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January 2007, Page 1.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(January 2007)
New gifts,
Welcome,
Luke,
Song,
Question.
New gifts for a new year
1 Corinthians 12-14
“If anyone is in Christ ... new creation!” - St Paul (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Christians have the best possible reason for celebrating a new year. For it is only the Christian faith which proclaims that anyone who enters it finds a brand new start in life. I wonder what this new start is supposed to look like?
Earlier in the chapter where Paul writes these words he gives us an important clue: “God has given us the Holy Spirit ...” (verse 5). We aren’t just given a new idea and left to work it out on our own. But what, or who, is this “Holy Spirit”?
Most Christians have been taught the first part of the answer. He’s the third person of the Trinity - God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the Father lives in heaven, the Son came to earth for a while, but then when he ascended he went back to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to take his place. The Holy Spirit is Jesus himself in character and personality, but living in the hearts of all believers instead of living in just one person at one time and place.
But we easily parrot the answer without feeling the reality of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul wants us to know the Holy Spirit personally and not just theoretically, so in his letters he says quite a lot about how the Holy Spirit helps. The Holy Spirit comes to remind us of Jesus - to convict us of sin and to turn us back to him. He comes to grow good qualities in our lives like fruit grows on a tree. He comes to give us gifts to help us live lives which make the world a better place. “Spiritual Gifts” as Paul calls them.
This month we have the chance to look at these gifts as Paul explains about them in three chapters of 1 Corinthians: chapters 12 to 14. Why not read these chapters over for yourself?
The middle chapter, all about how we should use God’s spiritual gifts in love, is very familiar to many Christians. We get sidetracked into thinking it’s about weddings, but it’s about far more than that. But the two chapters around this are very thought-provoking. We are supposed to be the “body of Christ”, and a body has lots of organs which all do different jobs - so how do we work like that? Answer: God gives different gifts to different people, and each person reading this article has been given a gift by God. So how do I find this gift? And once I’ve found it, how do I learn to use it, and what is the difference between abuse and proper use? All these are questions Paul tackles - so come along as we tackle them to, beginning on 14th January.
John Hartley