismatics believed it had to be one of some show of power to prove their salvation.

Instead, however, the scriptures teach us that the Spirit moves to bring people to Christ (John 16:8).

Galatians 5, also teaches that the proof of the Spirit in the life of the believer is the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5: ²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

And even this passage on the fruit deals with the problem of pride. Listen to the next three verses that tell us how to be controlled by the Spirit of Christ: ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (stop being selfish) ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. (listen for God) ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. (avoid pride) The Spirit filled life.

The showy manifestation of power is not the proof of salvation, to make it simple, the proof of salvation is the way we carry out our acts of love for others.

So, it is sad that some would exclude others because of their own experience and limit God to their own experience. But that is what pride can do to a church, so loving one another is paramount.

Here is the neat thing, though. It is different here. We have created a community of welcome and love.

I see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit here all the time at Painter Creek I see the power of God here in our midst all the time. I see her work the most in our sense of community, but beyond that, I see it in in the creativity that many of you bring to our worship experience.

When we get to Chapter 14, I’ll talk about how the principles of Chapter 14 govern the way that I lead the Church and try to encourage each of us to allow the Holy Spirit to move in our own spirits.

I hope the take away from this message is how the Spirit of God is central to our life. It is literally the touch of Christ.

Christ touches us inside of our hearts, sometimes we feel a burning urge, sometimes it is just a nudge, or a thought that is more than a coincidence because it answers a prayer or solves a nagging problem.

God is with us leading us and inspiring us and Paul writes this to help encourage them to let this touch of Christ fill them and shine their light in the darkness.