1 Corinthians12chapter 12

1 Corinthians 12:1-3

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant: the fourth of the letter's peri de sections turns from public worship to the pneumatika, the gifts of the Spirit, because reports from Chloe's house evidently included jealousy and disorder around them. Paul begins by recalling their pagan past, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led, since ecstatic speech and frenzied utterance were common at Corinth's own shrines and needed a test the Corinthians had never had. That test is given in verse 3, no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no man can say that Jesus is Lord, kyrios Iesous, but by the Holy Ghost, so the content of a confession, not its intensity, proves the Spirit behind it.

1 Corinthians 12:4-6

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit: three verses in one breath name three words, diversities of gifts, charismata; differences of administrations, diakonion, the word for service; and diversities of operations, energematon, workings, and set each against the same divine name, the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. The bench reads the pattern as unmistakably Trinitarian, one gift-giving God working under three names before the doctrine of the Trinity had its later vocabulary. The point drives straight at Corinth's disease, since a gift can differ in form from another believer's gift while both come from the same single source, so no gift may be used to claim a rank the giver did not assign.

1 Corinthians 12:7

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal: the verse states the gifts' purpose before it lists a single one, to profit withal, sympheron, the common good, not private display. Every man, pas, includes the whole congregation, so no believer stands outside the Spirit's giving and no gift is handed out for its holder's advantage alone. The list that follows in verses 8 through 10 is offered as evidence of this one purpose worked nine different ways.

1 Corinthians 12:8-9

For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit: the list's first pair is verbal, logos sophias and logos gnoseos, an utterance of wisdom or of insight given for a moment rather than a permanent office. Verse 9 adds faith, pistis, here not saving faith but a special confidence for the moment at hand, and the gifts of healing, charismata iamaton, both words plural in the Greek, many gifts for many kinds of healing rather than one universal healer's touch. The site teaches these gifts as living and present, the church's ongoing equipment rather than a closed chapter of its infancy.

1 Corinthians 12:10

To another the working of miracles: To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: the list's back half names five more gifts in one verse, energemata dynameon, workings of power; propheteia, speaking a word from God to the moment; diakriseis pneumaton, discerning of spirits, the ability to test which spirit speaks behind an utterance; gene glosson, kinds of tongues; and hermeneia glosson, their interpretation. The pairing of tongues with interpretation as two separate gifts anticipates chapter 14's ruling that the assembly needs both together, and the discerning of spirits anticipates the same chapter's command that the other judge what a prophet says. Nine gifts named in three verses, and the New Testament nowhere calls the list exhaustive or names an end to any of them.

1 Corinthians 12:11

But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will: the list closes where it opened, one Spirit behind nine gifts, and the verb here is the Spirit's own choice, dividing as he will, not as the believer asks or earns. The bench notes the verse rules out both self-selection and human ordination as the source of a gift, since the distributor is the Spirit and the criterion is his will alone. What the church may do is recognize a gift already given, never manufacture or withhold one the Spirit intends.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ: the chapter's central figure begins, one body with many members standing for Christ himself, head and members together, not merely his church considered apart from him. Verse 13 supplies the means, by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, the same Spirit who distributed nine different gifts now shown uniting every recipient into a single organism. The bench connects the baptism here to the Spirit's incorporating work rather than to water, since the point is union, not a rite.

1 Corinthians 12:14-17

For the body is not one member, but many: Paul answers Corinth's drift toward a favored few gifts by insisting the body was never meant to be one organ. If the foot should say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, or the ear say the same of the eye, the complaint changes nothing, since a member's place in the body does not depend on its own comparison to another member. Verse 17 presses the logic to its absurd end, a body all eye has no hearing, a body all hearing has no smell, so uniformity would destroy the very thing the discontented member wanted to belong to.

1 Corinthians 12:18-20

But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him: the passive complaint of the previous verses meets God's own active placement, tithemi, the same verb the Septuagint uses for planting and appointing, so a member's function is not an accident of nature but a deliberate gift of arrangement. If all were one member there could be no body at all, verse 19's plain conclusion, and verse 20 restates the settled fact against which the whole complaint runs aground, many members, yet but one body. The bench reads the repetition as Paul refusing to let the point pass with a single statement, because Corinth's factions needed to hear it twice.

1 Corinthians 12:21-24

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you: the discontented member of the earlier verses gives way to the proud member, and both errors are answered by the same body. Verse 22 turns the argument over completely, the members that seem more feeble are necessary, and verse 23 names the further honor Corinth's own culture would have withheld, the uncomely parts clothed with more abundant comeliness by the church's own deliberate care. God himself set the pattern first, verse 24 says, tempering the body together and giving more abundant honor to the part which lacked, so that a congregation's care for its weaker members imitates a design God built into every human body before the church existed.

1 Corinthians 12:25-26

That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another: the purpose clause names the goal the whole figure has served since verse 12, schisma, the same word the letter used for Corinth's own factions in 1:10, now shown to be a contradiction of the body's own nature. Verse 26 gives the test of whether that care is real, one member suffering and all suffering with it, one member honored and all rejoicing with it, sympathy running in both directions rather than only toward misfortune. The bench notes how far this stands from a party spirit that rejoices when a rival's gift goes unnoticed.

1 Corinthians 12:27-28

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular: the figure closes by naming its subject outright, this Corinthian congregation itself, and members in particular, each believer a specific and irreplaceable part rather than an interchangeable unit. Verse 28 lists what God has set in the church, an order rather than a random list, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, and then miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, and diversities of tongues named without a further ordinal. The bench reads the ranking as the founding and teaching offices placed first because the church could not exist without them, with the remaining gifts serving the body those offices had already gathered, and the site teaches every office and every gift on this list as the church's continuing furniture, promised nowhere to expire.

1 Corinthians 12:29-30

Are all apostles? are all prophets?: Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles: the seven rhetorical questions of these two verses each expect the answer no, closing the chapter's argument by returning to its opening problem, since some Corinthians apparently wished every believer to possess the same gift, tongues in particular. The form itself is the answer, since a question expecting no for every gift on the list rules out any single gift, tongues included, as the mark of a Spirit-filled believer. The bench ties the questions back to verse 11, one Spirit dividing severally as he will, the diversity Paul has been defending since the chapter opened.

1 Corinthians 12:31

But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way: the closing command holds two things together that Corinth had pulled apart, an earnest zeal, zeloute, for the gifts that build the church most, and the promise of a way that outranks any gift, kath hyperbolen, beyond comparison. The bench notes covet earnestly is imperative and plural, addressed to the whole congregation rather than to gifted individuals alone, so seeking greater gifts remains a corporate duty even as chapter 13 opens to show what must carry them. The more excellent way is not a rejection of the gifts just described but the love without which, as the next chapter states, they profit nothing.