Spiritual Gifts in the Work of the Ministry Today
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Spiritual Gifts in the work of the ministry today DONALD GEE SPIRITUAL GIFTS in the Work of the MINISTRY TODAY By DONALD GEE GOSPEL PUBLISHING HOUSE Springfield, Missouri 65802 2-592 Copyright © 1963, by .F.E. Bible College Alumni Association Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The contents of this book were presented initially in the form of five lectures to the student body of L.I.F.E. Bible College in Los Angeles in 1963. The lectureship was sponsored by the L.I.F.E. Bible College Alumni Association. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. WHAT ARE SPIRITUAL GIFTS? 2. SPIRITUAL GIFTS FOR PREACHING AND TEACHING .. 3. PROPHETICAL MINISTRY 4. SPIRITUAL GIFTS OF ACTION 5. SPIRITUAL GIFTS AND WORLD EVANGELIZATION .... Introduction One of my main reasons for undertaking this work is that I have mature opinions and convictions re• garding the gifts of the Spirit which I wish to commit to others before I pass hence to be with Christ. Not that I think these involve drastic revisions of those things which I have taught by voice and pen all over the world these many years. Some convictions, however, have become firmer and now seem in greater need of being stated. One happy reason for this sense of urgency is the new era in the Pentecostal Revival which is growing to impressive magnitude in recent years. I would like to humbly submit my mature thoughts on this favorite subject to a new generation of participants in the Pentecostal Revival of the twentieth century. My chief qualification for presuming to attempt this work is that for over forty years all over the world I have spoken on this inspiring subject to eager audiences. No man can engage in such an activity without becoming increasingly familiar with his sub• ject. In teaching others we teach ourselves. In 1928 I wrote a series of brief articles in Redemp• tion Tidings, the official organ of Assemblies of God in Great Britain and Ireland, which on completion were published in a slender volume entitled Con• cerning Spiritual Gifts. It received an enthusiastic welcome, even from those outside the Pentecostal Move• ment. It manifestly met a felt need in Christian circles. Since then it has been translated in my knowledge into French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, vii viii INTRODUCTION Bulgarian, Arabic, and Chinese; besides it has been published as a series of articles in other languages. The most recent translation has been into Dutch, in 1961. In 1947 an opportunity occurred to publish an en• larged and revised edition in America that enabled me to incorporate more fully my personal convictions on the spiritual gift that Paul calls the "word of knowl• edge." I have been deeply sensitive that these con• flict with popular views taught by some of my esteemed British colleagues, to whom I owe an incalculable debt for giving me some of my first insights into this thrilling SUBJECT. BUT through the years I have become in- creasingly convinced that the great spiritual gift of the "word of knowledge" manifests a teaching ministry rather than clairvoyance. I know that the other idea has been accepted by many, but not by all. Those who do not accept it deserve a clear statement of what some of us feel is a worthier presentation of the sub• ject. In this work I have attempted it. I seek not controversy, rather a synthesis of differing views which may all contain varying sides of truth. I am sure that the last word has not yet been said on the gifts of the Spirit. Of one thing I am convinced, and that is that truth is not found in extremes. Rather it will be expressed through balancing statements that at first sight may appear paradoxical. Therefore, while I trust that I have done justice to the avowedly super• natural element in the gifts of the Spirit, I also have sought to give just place to the inescapable natural constituent part of the same subject. In this, as in other high themes, the truth consists in "God and man in oneness blending." Only in holding the tension be• tween these two, the divine and the human, can pro- INTRODUCTION IX gress be made towards arriving at the ultimate truth. Throughout these studies the gifts of the Spirit are related to the work of the ministry. The scriptural and logical basis for this relationship is very clear in the 12th Chapter of 2 Corinthians, where the list of personal gifts in the early verses becomes in the closing verses a list of the ministries set by God in the Church. Soon after writing my book Concerning Spiritual Gifts I wrote, as a sequel, another book entitled The Min• istry Gifts of Christ based, mainly, on the five leading ministries of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (Eph. 4:11). The theme of these studies is an approach to spiritual gifts as the basis for various ministries. Moreover, these things are for today. They have more than academic interest. The testimony of the Pentecostal Revival is that they are divinely intended to possess an abiding and practical application to the work of the gospel. DONALD GEE, Kenley, Surrey, England What Are Spiritual Gifts? The time is opportune for a reappraisal of spiritual gifts. The Pentecostal Movement for sixty years or more has witnessed to their restoration. Yet on the whole, when we are told that "the gifts" are being exercised within our churches, we find far too often that the reference is only to messages in tongues and their interpretation. Divine healing is a related, yet separate, subject and has never been the peculiar testi• mony of the Pentecostal Revival alone. Now a fresh and arresting phenomenon has arisen in a new outpouring of the Spirit within the older de• nominations, particularly the Episcopalians. Once again the emphasis mainly is upon the glossalalia, or speak• ing with tongues. Mention of other gifts of the Spirit follows a pattern obviously borrowed from ideas cur• rent within the Pentecostal Movement and shares its limitations. This latest revival has all the exuberance of a new discovery of the Living Christ which we of the older revival have known these three-score years. We rejoice with it. Where it will lead remains to be seen. Ignorance of spiritual gifts can easily mean a repetition of some of our own, and others', hoary mis• takes. It can frustrate the full purposes of God. 1 2 Spiritual Gifts in the Ministry Today Therefore we are wise to commence these studies with Paul's classic words of introduction to the same theme: "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.'" The ignorance long ago at Corinth was not experimental, for they "came behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of the Lord." It was ignorance of the relative values of spiritual gifts, their true nature, and their right use. In understanding of these things they had to grow out of childish ideas and become men. We must do the same. It is an impressive witness to the reality of what the Holy Spirit has been seeking to do through the Pente• costal Revival that it has survived its own weaknesses and excesses and stands today as a spiritual force in Christianity that is compelling the attention and respect of the historic churches. And this has been achieved, under God, in spite of a notable lack of teachers or leaders that could justly be described as theologians. The climate of the early decades of the Movement gave scant encouragement to a teaching type of ministry. All the emphasis was upon evangelism, and that of a rather garish type. If the Holy Scriptures were quoted it was rather to support experience than instruct it. It has to be ruefully admitted that teachers, as such, often undermined their own acceptance because they brought over into the Pentecostal Revival the methods they had used in their former denominational churches. Their ministry therefore seemed to present a descent into the natural from the supernatural that accorded ill with the essence of the Pentecostal Revival. There was much truth in this complaint, and teaching by natural gifts (and sometimes even without those!) laid a 1 Corinthians 12:1. - Ibid. v. 7. 1 Corinthians 14:20. What Are Spiritual Gifts? foundation for that wrong conception of the basically spiritual gifts that are at the root of a truly Pentecostal ministry of the Word. Any realization that a teaching ministry could be as truly "Pentecostal" as healings or miracles was difficult to fit into the prevailing emphasis on the apparently supernatural at all costs. It shall be an important part of our business in the course of these studies, if God permits, to present a truer picture of the proper nature of teaching and teachers within a spiritually gifted Church. This correction is still urgently needed if the revival is going to keep its balance in the purposes of God. But for the moment let our business be to seek a satisfactory and scriptural definition of spiritual gifts as a whole. In turning to the Authorized Version of the Bible it will be at once noticed that the word "gifts" is printed in italics in 1 Corinthians 12:1, indicating that the word is not in the original. For that reason some pedants would render it simply "concerning spirituals," which in some sense is correct for the whole of the following three chapters deals with spiritual topics.