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Ask Pastor John
Wasted Talents
00:10:35
Without Christ-exalting love, spiritual gifts serve as self-promotion — even when they produce powerful results.
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- [00:04]
A
You are talented, you have gifts, maybe even pulling off marvels with your own hands. You are impressively gifted. But there's a catch. You can be a miracle worker and waste your gifts. Spiritual gifts are like dynamite. In the right hands, they blow up rocks to build tunnels and highways they can produce. But in the wrong hands, hands seeking to puff up spiritual gifts are good for nothing. Today on Ask Pastor John wasted talents. And that brings us to the love chapter First Corinthians 13, which we read together today, and to this question from Martha in San Diego. Pastor John hello and thank you for taking my question. In First Corinthians 13, verses 1 to 3, Paul teaches that spiritual gifts, though valuable, are meaningless without love. He explains that no matter how impressive or beneficial a gift may seem, whether it's speaking in tongues, prophesying, even giving away all of our possessions, it all amounts to nothing if it isn't motivated by love. A spiritual gift plus that gift put in action minus a motive of love equals nothing. That is a powerful warning from Paul. How does this challenge our understanding of the role of spiritual gifts in the church? And why do you think Paul places love even above the most powerful spiritual abilities?
- [01:39]
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I think the reason Paul makes love the measure of the right use of spiritual gifts is because it is so easy for us to to lose sight of the fact that spiritual gifts are meant for the upbuilding of other people, not the manifestation of our own powers, even divine powers. In other words, spiritual gifts are wonderful and dangerous, just like dynamite is wonderful and dangerous. In the right hands, it can blow a mountain out of the way for a highway. And in the wrong hands, it can blow your head off. And love is the criterion that Paul uses for how not to blow your head off, but create highways of Christian truth and Christ exalting faith and obedience. In 1 Corinthians 8, 1, Paul says, Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. So there's a wrong use of knowledge. It doesn't build up the other person, it puffs up the one who presumes to know. But the measure of the right use of knowledge is love. Because love doesn't puff up the lover, it builds up the beloved. Then when he gets finally, what, four chapters later to spiritual gifts, in chapters 12 to 14, he says, let all things be done for up building or for building up chapter 14, verse 26, which is virtually the same as saying in chapter 16, verse 14, let all that you do be done in love. So since everything is to be done in love, and since love builds up, instead of puffing up or tearing down. Therefore, everything is to be done for upbuilding. And that makes love the measure of all the right uses of spiritual gifts. You can see him applying this measure, for example, in 1 Corinthians 14:4, when he governs the use of tongues like this. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. So unless there's interpretation, Paul is saying, interpretation for the tongue. He says, the one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, that is, he's more loving. Why is he greater? Because building someone up, that is loving them, is the measure of the right use of the spiritual gift. He says again in verse 17, when you pray in tongues, you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up, that is, he's not being loved. So the question becomes, well, if love means building up, what does building up mean? I think a lot of people don't stop and say, what are we talking about here? Like a building is obvious. It's not obvious. I think most agree when you do the contextual search, most agree it means building up someone's faith that is helping them be stronger, more firm, more steady, more durable in their faith in Jesus, in His word, in the promises of God. Colossians 2:7 says, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in faith. And Jude 1:20 says, Build up yourselves in your most holy faith. So I think it's right to say that building up refers to building up a person's faith, that is faith in Christ, making it stronger, more durable. So what it boils down to is that Paul wants the church, the fellowship, the use of gifts, to be all about Christ. The trusted Christ. Spiritual gifts are to be done in love. Love builds up. Building up is the strengthening of faith. Faith is in Jesus Christ. That's the issue. Ultimately, it's the centrality of the glory, the trustworthiness, the beauty, the worth of Christ. Trusted. Building up that trust, building up that treasuring, building up that love for Christ is the issue. Christ is honored when he's trusted, treasured, believed. The right use of spiritual gifts is ultimately the question, are you making much of yourself or are you making much of Christ? Now, here's what makes 1 Corinthians 13 so provocative and so penetrating and surprising, right to the core of our motivation and whether Christ is at the heart of it. Paul doesn't just say that the gift of tongues without love is a clanging cymbal and that the gift of prophecy and knowledge without love is nothing. He also says that this is just so shocking. Faith itself that removes mountains if it does not have love, gains nothing. And even more amazing, you can even give your body to be burned, which certainly looks like love, and yet not have love and gain nothing. In other words, the very things faith and love, the very things that are supposed to be the measure of the right use of gifts, faith and love can themselves masquerade as the real thing when they're not. So here's verse two. If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I'm nothing. And if I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned, I mean what. What can you do more loving than that and have not love, I gain nothing. Paul is so convinced of the deceptive power of sinful human nature that he feels the need to point out that there is a kind of love that sacrifices its own body and is not love. And there's a kind of faith that can move a mountain and is not saving faith. You can sacrifice yourself in a self exalting way, a way that's not concerned to build anybody up, but rather to make much of your own self sacrificing virtue. Yes you can. How deceitful is our heart? And you can trust God. Mark this, you can trust God to work a miracle, to show off your miracle working faith and not with any concern that the Christ exalting faith of others be built up. So what First Corinthians comes down to is whether our lives, including the use of our spiritual gifts, is motivated by self exaltation or Christ exaltation.
- [09:33]
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Yes, spiritual gifts are wonderful and dangerous, just like dynamite is wonderful and dangerous. Spiritual gifts are not for us to put on a trophy case to show off to others. They are tools meant to build up the faith of others in love. And speaking of gifts and talents and getting things done for all the right reasons, we've covered personal productivity from a lot of different angles on the podcast over these past 13 years now. And for more, see the Ask Pastor John book in that section on purpose productivity and laziness on pages 85 to 94. For more to catch up on what we've covered over those 13 years now on purpose productivity and laziness. Thank you Pastor John. Fur Babies and Pet Stewardship. Oh boy, that should be interesting. Up next time, I'm Tony Reinke. See you on Thursday.