1 Corinthians 12:3

With this diabolical, capricious, and blind impulse, Paul contrasts the new breath with which the Holy Spirit penetrates the Church, a breath which has a fixed and glorious object, the Lord Jesus, and which, acting on the depths of the consciousness, gives rise to a new utterance in him who is animated by it. Heinrici, following Griesbach and Storr, thinks that the apostle means here to defend the gift of tongues against its detractors. After alluding to the oracles and deceptions of heathen priests, in 1 Corinthians 12:2, he now passes, they hold, to the effects of Christian inspiration, which, while offering some analogy to these heathen manifestations, ought yet to be carefully distinguished from them. No doubt the discourses in tongues are unintelligible, and there might be a fear of their containing some blasphemy against Jesus Christ. But this fear may be dismissed, for the Holy Spirit can inspire with nothing which is contrary to the glory of the Lord Jesus.

It is impossible not to feel the very artificial and forced character of this connection between 1 Corinthians 12:2-3. Besides, we shall see that in this whole section, chaps. 12-14, Paul is speaking, not to exalt the gift of tongues, but, on the contrary, to combat the exaggerated value given to it. This introduction, 1 Corinthians 12:1-3, is still quite general, and has no special relation to the gift of speaking in tongues. De Wette seems to me to have apprehended the context better: “As Gentiles, you acted without consciousness and without personal judgment; but now, as Christians, the time is come for your knowing how to regulate yourselves; and hence I make known to you the true principle by which you ought to judge all manifestations of this kind.” But this transition is not enough. We must go more to the root of the matter, and not confine ourselves to the contrast between the blind passivity of the heathen state and the full personal consciousness of the Christian state. For this characteristic of superiority would apply only imperfectly to the gift of tongues, the exercise of which excludes the use of the faculty of the νοῦς, the understanding (1 Corinthians 14:14). The real transition seems to me rather to be this: “In your former heathen state you had no experience whatever similar to that which you now have in the Church. The dumb idols, to the worship of which you let yourself be carried, did not communicate powers similar to those which the Spirit now communicates to you. Consequently, novices as you are in this domain, you need a guiding thread to prevent you from going astray: This is why I instruct you....” (Comp. Meyer.)

The first thing needed by a Church so inexperienced in this domain was to know how far it extended, in other words, what was the true character of the Divine influence; who was truly inspired and who was not. The apostle answers this first question by two maxims, the one negative, exclusive; the other positive, affirmative. The character of Divine inspiration does not depend on the form which the discourse takes, but on its tendency. Whether it be a prophecy, a tongue, or a doctrine, matters little; every utterance which amounts to saying: Jesus be accursed! is not Divinely inspired; every utterance which amounts to saying: Jesus Lord! is Divinely inspired. It should be remarked that Paul here says Jesus, and not Christ. His concern is with the historical person who lived on the earth under the name of Jesus. It is with Him that all true inspiration is bound up; it is from Him that all carnal or diabolical inspiration turns away. Jesus had said: “Father, all Thine is Mine, and all Mine is Thine” (John 17:10), and “The Spirit of truth shall glorify Me; He shall take of Mine and show it unto you.” No utterance whatever, degrading the man who is called Jesus, however eloquent and powerful, emanates from Divine inspiration. Every utterance glorifying the man Jesus, however weak and unpretending, proceeds from the breath from on high. According to the Greco-Lats., the Byz., and the T. R., we should read: ἀνάθεμα ᾿Ιησοῦν (sayeth that Jesus is accursed), and κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν (sayeth that Jesus is the Lord). According to the Alex. and the Peschito, the word Jesus is in the nominative: ἀνάθεμα ᾿Ιησοῦς and κύριος ᾿Ιησοῦς; it is each time an exclamation: Jesus accursed! Jesus Lord! Clearly this second reading is the only possible one. Exclamation, much more than cold logical statement, is the language of inspired discourse, the characteristic of which is enthusiasm. In classical Greek the word ἀνάθεμα is synonymous with ἀνάθημα, and denotes every object consecrated to deity. But in the LXX. and in the New Testament it takes a particular sense, denoting an object consecrated to God in order to its destruction, a being devoted to be cursed (Deuteronomy 7:26; Joshua 7:13, etc.; Galatians 1:8); while ἀνάθημα preserves the meaning of offering sensu bono; comp. Luke 21:5.

