1 Corinthians 12:31- input would be helpful

Those of us who have been at guildford anglican this term are at a bit of advantage having had sermons on 1 Corinthians. Just been contemplating, amongst other verses, 1 Corinthians 12:31

"But eagerly desire the greater gifts"

What do people think the 'greater gifts' are? I had just about always linked this verse to chapter 13:12

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

But thinking about it, there could be at 2 least two potential arguments against this linkage; namely,

1. Faith, hope and love aren't really spiritual gifts (although faith is listed as a spiritual gift in chapter 12:8-9 [to one there is given through the Spirit (v8) .... to another faith by the same Spirit] and

2. All Christians should have faith, hope and love.

But I am coming to link chapter 12 verse 31 with chapter 14 verse 1 (and in a sense verse 14)

"Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy" and

chapter 14 verse 12

"Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in the gifts that build up the church"

This seems a more logical argument flow- in a sense if you took out chapter 13, then you could get a good argument flow- but out course, without chapter 13, spiritual gifts are but 'clanging cymbals' (chapter 13 verse 1).

I am sure there could be other ways of looking at this verse..... any thoughts?

bb

I will have a look and come back to you on it.

Jeremy, walk with God on this one.

There are so many arguments back and forth about these gifts. I'm not sure on a lot of them.

One of the things you will have to grapple with at some stage is whether a lot of those gifts are still relevant for the church today.

There is an argument put forward that these spiritual gifts pretty much ceased to be given out by the spirit when the Bible was canonised. Now that we had Gods word...we could rely less on spiritual gifts.

There is much debate concerning these chapters anyway, so yeah...walk with God! I could share what I think...but yeah, it would probably just incite an argument anyways, so maybe best not to.

Bless ya bro.

Trent

I'm going to wade in without even having read the passage in full,

Against what you said Miguel, I don't totally agree because otherwise why would minister's continue to do sermon series on finding what your spiritual gifting is?

Also, (apart from the gift of helps ... which I've heard of various explanations) I believe that people are given specific spiritual gifts so as to unify the many for a single purpose ... I'm talking about the passage that says that we all make up the one body of Christ, but we can't all be ears or eyes.

I think the passage does need to be viewed in the context of the letter as a whole and Paul rebuking people for viewing the gift of tongues as being the only gift of importance. I don't know but I would consider these days that the greater gifts are the ones which allow others to be built up over you building up yourself. So tongues can be a VERY showy gift ... especially if others don't understand it. However, being able to understand and interpret the bible and teach it is more worthy to others than yourself (or should be). So we should 'desire' such gifts, however I don't think that we should get hung up if we don't receive them.