8899 cascade road se ada, mi 49301 868.7005 adabible.org We Believe Miraculous Gifts Hi, my name is Janette Felder. On behalf of the elders and the staff at Ada Bible, thanks for taking a few moments of your busy day to listen to this teaching. I m honored and delighted to be able to talk with you about our understanding of the miraculous gifts that are in Scripture. One of the most amazing teachings in the Bible is that all Jesus followers are members of one body, the Body of Christ. When we attach ourselves to Jesus through faith, we discover that we are also attached to each other. Paul explained this in his letter to the Romans. He writes, Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others (Romans 12.3-5). Or, to put it another way, we are members of one another. In Ephesians, Paul develops this further and explains that a community of Jesus followers, like Ada Bible Church, grows only as every member (that s every individual Christian) serves in the unique way he or she is able (Ephesians 4.12-16). In a very real way, you and I are dependent on each other for our spiritual growth and health, and only as each of us serves and grows will our community of faith be healthy, strong, and effective. Now, you may be wondering, how do I know I can really contribute? What can I do to help the body grow? Well, this is where it really gets interesting. Paul explains that, We have different gifts, according to the grace given us (Romans 12.6). God has promised that everyone who believes in Jesus will receive the Holy Spirit who works in our hearts to make us like Christ and to enable us to contribute in real ways to the life of the body. He has given each one of us certain gifts from the Spirit (or spiritual gifts ), and he calls us to exercise those gifts for everyone s benefit. What are these gifts? Well, we can find several lists in the Bible with at least 19 different gifts things like serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leadership, and mercy (Romans 12.7-8). We can see these gifts at work in our church on a daily basis. However, in one list Paul mentions what we often call the miraculous gifts things like healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and interpreting tongues (1 Corinthians 12.9-10). Historically, Christians have always affirmed that God has given his people spiritual gifts, but there has been some debate over whether or not the miraculous gifts are given today. Some say they were given to key people as the Jesus movement was getting started, but when the last one died the miraculous gifts ceased. Others believe the example set by the apostles is exactly the kind of experience believers should expect to have in all generations. Historically, this debate has divided the Church along denominational lines. On one extreme, some claim that true followers of Christ who have been baptized by the Holy Spirit will speak in tongues or have some
other supernatural experience as evidence of their encounter with God. On the flipside, others claim that all experiences of the miraculous gifts, whether tongues or healings, must be fake (or even demonic) simply because they are not intended for today. Actually, these views are held by the minority, and we want to join the vast majority of evangelicals and avoid those extremes. Here at Ada Bible Church we believe division on this issue is unnecessary and can be avoided. We don t require every attender or member to agree on this question, but we do ask for unity and mutual understanding. So, what is our position on miraculous gifts? Over the next few minutes I want to isolate just three statements about miraculous gifts and explain them briefly, looking at a number of Scriptures along the way. We won t be able to cover every issue exhaustively, so if you have further questions let me encourage you to contact the church office. We can point you to resources to take your study further. Okay, let s jump in. Statement #1: We believe the Bible teaches that everyone who trusts Christ for salvation has been equally baptized (or indwelled) by the Holy Spirit regardless of the presence or absence of the miraculous gifts. Some traditions teach that followers of Jesus experience distinct stages of baptism by the Holy Spirit. They say after we have trusted Christ for salvation we should all have an experience of being more fully baptized by the Holy Spirit. They say the evidence of this special filling will be something miraculous and obvious, such as speaking in tongues. This is not how we understand the teaching of Scripture. Our understanding is that every believer is baptized (or indwelled) by the Holy Spirit as soon as they trust Christ for salvation. Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Corinthians where he writes, we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free and we were given the one Spirit to drink (1 Corinthians 12.13; cf. Ephesians 4.3-6). Since Paul makes no distinction between different believers in the Corinthian church, we understand it to mean that there is no distinction. We would say the difference between Jesus followers is not that some have more of the Holy Spirit than others, or that some have been baptized by the Spirit more fully than others. Rather, we believe radical life change happens when we more fully submit ourselves to God and he works in our hearts. The presence or absence of the miraculous gifts is an entirely separate issue. Statement #2: The Bible makes no clear statement that the miraculous gifts of healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, or others have either ceased altogether or will continue as we see them in Scripture. 