Now we have received,
not the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit who is from
God, that we might know
the things that have been
freely given to us by God.
1Corinthians 2:12
The greatest gift that God gave was His Son who by means of His death upon the cross gave to all who God gave to him; redemption. I am not speaking of an experience of redemption, rather the fact of redemption. If all we feel is the experience of redemption then we are only left with our experiences. Experiences are not the ground of reality for if we are not led outside our experiences then our reality is determined by our experiences. What this means is that experiences become more real than the reality, the reality of the gift of redemption. We live for experiences. These experiences are only subjective and the object of the experiences are us and not the Savior. Oh! We might point to the Savior but the real fact is that far too often people live for experiences. Is Jesus Christ the Lord of your experiences or do you try to lord it over Him? Is any experience dearer to you than our Lord Jesus Christ? We must not care for experiences, we must be sure of Him. Faith that is sure of itself is not faith for only faith that is sure of God is true faith. Belief is not an intellectual act, it is not built upon experience; belief is a moral act whereby we commit ourselves to Him. When we build our relationship to God on experiential Christianity there is only a mental understanding, and acquiescence allowing for a form of group euphoria to overrule your worship. It is God who draws us, and it is God who gives to us gift(s), the gift He so graciously gives is redemption; this alone should humble us, that we will live eternally with Him, not because we are so good, that we have demonstrated some emotional outburst of an religious experience, but because He has drawn us to Him freely. Now we can have an intelligent appreciation and understanding of that transaction of God.
There are two types of gifts mentioned in the Scriptures, organizational or gifts of office, and revelatory; one is never ending, the other has an end. Upon those two types of gifts are objections, objections that certain gifts do not end and that they are to be present in the Church today. Is this true? We must know and understand what the Bible declares is true and not to promote a teaching that is not based upon the Bible.
I will begin with the gifts of office, those gifts of organization that are still present in the Church today and the first is that of Apostle.The Greek word we translate as apostle is: άπόστολος; derived from άπό (from) and stello (to send); therefore it is describing the person who is sent forth. There are those who are attaching this word apostle to themselves and desire to be known and called apostles. Is this correct and Biblical? Jesus is called the Apostle: "therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus" (Hebrews 3:1).The twelve men chosen by Jesus Christ were called apostles: "And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles" (Luke 6:13). Some would question that Paul should be called an apostle, but He was chosen directly by Jesus Christ: "Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord" (1Corinthians 9:1)? There is a wider sense of the word apostle, the one sent forth, and we can see from the bible that Barnabas, Epaphroditus and Timothy were messengers of God's word and in this sense they were apostles or ones sent forth. All Christians are to be sent forth with the word of God, to speak the word of God, to live their lives according to the word of God, they have been chosen by God to be His messengers. In the first sense of the word where those chosen directly by God, the twelve and then Paul were a special chosen people and in that sense there is to be no succession of this chosen apostles, they were eyewitnesses to the Son, Jesus Christ. Missionaries especially show the evidence of the gift of being an special chosen or gifted individual and they go forth with the message of God and they plant Churches wherever they go. Therefore in the secondary sense of the word there are apostle, or those sent forth in a special way to preach and teach and build Churches, even undergoing harsh and often terrible circumstances, a special calling for a few chosen people.
This is the beginning of our examination of the gifts and I will take each gift separately and carefully examine the Scriptures for the answers we seed in regards to the use of the gifts for today.
For if there is a willing mind,
it is accepted according to
what one has, and not according
to what he does not have.
2Corinthians 8:12
Pray, Read God's Word, Daily
Richard L. Crumb
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