Serving One Another: A Study of New Testament Gifts: Volume One: Foundations and The Motivational Gifts

By Stephen Ansley

God wants His people to know the gifts He has given them.

Gifts appear in Scripture primarily in three passages, each with its own list, with other gifts mentioned individually here and there in other parts of Scripture.  This three volumes study of New Testament gifts deals with the three lists separately to honor the uniqueness of each list.  You are invited to come along with the author in discovering what God has given to His people, including you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098068639

Book preview

cover.jpg

Serving One Another

A Study of New Testament Gifts: Volume One: Foundations and The Motivational Gifts

Stephen Ansley

Copyright © 2021 by Stephen Ansley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Cover Design by William H. Ansley

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version, copyright c 1982. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries by Hans von Campenhausen, copyright c 1969. Used by permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpts from God’s Empowering Presence by Gordon D. Fee, copyright c 1994. Used by permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpt from Discover Your God-Given Gifts by Don Fortune and Katie Fortune, copyright c 1987, 2009. Used by permission of Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpts from James Goll’s The Seer, copyright c 2004. Used by permission of Destiny Image Publishers, Shippensburg, PA, 17257.

Excerpts from Understanding the Fivefold Ministry, edited by Matthew Green, copyright c 2005. Used by permission of Charisma House, Lake Mary, Florida.

Excerpts from Are Miraculous Gifts For Today? by Wayne Grudem, Richard B. Gaffin, Stanley N. Gundry, Sam Storms, Doug Oss, and Robert Saucy. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondevan.com

Excerpts from Gifts of the Spirit by Kenneth Kinghorn, copyright c 1976. Used by permission of United Methodist Publishing House.

Excerpts from Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, copyright c 2006. Used by permission of Harper Collins.

Excerpts from 1 & 2 Peter / Jude, A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition c 2018 by Daniel Powers, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO. Used by permission of The Foundry Publishing. All righs reserved. TheFoundry Publishing.com

Excerpts from Beginner’s Guide to Spiritual Gifts by Sam Storms, copyright c 2012. Used by permission of Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpts from How to Have a Healing Ministry in Any Church by C. Peter Wagner, copyright c 1988. Used by permission of Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpts from Apostles and Prophets by C. Peter Wagner, copyright c 2000. Used by permission of Chosen, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Excerpts from Apostles Today by C. Peter Wagner, copyright c 2006. Used by permission of Chosen, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

To Jill, Amy, Amanda, Sarah,

William, Breanna, and Samuel

Among God’s Best Gifts to Me

Preface

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy consulted with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator James Webb and other officials about the possibility of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Convinced that it could be done, he announced the goal before a joint session of Congress. That goal was achieved in 1969. President Kennedy and some of the NASA team were big picture men. Without the big picture men, we would never have had the vision to try to reach the moon. Without a multitude of detail people in NASA, mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, we would never have succeeded.

In preparing to write on this subject I had to decide if this study should be a grand one, saying something about all gifts, or a detailed one, narrowing the range and attempting to be as close to definitive as possible within that range. Like going to the moon, both tasks are needed.

Which do I intend to do in this book? The simple answer is that I will do some of each. There are many books that are devoted to examining a single gift. But there are many gifts that are completely overlooked by that approach and have no books devoted to them. There are other books that try to cover all the gifts but which are either too shallow or fail to see things that I believe are important. Therefore, I want to make up for what I feel is lacking in both extremes. The result will be a book that will satisfy neither the big picture guys nor the detail people. However, most of us stand some where between the extremes, and hopefully there is value in a combined and compromised approach.

One thing that I will not do, which will be disappointing to some readers, is provide definitions of each gift. What I will do instead is give extended descriptions. I am convinced that to be done well, definitions would require a whole book. Not only should the author of such a book (if someone were to accept the challenge) examine the Scriptures carefully, but it would also necessitate extensive review and evaluation of definitions that have already been proposed. That would be a lengthy task. Frankly, most of the definitions I have read have been disappointing. For our purpose here, descriptions will have to do.

