14:1
So Paul has been teaching on the primary importance of love, but this is not to denigrate the gifts at all. The gifts are to be desired, and are to be used in the context of love. We are to “pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”. On the cessationist view, one has to say that this chapter would be one of the most irrelevant chapters in the New Testament.
Paul then singles out one gift as being of special importance, prophecy. Now this is an area where a lot of nonsense is spoken. If you look at Charisma News there are frequent articles that make me groan. At the time of writing there is this one entitled “Blood Moon Pastor Gives Prophetic Insight Into Coming Solar Eclispe”. This sort of things just makes me groan. By now (this was written some five months ago), of course, I could have been proved to be a hopeless sceptic and all he said came true! However, there are things that give prophecy a bad name. But the cessationist camp sometimes talk an equal load of nonsense. One tactic is to set up a straw man by effectively saying that every “prophetic word” has to be equally true or authoritative as Scripture. No sensible charismatic believes this, all prophecy has to be judged against the written word of God. Nor is the cessationists' view of prophecy consistent with Scripture. There are the major and minor written prophets (Isaiah, Micah etc). Then there were bands of prophets, about whom we know very little of what they actually said. Then think about Elijah and Elisha. These are two great prophets of the Bible, but their words of prophecy are not of the same value as the words of Isaiah. What do I mean by this? Ask yourself this, when did you last hear a sermon based on the words of Elisha and drawing lessons from the words themselves? We have no doubt heard many messages on Elisha and Elijah, but their actual words are very much tied into the context of the time. Their actions and trust in God provide valuable lessons for us, but their words do not really contribute to our theology. We have also heard many sermons on Isaiah, and in this case the emphasis is on the words Isaiah spoke, and his words are foundational to much of our theology. Then there is David’s prophet Nathan, not all the words he spoke were correct! Eg in 2 Sam 7:3 Nathan tells David to go ahead and build a temple “for the Lord is with you”. Then in the next verse we read that the Lord spoke to Nathan and gave him a very different word. So straw man arguments against prophecy should be abandoned. On a more positive note, from Genesis to Revelation God has on numerous occasions spoken to individuals and to groups of people about their particular situations. So has He now stopped doing that! Our God is a God who communicates with His people on a personal level. In his book on Covenantal Apologetics, Oliphant says (p200) “God the Holy Spirit does not speak audibly to people , even to his people, apart from the word of Christ in the Bible”. On what grounds can we say that? In Acts 18:9,10 God spoke to Paul encouraging him to stay in Corinth. Does God never speak to a Christian today urging them to stay or leave a particular situation?
Anyway, time to end what has become close to a rant! Suffice to say that I believe that prophecy is still relevant for the Christian today, but everything is subject to the written word of God. Actually, we have very little idea about the detailed nature of prophecy in the New Testament. But this chapter is highly relevant to us today, so let’s see what we can learn from it.
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