1 Corinthians 12:1-3

“Now as to spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. 2. Ye know that when ye were Gentiles, ye were carried away unto dumb idols, even as ye were driven. 3. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God sayeth: Jesus accursed! and that no man can say: Jesus Lord! but by the Holy Spirit.”

The δέ seems to me, as to Edwards, to have the adversative sense: “For the rest, I shall set them in order by word of mouth, there is nothing pressing (v. 34); but in what concerns spiritual gifts, I would not have you left longer in ignorance; I must instruct you at once.” The form περί, as to, presents this subject as one expected by the readers. This preposition might depend directly on the verb ἀγνοεῖν : “that you should be in ignorance touching...” But it is more natural to take it in the same sense as 1 Corinthians 7:1 and 1 Corinthians 8:1, as a sort of title, and to understand the regimen of ἀγνοεῖν : “in regard to such things.” The address: brethren, is not only intended to excite the attention of the readers on entering on this new and important subject; it is also meant to soften the humiliation there might be in the expression: I would not have you ignorant.

Should we take the word πνευματικῶν in the masculine sense: spiritual men, the inspired, or in the neuter sense: spiritual gifts? Most modern critics (Hofmann, Ewald, Hilgenfeld, Reuss, Holsten, Heinrici) decide for the first sense, because, as Holsten says, it was rather about the part and the right of the inspired in the assemblies, that Paul had been asked, than about the inspirations themselves. Heinrici rests his view on 1 Corinthians 14:37: “If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual. ” These reasons seem to me far from decisive. With the parallel quoted by this last may be contrasted 1 Corinthians 14:1: “Desire spiritual gifts” (τὰ πνευματικά), which is much more conclusive; and to the argument advanced by Holsten, the common - sense answer is, that it was much more natural and wise to estimate the gifts in themselves independently of the persons than to do inversely. I think, therefore, with the ancient commentators and with Meyer that the neuter sense is preferable. As to the idea of Baur, Wieseler, and others, who restrict the application of the term to the gift of tongues or to those who possessed it, the view seems rather arbitrary. The apostle does not deal specially with this gift till chap. 14 In chaps. 12 and 13 he speaks of all the gifts in general, and, particularly in the verses which immediately follow, he marks off the whole domain of the pneumatic forces with which he is about to deal.

The expression: I would not have you ignorant, alludes to the mysterious side of the subject, and to its complete novelty to men recently converted.