Portions of this book take the shape of encyclopedia entries. Consequently, you may consult this book as a resource book by looking at individual topics. It should also prove to be a useful reference work, not only for those who want to learn about gifts, but also for those who choose to teach about gifts. I have provided several features, such as Greek definitions of key words, which will give easy access to the original text. There will be paragraphs or sections that you might want to skip. However, the best use of this material will come by reading from cover to cover. It is also my hope that readers will not lightly pass over my annotated bibliographies. The critique of those books is not intended merely as a list of additional resources, but more so as part of the discussion about gifts.

I believe that the book balances the poles of being theoretical and practical. Hopefully, I have written a book that is biblically grounded, theologically sound, and useful. I state the obvious when I say that no reader will agree with everything I say, and some will disagree with most of what I say. I entertain no illusions that my affirmations and arguments will cause any wide spread changes of viewpoint on the scale of a paradigm shift. But I do hope that many areas of understanding about New Testament gifts will be illuminated and misunderstandings about them will be corrected. I have written the book which I wish had been available to me as a young man.

Stephen P. Ansley

Riverside, California, USA

January, 2020

Part One: Foundations

"if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness."

Romans 12:6-8

"But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills."

1 Corinthians 12:8-10

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Ephesians 4:11-16

1

A Credo on New Testament Gifts

The word credo is a Latin word that means I believe. A credo, therefore, is simply a declaration of what a person believes.

On the one hand, the things that I will say in the pages that follow are intended as exposition of Scripture, and I, as a person answerable to God for what I teach, must do nothing less than faithfully teach what the text says.

On the other hand, I also have to teach what I believe the text means and how it is relevant. An exposition of Scripture is never totally objective, nor should it be. To teach something that one does not believe makes no sense unless the teacher is merely identifying belief options. I readily acknowledge that the church at large has never had a consensus on gifts; there are many views held by different Christians on the subject. Therefore, this credo will include both an exposition of Scripture and a statement of what I believe, with the understanding that what I believe is only one opinion among many about what the text means.

In Scripture gifts appear primarily in three passages, each with its own list, with other gifts mentioned individually here and there in other parts of scripture. I believe that each of those three lists is deliberately separate and unique, and that the uniqueness of the lists ought to be honored by keeping them separate as they appear in Scripture.

There appears to be some duplication of gifts from list to list. I believe that these near repetitions are apparent only, and that there are no genuine duplications from list to list.

In the church in which I am currently a member, the combined-lists approach is used. That is the most common way that gifts are taught. I am grateful whenever gifts are taught, even if it differs in some ways from my own understanding of gifts. Many congregations ignore teaching about gifts altogether. I believe that a combined-list approach is not the best, but it is not altogether without value. On the positive side, gifts are being taught, and church members have the possibility of discovering what their gifts are and are stimulated to think about gifts. On the negative side, the conflation of the three categories of gifts can leave church members confused or misinformed.

All three gift passages, and supremely the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, make clear that love is the supreme factor in the exercise of gifts. I believe that if my teaching on gifts is not governed by love and does not generate love, even when I am being restlessly critical, I am in error, and you should reject my tone. In the church of my youth, open disagreement of any kind was considered to be unacceptable, contentious behavior; a member was allowed to express his or her personal opinion only so long as it was in harmony with the general opinion of the whole congregation, or more precisely, the opinion of the leadership. By contrast I believe that it is healthy not to shy away from acknowledging differences of opinion. If we disagree, and sometimes we do, it is okay as long as we do it while treating each other with respect and gentleness, in other words, with love.

The church where I am a member is a community church, which means, among other things, that in non-essential doctrines we have a diversity of views. This is unlike a denominational church in which there is an accepted and uniform view on nearly everything. I believe that teaching on gifts is important, but it is not an essential doctrine. At best, it is secondary. It is not a subject about which we can have no disagreements, and it should never be the basis for breaking fellowship.

Gifts are exactly that—gifts. They are never given for merit or reward. Rather, it is a matter of God by His grace giving us the opportunities and the responsibility to serve one another. I believe that the mere possession of gifts is not necessarily a measure of maturity or of special intimacy with God.

