Not For Puffing Up – 1 Corinthians 12:3-13

A text – 1 Corinthians 12:3-13

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.

¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

A reflection:

Since this is the week of Pentecost, we celebrate this coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples and the early church. It was not many years after that auspicious day that Paul was converted from solely Pharisaic Judaism to belief in Christ Jesus as God’s Son. He began preaching to communities all over the Mediterranean world, especially Gentile ones. Corinth was a cosmopolitan Greek city on a couple of trade routes, and many of the people who were first persuaded by Paul’s preaching to become followers of Jesus were from different backgrounds. Some were very rich merchants. And some wanted to be the best at whatever they did.

When the Holy Spirit gave that community of believers spiritual gifts, the folks who were given the gift of speaking in tongues began to feel and act superior to those who had lesser gifts, they thought, like preaching or healing. So Paul tried to teach them that each gift the spirit gives comes directly from God for the benefit of everyone in the community, not to enrich the status of some at the expense of others. Paul began by reminding them that none of them could profess to be believers at all if not for the gift of belief from the Holy Spirit in the first place (verse 3). They all began on equal footing. The Holy Spirit is the actual Spirit of Jesus Christ. Too bad these people hadn’t seen Jesus, the crucified one, who, through giving up everything, served everyone. Maybe the Corinthians who saw themselves as better than everyone else could have benefitted by seeing Jesus’s servant heart at work. It might have taken them down a peg or two.

In my own spiritual life I have a great model of not-a-doormat, Christ-like servant humility. A wonderful pastor of the congregation I attended in junior and senior high school was humble, quiet, trustworthy. He was also very funny, a good athlete, and great laugher. And sometimes when I feel a little puffed up and about to take credit for something I really shouldn’t, his face and his laugh pop up in my mind. I think that is the Holy Spirit trying to work in me, reminding me how good this lovely man was and how I could strive to be that kind of good, too.  We all have gifts, but not to puff up and enrich ourselves: to serve others.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for the Holy Spirit and the many gifts we are given. Help us to remember to serve others well instead of taking credit ourselves. Help us to enjoy seeing the fruit of those gifts flowing out to others. Amen.