Posted on 08/06/2016 6:11:39 AM PDT by metmom
"If I have the gift of prophecy . . . but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2).
Love motivated God to communicate with fallen humanity. That must be your motivation too.
The word prophecy as used in 1 Corinthians 13:2 is the ability to publicly proclaim God's truth accurately and authoritatively. It's a greater gift than tongues because tongues were given as a sign to unbelieving Israel in the first century (1 Cor. 14:21-22), whereas prophecy instructs and edifies believers throughout the centuries. Paul said, "one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation [and] edifies the church (1 Cor. 14:3-4).
Prophecy has two aspects: revelation and reiteration. When an Old or New Testament prophet received new information directly from God, that was revelation. Whenever that information was repeated through preaching or teaching, it was reiteration. For example, the sermons of Peter and Paul combine new revelation with a reiteration of Old Testament truth. That's a common element in New Testament preaching.
With the close of the New Testament canon, direct revelation from God ceased. All preaching and teaching today is reiteration. New Testament prophets policed one another to ensure that every prophecy was truly from God (1 Cor. 14:32). Today, Scripture itself is the standard by which we test someone's message. As the prophet Isaiah said, "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no [light]" (Isa. 8:20).
Paul is saying 1 Corinthians 13:2, "If I have the ability to speak direct revelation from God, or to reiterate divine truth forcefully and dramatically, but lack love, my ministry is meaningless." In its broadest sense, that principle applies to every believer because we all are proclaimers of God's Word. You might not teach a class or preach a sermon, but whenever you tell someone about Christ or share a biblical principle, you're reiterating divine truth. That's why you must always speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Then the Holy Spirit can empower your words to minister to others.
Suggestions for Prayer
Ask God to help you guard your words so that everything you say will be clothed in His love.
For Further Study
Read Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and 18:20-22.
What tests did Moses give for determining false prophets? What punishment did false prophets receive?
Studying God’s Word ping
Amen!
Not possible to fake love to a lover.
So many of the very religious seem to think they can.
Wow. That’s profound.
Yes, God knows. We may be able to fool other people, and maybe even ourselves, but God knows.
We never see an identity statement in the bible quite like “God is love.” We see many adjective attributions to God such as holy, just, merciful, loyal, and longsuffering, and theologians give us other words like omnipotent and omniscient, but this is a notable case of equating God to a noun.
The inexorable conclusion: Clothing with love, seems to be far too little. We all know the figure of speech “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Clothing is not enough. Infusing with love is the only thing that will do.
The love of God brings about profound effects.
Many of us go around wanting to be “good enough” before God, and we do “clothe ourselves” with love (and other virtues). But in a weak moment, such garments can show wear or slip off.
The only thing that will last is being imbued with love, set to a different purpose than what we found ourselves set to when fallen, a purpose conceived and built by the Lord.
P.S. Not to call clothing a bad thing... it is an accommodation to our still fallen condition and it’s as old as the Garden... and it’s a reminder of what we should be looking like... but it is only a step on the way to what we need to be, and what follows can only be administered by the Lord as we permit it to infuse us further and further. That’s why we see scriptural statements like letting love be without hypocrisy.
As a result of my reading prayerfully, and praying scripturally, I enjoy daily guidance from God. So yes, everything must pass through the filter of scripture. But there ought to be personal revelation, such as Peter and Paul received from the Lord (e.g., the vision of the sheet and the vision that there would be no loss of life on the ship), that bears directly on an individual's ministry.
Someone might say, "Yeah, but that was before the close of the NT canon." But I would say that Peter and Paul's experiences with God's specific guidance forms a highly scriptural template for guidance I may expect in my life, today. I don't see why it wouldn't. Notwithstanding that I see John Macarthur quoting "if there be prophecies, they shall cease", I don't see adequate context for that to mean it has ceased already. I see that as a future event.
I have heard exponents of Macarthur's view say that "when that which is perfect is come" refers to the concluding of the assembly of the final canon of scripture. But I see a much better fulfillment of "that which is perfect is come" than that: I see it as yet future, when the Lord Jesus Christ Himself returns to planet Earth. Now that will be perfect! And I see that as the obvious fulfillment of the 1 Cor. 13 prophecy.
But I also realize there are varied opinions on this matter, and different theological disciplines; and I don't want these distinctives to divide us into amputated body parts. One day, we will no longer just "know in part"; knowledge will be transparent.
I have learned to be a bit chary of claims that “God can’t possibly do thus and such” which it isn’t something the scripture solidly rules out.