All of these affirmations will be re-stated and expanded in the following pages. In fact, this whole book is an expanded credo. This book is my credo on the gifts that have been given to the church, and it is my invitation to you to come along with me.

2

Horizons

A Sunday morning adult education class, of which I was a member, was working its way through the book of Revelation. Knowing that a previous member, who was a very good student of Scripture, would be visiting us, we invited him to use the hour to offer his view of the book.

He came well prepared and spoke with conviction, but I was concerned that perhaps he was too confident in his conclusions. During the question and answer time following the presentation, I said, I’d rather ask this question than answer it, which seemed to amuse the class. You have studied Revelation with integrity, sincerity, and devotion to truth. However, many other Christians—equally honest, sincere, and dedicated to God—have done the same thing and come up with very different views than yours. What do you make of that?

He shrugged his shoulders and hesitated, and before he could answer, he was rescued by a class member who offered a helpful insight, What you find depends on your presuppositions. That is right. It is always right. More often than not we talk about our ideas, which are the superstructure of our thinking, without first dealing with the things we have pre-supposed to be true, things which are the foundation of the super-structure of our thinking.

We do not approach Scripture empty-headed, to use Anthony Thiselton’s term (Thiselton 2000: 493). When we read Scripture, our minds are already filled with what are usually called presuppositions, what we pre-suppose to be true. He uses the term horizons and has convinced me that it is a better term. As we read "the text itself speaks back to correct and to refine our initial pre-understanding." Reading Scripture always involves a set of horizons, that of the ancient writer and that of the modern reader. Understanding the text and its relevance for our lives means moving back and forth between those two horizons until the two merge. It is essential that very early in the process the reader comes to be aware of the distinctiveness of his own horizon.

This awareness of horizons is not only true for reading an ancient text, but it also has its parallel for a modern text, such as this book. A modern writer has his own horizon, and a modern reader has his own too. That is why it is always helpful when a modern author starts out by identifying his horizon. If I were to list all the components of my own horizon, it would be a long list. That, of course, is not practical. But I trust that offering some insight into how I see the world in general and Scripture in particular will be helpful to you. Beyond what I state, you will almost certainly read between the lines to detect my pre-understanding in many other ways.

In the pages that follow we will examine three groupings or categories of gifts: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4. Not all of the eight components of my horizon that I list below will impact all of these lists; some will impact one list, others another. Only a couple of them touch all gifts.

Sola Scriptura and Experience

At the time of the Protestant Reformation (sixteenth century), as well as before and since, the Catholic Church placed church tradition on an equal plane with Scripture as the norm for theological reflection. The two were believed to be equally authoritative.

Scripture Tradition

The leaders of the Reformation protested by placing sola Scriptura, along with sola gratia (grace alone) and sola fide (faith alone), as their watchwords. Simply put, sola Scriptura means Scripture alone.

But how is sola to be understood? No one uses only Scripture to understand Scripture. Therefore, the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, did not reject tradition altogether, but rather placed it along side reason and submitted both of these resources under Scripture; Scripture alone, they affirmed, is the final court of appeal. In this way the Catholic abuses of ecclesiastical authority, particularly in the formulation of doctrine, were to be countered.

Scripture

Tradition Reason

That was not the end of the matter. John Wesley (1703-1791) was a minister and theologian of the Church of England, the father of the Methodist movement in England, and eventually the indirect founder of the American Methodist denomination. He accepted sola Scriptura and the overall paradigm, but modified it in two ways.

First, as Methodist scholar Albert C. Outler notes, "(John Wesley) interpreted solus to mean ‘primarily’ rather than ‘solely’ or ‘exclusively’" (Thorsen 2005: 157). I think that is right, and I think that was the understanding of the earlier Reformers, although they were not explicit about it. No one interprets Scripture by itself. Reason and tradition flounder unaided by Scripture, and an understanding of Scripture without reason and tradition is impossible.