But to whom in the Christian Church can the apostle attribute the language: Jesus accursed! It has been supposed as is still done by Holsten that the apostle here refers to discourses hostile to Jesus which were heard from the lips of Jews or even from those of unbelieving Gentiles, who treated Jesus as an impostor, and saw in His ignominious and cruel death a token of the Divine curse. Comp. 1 Corinthians 1:23: to the Jews a stumbling-block. There might thus be found in this passage the three great religious domains of the time, heathenism (1 Corinthians 12:2), Judaism (1 Corinthians 12:3 a), and Christianity (1 Corinthians 12:3 b). But the construction of the sentence does not lend itself to such parallelism. And the question arises, How could the Church of Corinth have been tempted to ascribe such discourses to Divine inspiration? Besides, we have to do here with discourses uttered in the assemblies of the Church; and how would men have been allowed to speak publicly in the Church who were not Christians? One would rather suppose, as Heinrici seems to do, that this first purely negative rule is not meant by the apostle to apply to any real case, and that he has put it down only the better to bring out the idea of the second by way of contrast. But neither is this explanation admissible; for these two criteria are so placed in relation to one another, that the real application of the one implies also that of the other. Must we then believe that Paul admits the possibility of such discourses within the Church itself? When Heinrici declares this supposition absurd, does he transport himself adequately into the midst of the powerful fermentation of religious ideas then called forth by the gospel? In 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, the apostle speaks of teachers newly arrived at Corinth, who preached another Jesus than the one he had preached, and who raised a different spirit from that which the Church had received. It was therefore not only another doctrine, but also another breath, a new principle of inspiration, which these people brought with them. In our Epistle itself, 1 Corinthians 16:22, he speaks of certain persons who love not Jesus Christ, and whom he devotes to anathema when the Lord shall come. These utterances would appear very severe, if they were not a sort of return for the anathema which these people threw in the face of Jesus Christ. How was this possible in a Christian Church? We must observe, first of all, the term Jesus, denoting the historical and earthly person of our Lord, and bear in mind that from the earliest times there were people who, offended at the idea of the ignominious punishment of the cross, and the unheard -of abasement of the Son of God, thought they must set up a distinction between the man Jesus and the true Christ. The first had been, according to them, a pious Jew. A heavenly being, the true Christ, had chosen him to serve as His organ while He acted here below as the Saviour of humanity. But this Christ from above had parted from Jesus before the Passion, and left the latter to suffer and die alone. It is easy to see how, from this point of view, one might curse the crucified one who appeared to have been cursed of God on the cross, and that without thinking he was cursing the true Saviour and Christ, and while remaining without scruple a member of the Church. We know the name of a man who positively taught the doctrine we speak of. He was a Jew-Christian, named Cerinthus, very much attached to the law like the adversaries of Paul at Corinth; and it is curious to hear a Father of the Church, Epiphanius, affirm that the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written against this person. We shall not go so far. We would only use the example to show what strange conceptions might arise at this period when Christian doctrine was yet in process of formation, and when all the ideas awakened by the gospel were seething within the Church. To the example of Cerinthus we can add that of the Ophites, or serpent-worshippers, who existed before the end of the first century, and who, according to Origen (Contra Celsum), asked those who wished to enter their churches to curse Jesus. In stating this first negative criterion, the apostle therefore means to say to the Corinthians: However ecstatic in form, or profound in matter, may be a spiritual manifestation, tongue, prophecy, or doctrine, if it tends to degrade jesus, to make Him an impostor or a man worthy of the Divine wrath, if it does violence in any way to His holiness, you may be sure the inspiring breath of such a discourse is not that of God's Spirit. Such is the decisive standard which the prophets, for example, are summoned to use when they sit in judgment on one another (1 Corinthians 14:29).

After drawing the line fitted to set aside all that presents itself as Christian inspiration without being so in fact, the apostle points out the characteristic common to all those manifestations to which the quality of a true inspiration can and should be accorded, whatever may be the form in which they show themselves. To proclaim Jesus as the Lord; such is the mark of every Divinely inspired Christian discourse. Such a discourse is a cry of adoration, an act of homage by which the historical person who bore the name of Jesus, notwithstanding His shame and bloody death, is raised by the inspired one to the Divine throne, and celebrated as the Being who exercises universal sovereignty; such is the force of the title κύριος, Lord; comp. Philippians 2:9-11. It might be objected to the apostle that there are professions of faith in Jesus Christ which are purely intellectual, orthodox sermons which are devoid of the breath of the Spirit. But this objection has no force whatever in the context, especially with the reading κύριος ᾿Ιησοῦς (nominatives), which we have adopted, and which makes these words an exclamation. Such a cry of the heart does not in the least resemble a cold logical affirmation. We might object, with more show of reason, the exclamation of the demons who cried out on seeing Jesus: “Thou art the Holy One of God.” But this emotion of fear and this particular insight might well be, even in those beings, an effect of the Spirit's influence; comp. James 2:19. It is the Holy Spirit who gives to an intelligent spirit the discernment of the holiness of Jesus. Thus, however simple, however elementary in matter a Christian discourse may be, however calm, however sober in form, if its result is to place on the head of Jesus the crown of Lord, it is the product of the Divine Spirit, as well as the most extraordinary manifestation which can take place in a Christian assembly.

The field of Divine inspirations is thus marked off by a line of demarcation which every believer can apply. The apostle now explains the relation which those various manifestations of the Christian Spirit, that are embraced in it, sustain to one another. He first expounds the idea, that however various those manifestations may be in their outward form, they are one in their principle and end (1 Corinthians 12:4-12).