We have an uneasy theological hedge in the Protestant world against problems in the modern system of Roman Catholic (and less spoken of, but equally applicable) Orthodox theology. The church as a whole let itself fall into a human-driven empiricism, like the idea that it could take a secular government or governments under its organizational wing, and that can’t be wished away by more of the same. Christ, with a plan embracing the salvation of every willing soul, is not caught flat footed, so to speak. He allows the errors and the truths to play out in a scene in which He keeps His promises.
I believe we are right to expect that anything valid we hear from the supernatural is going to be backed up by the promises of God that we now know, and is going to be in the way of carrying out these promises. Old principles will never change; new particulars can and will appear.
We know how John MacArthur interprets prophecy in relation to love. He says, despite such warnings as Rev. 14:9-11, Christians can take the mark of the beast and still be saved.
His problem is he is a pre-trib dispensationalist. He himself it going to get taken out in a pretrib rapture, those “left behind” are going to have to deal with the antichrist, his image, and his mark. Not him. And to show you how much love he has, he says believers in Christ during those times, since they love Christ, can take the mark of the beast and be saved.
That belief, that direct revelation from God is over, often seems to be at the heart of many of our underlying problems within and outside of the current institutionalized Church.
Otoh, perhaps this is a semantics thing and I am misunderstanding him?
If by 'direct revelation' the author is referring to His miracles while He was in the flesh, then yes, that sort of 'direct revelation' ended on the Cross.
However, and without going too far into the metaphysical, if what Christianity teaches is true, that God lives within us and we within Him, then direct revelation is always possible.
In fact, isn't that the Gift of His Holy Spirit?
More and more, I see the Bible as the handbook of life, a supernatural/spiritual textbook full of situational lesson templates that He uses to teach His children His Ways, Wit and Wisdom here in Schoolhouse Earth for the short time we're here.
It's all there in the handbook, what to do, what not to do and why. Nothing new under the sun/Son.
God reveals stuff to us all the time so it’s impossible to say that all revelation, even direct revelation, has ceased.
If that were the case, then I guess God would not be acitve in the world today.
I think the concern it when someone comes along and states that God told them something, and expect people to take it with the same level or degree of authority as Scripture.
While God has indeed shown someone something that is for them in their personal lives, they simply cannot make it binding on other believers. It does NOT have that same level of authority for all believers.
Whatever is binding for all believers everywhere, God made sure to include in Scripture.
Yep.
He often chooses the very least among us, those whom the wise would least expect or listen to, to reveal His Messages to and to be His Voice and Messenger.
Did all of that end with the New Testament, too? No more prophets? No more warnings? God has gone silent in the time of our greatest need for Him?
From a certain point of view, that's all true enough, I suppose, but I figure that with God, all things are possible.
If that thing is already an in the Book example, then it's a given and it's silly to deny it or to limit Him, the Infinite God, the I Am.
On the other hand, just the mention of the word "supernatural" often carries many negative connotations, so people have to come to their acceptance, belief and faith on their own.
In the end, that's all we'll have in our One on one final pass and review with the Judge.
Hey, HiTech RedNeck, that was not good writing; it was GREAT writing. I am inspired by it. Keep up the good work!
I suspect that you are a writer, a minister, a professor — or all 3.
GBA — thank you.
metmom — you are right, I think; and thanks for your response.
Thank You, for saying what I was thinking but wasn't going to say.
Your post made me think more about Him and His Mysteries and again try to get my head around what I cannot get my head around.
I wonder if that sort of contemplation is a version of "being in constant prayer" that I've read about, but I'm not all that clear about that phrase/concept, either.
It has come to me as possible that some of these figures in the Revelation prophecies could stand for more than one literal historical thing. That we might be seeing a pattern, not just a one-off occurrence. So there could be one way to “take the mark of the beast” that is temporal, and another way that is eternal. Making both MacArthur and the theologians who disagree with him both “right” in a sense.
MacArthur seems to be keen for the “mono-meaning” which means he’d not agree with me at all about patterns sometimes being intended. And if that theology can be made to fly, fine. But sometimes it has seemed gratuitous to me.
Maybe my viewpoint is colored by the fact that I have seen Christ being quite loyal to many people who have sinned so vividly that “proper religious people” wouldn’t want anything to do with them. And I’ve been in those shoes too. There is a sin that is not unto death, then there is a sin that is. And to know which, you’d have to see the soul, not just the outward act.
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