1 The question of miraculous gifts really isn t as neatly contained as we might want it to be. No where can we see a clear statement that these gifts have ceased or that they will continue. They re simply described as what the apostles and some early Jesus followers experienced, and we want to be careful about presuming on the Holy Spirit. One of the hardest things for us to admit in a technological, scientific and rationalistic age is that the Spirit is free to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, in whatever way he wants. We know the Spirit will 1 Robert L. Saucy, An Open But Cautious View, in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views (Zondervan, 1996), p. 126. page 2 ada bible church
never act in a way that contradicts the nature or plan of God, but we also know the Spirit can and probably will surprise us. He has been surprising people from the beginning. We must be open to what the Spirit wants to do and how he wants us to respond. We want to be so connected to the life and Spirit of Jesus that we are sensitive to his work around us, even when he works outside of what we would normally expect. To do otherwise would be to risk disobedience. However, we also need to be discerning. As John writes, test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1), which means we take seriously what we see around us, compare it with what we understand from Scripture, listen and re-listen to what God may be saying to us, and always be willing to learn and adapt to what God is doing. Statement #3: We believe that God may give the miraculous gifts to some, but they are not the norm for individual Jesus followers or churches today. We are open to God working through us in miraculous ways, but it will always be, by definition, the exception not the rule. In fact, one wonders if these gifts were ever the norm. On the one hand, numerous people in Scripture experienced miraculous gifts, especially speaking in tongues. At the beginning of the church, on what was called the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit rushed upon Jesus disciples and All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them (Acts 2.4). Later, the book of Acts records how, in the home of an army officer named Cornelius, an entire group of people began speaking in tongues when they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10.44-46). This presents quite a pattern. The trouble is that thousands of people came to Christ in those years (see Acts 2.41), and we only have access to the experiences of a few. Is what we read in the book of Acts prescriptive of what all believers are supposed to experience, or descriptive of what happened at that time? We think it is primarily descriptive, which means it may or may not be our experience as we follow Christ. God is free to work at any time in whatever way he wants, but since he doesn t teach every believer to speak in tongues, perform miracles (such as, healing), or prophesy, we stop short of saying everyone or every church should experience them in the same way. The key here is to understand one of the purposes of miracles in the story of Scripture. You may be surprised to learn that the frequency of miracles in the Bible is not entirely consistent. As one scholar put it, miracles were not a daily or even a weekly occurrence, and some times of history far eclipsed others in the magnitude of miraculous activity. 2 Miracles occur throughout the Bible as God worked in powerful ways among his people, but they were more intense at certain points in the story. In fact, we can identify three main periods of time when miracles clustered heavily around certain events and individuals: Moses and the Exodus, Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostles. Why are miracles clustered here? Well, each of these periods were key times of transition or significance in the story of salvation. 3 The miracles served to substantiate that it was God at work, and the messages of these men were truly from him. Moses threw down his staff, and God turned it into a snake (Exodus 4.1-5). In the same way, the ten plagues of Egypt sent a message. As God put it, the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it (Exodus 7.5). Interestingly, these plagues are most often called signs and wonders because they were evidence of God s power, sovereignty, and action in history. 2 Saucy, p. 104. 3 Scholars often call this redemption history. For more on the story of Salvation, listen to the We Believe teaching Salvation, available at adabible.org > Media Player > 9 Core Doctrinal Teachings. page 3 ada bible church
