Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Jesus Is Lord
1 Corinthians 12:1-3
1 Now concerning spiritual things, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant. · WEB
Before sorting the gifts, Paul gives the one test that matters — and it is not intensity of experience but what a person confesses about Jesus.
Now concerning spiritual things, brothers, I don't want you to be ignorant 1 Corinthians 12:1.
The sixth now concerning opens the letter's longest single discussion, running three chapters 1 Corinthians 7:1 1 Corinthians 8:1. It was evidently a live question in Corinth, and the ignorance he means to remedy is not about which gifts exist but about how to tell what is from God at all.
You know that when you were heathen, you were led away to those mute idols, however you might be led 1 Corinthians 12:2.
The starting point is their own history, and two details are chosen. The idols were mute — the standing scriptural taunt against images that cannot speak Psalms 115:5 Habakkuk 2:18 — and the worshipers were led away, passive, carried along. Pagan religion in Corinth included ecstatic states in which a person was taken over and did not know what they said. So the congregation had a background in which being seized by a power was itself the mark of the divine, and some of them were evidently applying that standard to the church's gifts: the more overwhelming the experience, the more genuine.
Therefore I make known to you that no man speaking by God's Spirit says, "Jesus is accursed." No one can say, "Jesus is Lord," but by the Holy Spirit 1 Corinthians 12:3.
The test is doctrinal and it is remarkably simple. Not the intensity of an utterance but its content — what does it say about Jesus? A parallel test is given elsewhere in nearly the same terms, on whether a spirit confesses Christ come in the flesh 1 John 4:1–3. This is the letter refusing to let spiritual authenticity be measured by the very standard the Corinthians had brought with them from the temples.
And the confession chosen is the shortest creed in the New Testament. Jesus is Lord — the name of the crucified man joined to the title the Greek Scriptures used for God, which is why saying it costs something in a city that said it of Caesar Romans 10:9 Philippians 2:11. No one says it, and means it, except by the Holy Spirit.
That cuts two ways for this church. It disqualifies whatever spectacular thing does not honor Christ, and it dignifies every ordinary member who does. The quietest believer in the room, capable of nothing more remarkable than that confession, is thereby demonstrated to have the Spirit — which is exactly the ground the next paragraph builds on 1 Corinthians 12:7.
settled What this mark means