Secondly, he added experience to the equation. Experience stands as a complement to reason and tradition, and all three are secondary to Scripture in theological reflection.

Scripture

Tradition Reason Experience

Another Methodist scholar, Don Thorsen, describes the process creatively when he says, Presumably one must begin theological reflection with home plate—Scripture. But to ‘score a run’ one must cross the bases of tradition, reason, and experience before completing the return to Scripture—the start and finish of theological reflection (Thorsen 2005: 39). This paradigm has been called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. John Wesley himself never used the term. It was coined in the 1960s by Albert C. Outler and provides a good descriptive label of Wesley’s of theological method.

The Introduction to Wesley and the Quadrilateral quotes The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (1996, Paragraph 68, 74) stating the same thought as Don Thorsen, but with an additional touch of eloquence, Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason (Gunter 1997: 9).

John Wesley’s method, with its role of experience as a guide for theological reflection, is a model of how to test an interpretation of Scripture (Maddox 1997: 121-123). This is true of many subjects in Scripture and particularly true with regard to some of the gifts; it remains a useful, if not also necessary, means of ascertaining a proper understanding.

Many gifts are mentioned only once in Scripture. For example, in Romans 12 are ruling and mercy, in 1 Corinthians 12 are a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, and discerning of spirits, and in Ephesians 4 is pastors. How is the reader to understand these gifts? Their meaning is not addressed. We are left to search for examples that seem to fit, examples both from Scripture and from personal experience. Experience becomes a valuable heuristic tool; it helps us test our tentative understanding.

In the end, of course, such tentative conclusions must be submitted to the tenor of the whole Bible. The Bible is both the first and the final authority, superior to experience as well as reason and tradition; no understanding of a gift can be allowed to stand if it is inconsistent with Scripture’s general message.

Not everyone is willing to add experience to the paradigm for the simple reason that experience is subjective by nature (as if reason and tradition are not also). There is good reason to be distrustful. But that does not mean that it is to be thrown out altogether. Experience serves a good purpose when it is utilized critically and rationally to inform our understanding of Scripture. John Wesley believed that true religious experiences would not contradict but only confirm and illumine Scripture… (Thorsen 2005: 133).

I should also comment on the Protestant doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. The purpose of that doctrine was to articulate the conviction that church tradition does not have superior (or even equal) authority to Scripture. I am fully committed to the sufficiency of Scripture, but I also recognize that my understanding of Scripture has been profoundly affected by my own private experiences and by my experiences in community with God’s people. To fail to recognize that would simply be a failure to recognize reality—the way things actually work. Or it could be due to a lack of intellectual honesty. Neither of those possibilities is good. But the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture does not set aside experience along with reason and tradition as necessary and helpful in understanding Scripture.

My point is that experience is part of my own horizon which I bring to Scripture. My experience is another way of saying that I seek to observe what God is actually doing or to observe the works of God to use C. Peter Wagner’s phrases (Wagner 2002: 75). I stand not only with the Reformers with reference to Scripture, reason, and tradition, but also with John Wesley with regard to experience. I believe that including experience in the paradigm is both legitimate and necessary. As my readers you will see that I utilize it often.

Ephesians 4 and Church Order

Ephesians 4:11 lists apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers as given to the church by her Lord. That list and references to elders and deacons in the Pastoral Epistles have implications for church order, how the church is to be led and governed. Beginning in the sub-apostolic era and continuing to the present time, church order changed in many ways from the form (or forms) of the apostolic era.

We are compelled to ask: What are we to make of these changes? Three answers have been given (Shelley 182: 86-87):

a. There is a Divinely Authorized Pattern revealed in the New Testament from which we are not to deviate. In fact we have a responsibility to get back to it. The early church shows us how church is to be done. The implication is that if we deviate from the original pattern, we are rejecting what God ordained.

This answer is called Restorationism. Pentecostals and the Renewal Movement (the Charismatic Movement of the 1960s and following) have a tendency to lean toward this answer. But most of them do not hold it absolutely.

b. The changes were (and are) guided by the Spirit. This could be called a Divine Development