This set up a pattern in the life of Israel. When God spoke through a prophet, He often provided (or the people asked for) a sign to authenticate the message. If the sign didn t take place, they knew the prophet was false and was not to be followed. This became common practice in the Old Testament (e.g., Deuteronomy 13.1-2; 18.21-22; Isaiah 7:10-16; 38.1-8), and provides background to what we see in the New Testament. Later, echoing the Exodus, the New Testament writers use the words signs and wonders to describe the miracles of Jesus and the apostles, which was another time God stepped in to rescue humanity. These miracles demonstrated that God was working through them and testified that their message was true and authoritative. The apostle John summarized Jesus ministry this way at the end of his Gospel. He wrote, Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:30-31). As John recorded Jesus miracles, his goal was that they would testify to the truth of Jesus message. Since God was furthering his revelation beyond the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament and starting something new (the Church), miracles were necessary. When the disciples spoke in tongues on the Day of Pentecost, they weren t speaking in an unknown angelic language or having an ecstatic worship experience. They were speaking the actual languages of people from various regions of the Middle East (Acts 2.5-6). They were overcome by God s Spirit who used them to announce the truth of Jesus Christ to all people at the same time, and he did it in such a way that God s presence was obvious. Later, the writer of Hebrews explains it all this way: This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will (Hebrews 2.3-4, emphasis added). The signs, wonders, and miracles that God worked through Jesus and the apostles proved who Jesus was, that the apostles were his prophets, and that the Jesus movement was legitimate. These miracles gave people certainty that Jesus was in fact from God, and the writings of the New Testament are at the same level of authority as the Old Testament. Now, you might be wondering, if miracles proved the truth of the apostles message, why wouldn t we expect him to do the same today? Great question. He can, and he does. However, Jesus taught that something very different would characterize his people and authenticate their message going forward. Listen to these two statements by Jesus himself: A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (John 13.34-35, emphasis added). I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples ] message May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17.20, 23, emphasis added). Do miracles happen? Yes. Are miraculous gifts given? Yes. Are they the common experience of all believers? No and that s okay. Today, God normally uses love and unity, not miraculous gifts, to show he is real and we are his people. That s why we focus more on them than on miraculous gifts and why we also focus on what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, page 4 ada bible church
gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 4.22-23). These are traits that foster and express our love and unity in Christ. To put this all together, then, we believe God gives spiritual gifts to every follower of Christ, so we want to pursue them eagerly. As a part of this, God gives miraculous gifts, but they are not the norm for every Jesus follower. They had a special purpose to authenticate the person and message of Jesus and his apostles, and there may be times today when God may need to substantiate his message in this way again. We know it happens. In fact, that may be why an increase in miraculous activity has been experienced in areas around the world where Christianity has been suppressed, such as China and some Muslim countries. As Paul put it, we want to eagerly desire the greater gifts But the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 12.31; 13.13). We don t want to criticize those with different experiences or approaches to the miraculous gifts today, even though we don t pursue or promote them. And, whenever God chooses to work in a miraculous way, we thank and praise him for his grace. As we bring this teaching to a close, let me summarize our three statements briefly. Here at Ada Bible Church, we believe all Jesus followers are equally baptized or indwelled by the Holy Spirit who is free to give miraculous gifts, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing. However, we believe they are not the norm for every Jesus follower and may have never been the norm for God s people. Like the other signs and wonders of Scripture, the apostles and others in the New Testament exercised miraculous gifts as a way of authenticating themselves and their message. Because of this unique purpose of miraculous activity in history and because not everyone has every spiritual gift (see 1 Corinthians 12.29-30), we don t assume or expect to see them in our community of faith. However, since God is free to do what he wants and since the Bible never makes an explicit statement that these gifts have either ceased altogether or will continue, we avoid criticizing those who practice them, and we remain open to how God desires to work in and around us. Our ultimate priority is that Jesus followers will be marked by love, unity, and the fruit of the Spirit. By these things, the world will know that Jesus came from the Father, that he is at work and powerful among us, and that we are his disciples. Our prayer is that our lives may be used to help others encounter the love of Christ. If you want to explore these concepts more or look up these scripture references, please see the written manuscript of this teaching on our website. We ve covered a lot of ground in just a few minutes, so you may find it helpful to explore this some more. Thank you for spending your time to listen to this teaching. It has been such and honor and joy to experience this with you. As you continue in your faith journey, may you personally experience and then share the wonder of God s love with one another. God bless. page 5 ada bible church