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Does God Still Give Gifts?

by Kevin Swartzendruber  
1/14/2011 / Church Life

I know this debate has been raging for over a century, but I thought I would weigh in with the insight the Holy Spirit has given me over the years. Between the fake revivals, manifestations and prophets we have seen over the years there is good reason for the discouragement of many individuals in regards to evidence for the moving of the Holy Spirit today. It seems to me that it would be better to see no gifts than to experience the disillusionment of imposters and fakes. Many today rush from one mega meeting to another chasing the supposedly gifted superstars of the healing and prophetic movements only to find themselves bewildered by the lack of evidence for anything significant. Many claimed healings disintegrate under closer scrutiny. "Prophetic" words are delivered either in vague unverifiable ways or, when specific, often do not come to pass. We are warned in scripture that this would happen.

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. (2 Peter 2:1-3)

To many, this is a sure sign that the gifts ceased with the passing of the apostles. Their world is very simple and straightforward, with only Satan and his minions exhibiting supernatural signs and wonders. The New Testament blatantly attests that the coming antichrist, along with his false prophet, will work in signs and wonders. With such overt scriptural language, they cannot deny the existence of the supernatural today. With this world view it is very simple to point out that anyone who claims to do miracles or signs and wonders is either a fake or under the control of evil spirits. They relegate anyone who claims to have supernatural help, Christian or not, to that of a false teacher or prophet. Is this world view really a scriptural perspective, however? I believe deeper scriptural evidence clearly shows this was not the view of the early apostles.

Nowhere in the New Testament scriptures are we given a litmus test for teachers or prophets consisting of merely looking for claims of the supernatural. If they were of the opinion that the gifts would cease as they passed on to the grave, would that not have been the clearest test to pass along to us? Instead we are told to test the spirits speaking through those teachers and prophets that would come.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (1 John 4:1-3)

Others, quoting this scripture, have an equally simplistic way of looking at the world, but quite different from the last group. In their world, supernatural gifts and manifestations are working in both believers and nonbelievers. To them, the only way to test whether someone is of God is to simply ask them if Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God. If the answer is yes, they are from God. If their answer is no, they are of the devil. Is this really a viable method for testing where a person's "gift" is coming from?

First of all I believe that a deeper study of scripture, using scripture to interpret scripture, can solve the question of the relevance of the gifts today. The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, lays out his clear doctrine on this important issue. In 1 Corinthians 12 he clearly directs the church into how to operate in and administer the gifts in their church. He makes it clear that each member is given a gift in accordance with how God has placed that person in the body of Christ. If I am placed as an eye, I must have the ability to spiritually see by the gifts of discernment or prophetic insight. If I am a hand, I must be able to serve by giving or healing. Now if these gifts were only given to the apostles, why would Paul give such explicit doctrine on the gifts and how to administrate them in the local church if an apostle would rarely come to speak? The truth is that there was no doctrine in the early church that only apostles could work in the gifts. In fact there are clear examples that there were prophets and others who worked in the gifts in the early church as well. Now the claim that the gifts ceased after the first century are entirely hinged on a "private" interpretation of a passage in the next chapter. After extoling the superiority of love, he states:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:9-10)

Those who use this scripture as proof that the gifts have ceased claim that the perfect thing mentioned here is the canon of scripture. With this interpretation, scripture was canonized thousands of years ago, and therefore the gifts cannot still be a part of Christian life. Such an arbitrary assignment of meaning to a word, used in scripture, is dangerous and clearly is a "private" interpretation of the meaning. If we want to understand how someone is using a term, we must look at all their writings. Upon turning to Ephesians, we get a clearer view of what the Apostle Paul is saying:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13)

Clearly, Paul's view was that all the gifts and ministries were given until Christ's work was done on the earth. With the gifts being the power tools, and the canon of scripture being the plan, why would the tools be taken away just because the plans were given? If you want a job done right, you need both the plans and the tools! These gifts were clearly given to perfect the saints, to do the work of ministry and to edify the body until the work is complete. By Paul's estimation, the work is not done until all true believers are unified in faith and knowledge. When that happens, the body of Christ will stand as a perfect man, in the full likeness of Christ! To settle on something as truth, however, we are told in Deuteronomy 17:6 that we need two or three witnesses. Jesus, Himself, is our second human, and third scriptural, witness. In his prayer to the Father in John 17, Jesus prays that the Father would do what He had started in His Son in the church.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23)

Here, Jesus sums up the whole matter by making it clear that His work on the earth was completely centered on bringing the church to a place of unity in love. That unity is not a manmade concoction, but something that will happen by a spiritual work done through the glory that Jesus passed on to us by the Holy Spirit. The gifts and ministries are the distribution of that glory dispersed throughout the church. The Word of God is the blueprint and the gifts are the tools that will one day bring us into the perfect reflection of Christ!
Having established that the gifts are indeed for today, how do we discern when a true gift or manifestation of the Spirit is at work or a counterfeit? That is the subject of my next blog, "Discerning Spots and Blemishes."

Kevin Swartzendruber was raised from an early age to know scripture and to seek God. Hunger for more of God lead him into many seasons of prayer, bringing with them a greater understanding of the divine purpose for the church as seen through scripture. See more at www.chronicallychristian.com

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