1 Corinthians 12

PAUL’S EIGHTH RESPONSE: AS TO EXERCISES OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS, 1 Corinthians 12:1 to 1 Corinthians 14:40.

This triad of chapters on spiritual gifts (twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth) must, in order to be properly comprehended, be read as one piece. In the whole St. Paul speaks of these gifts with reverence, but not with that jubilation which probably many a Corinthian would have expected. It might at first be supposed that inspired persons would, of course, be right; that the divine endowment would secure its own rightful exercise. But if it is a God who bestows, man, who receives and exercises, is a feeble free-agent; and the divine wisdom leaves the freedom undiminished. The danger of error was supplemented by the superintendence of a master apostle, as shown in this triad of chapters. Where no such superintendence exists, the incapacity of the human to harmonize with the supernatural is likely to end in morbid and ungraceful results. The fulness of the Spirit at the pentecost overcame and ruled the human. In the latter day, of which the pentecost may be a type, the harmony between the divine Spirit and the human soul may be so perfected, that the unison may be complete and completely beautiful. Man may then realize his own highest earthly ideal. In this first of the three chapters, as Paul sees that the Corinthians most valued the showier gifts, as that of tongues, so he directs them to a valuation according to utility. As they were liable to be made a matter of emulation, strife, and of erratic straying from the truth and from the Church, so he struggles to make them a means of binding the Church in a body. And then he is prepared to show, in the next chapter, that there is one gift within the reach of all, to which all other gifts are inferior the GIFT of LOVE. The third chapter is occupied in cautions and regulations against the disorderly use of gifts.