Romans 12: Living Life Study 07: Gift of Prophecy

6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you.

Now Paul comes to the expression of the Roman Christians faith – their gifts! First of all we have prophecy! Much debate is made of what Paul means here by this word “prophecy!”

Calvin’s opinion is that Paul means any one skilfully and wisely performed the office of an interpreter in explaining the will & mind of God. For example, preaching. That is in his own words “hardly anything else than the right understanding of the Scripture, and the peculiar faculty of explaining it, inasmuch as all the ancient prophecies and all the oracles of God have been completed in Christ and in his gospel.”

Others insist that prophecy is the prediction of future events as pre-thought by the mind of God, such as occurred at the beginning of the church and recorded for us in the New Testament. Yet others, would insist that prophecy was only those writing what we have as the New Testament today, and that this gift of prophecy has expired and is no longer in use for today.

I am of the mind that it is both the correct explanation of God’s mind in preaching and the speaking of future events… Whether we preach or predict, we prophecy and Paul exhorts his readers, the original and also us today, to use our faith to speak God’s mind and will. That is what the prophets of the Old Testament did – revealed God’s mind and will to the people.

That is our job today too – revealing God’s mind and will to people – not just in preaching and in prophecy, but also in evangelism – telling others what Jesus, the Son of God, did in his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension. Preaching and prophecy are gifts from God and are the outworks of faith of the believers who have those gifts.

Tomorrow – another gift - serving!!
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