07 How Paul Defines Spirituality

Today's passage is one of the "See For Yourself" passages Chapter 7 of Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity. 

In 1 Corinthians 12:1–3, Paul speaks to a church that’s confused about what makes someone “spiritual.” The Corinthians had started treating dramatic experiences—especially speaking in tongues—as proof that God was truly at work. 

Paul redirects them to something far simpler and far more decisive: the Spirit’s work is shown in a person’s confession and conviction that Jesus is Lord, not in how impressive their worship looks or how extraordinary their experiences feel. 

 In this week’s episode, we explore: 

• Why the Corinthians’ pagan background shaped their expectations of spiritual “signs”
• What Paul means by “spiritual things” in 1 Corinthians 12:1
• How Paul identifies the real mark of the Holy Spirit’s work in a believer
• Why “Jesus is Lord” summarizes the heart of the gospel message
• How modern Christians can repeat Corinth’s mistake 
• What true spirituality looks like in ordinary life: work, family, faithfulness, and daily obedience

By the end of this episode, you’ll have clarity and relief: the Spirit’s presence isn’t measured by flash, intensity, or spiritual comparison. 

 Series: Start Strong: A New Believer’s Podcast

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY to win a free ebook of Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity.

Transcript

Setting The Stage And Text

Corinth’s Questions And Divisions

What “Spiritual” Really Means

Pagan Worship And Ecstasy

The True Mark: Jesus Is Lord

Clarifying Confession And Belief

Summary Of Paul’s First Point

Modern Mislabels Of Spirituality

Ordinary Faithfulness Over Flash

Krisan Marotta 0:42

Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the seventh episode in a companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we're in 1 Corinthians 12, verses 1 through 3, one of the See for Yourself passages from chapter 7 of the book. If you're reading along, go ahead and read chapter 7 before you listen. And if you don't have the book, don't worry, just keep listening. Have you ever left church thinking God must be far away from you because you didn't feel a certain way during worship? Maybe you think God is closer to other people because their worship looks amazing and your life feels ordinary? The ancient Corinthians made that kind of comparison too. Only they treated speaking in tongues as proof that a person was truly spiritual. Paul says that kind of test misses the point. What does real spirituality look like when your life feels normal? Find out in today's episode. Let's begin. We're looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 12 today. In the section of the letter, Paul is addressing questions related to how the Corinthians handle themselves when they meet together. In chapter 12, he turns to the topic of spiritual gifts and speaking in tongues, and this is a topic he'll continue through the end of chapter 14. We're only going to look at the first three verses of his argument today, but these three verses are foundational for the point he's going to make in these chapters. They are also foundational to one of my main points in chapter 7 of my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Now, I did a whole podcast series on 1 Corinthians where I go into Paul's entire argument in these chapters in detail. I'll put a link to those episodes in the show notes, and I invite you to listen to them if you want more detail and more understanding of Paul's points. For today's episode, I'm only going to concentrate on how these verses underscore the points I made in chapter 7 of my book. Let me read 1 Corinthians 12, 1 through 3 for you and we'll get started. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray by mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except the Holy Spirit. Paul starts out now concerning spiritual gifts. This phrase now concerning is a marker that Paul has been using since chapter 5 that signals that Paul is addressing a new topic. This letter is a response to both the verbal and written reports Paul received about what was happening in the church in Corinth. The Corinthians wrote Paul and asked a series of questions, and in this section of the letter, Paul is answering them. Each time he switches to a new question, he says, now concerning. These questions were actual problems going on in the Corinthian church. They weren't random philosophical debates. These issues were causing disagreements and divisions in the church, and the Corinthians had written to Paul for help. Now, in the letter, we have Paul's answers, but we don't have the questions. So it's like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. We can hear the answer, but we have to guess what question was asked. Now, as you might expect, how you understand the question influences how you understand the answer. For example, one commentary I looked at argued that the Corinthians had asked Paul these questions. What are spiritual gifts? How many are there? Does every believer have them? How can believers know which gift they have? How important are they to the individual and to the life of the church? What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how does it relate to spiritual gifts? Are all of the gifts given in every age of church history, or were some given only during a certain time period? Can the gifts be counterfeited? And if so, how can believers tell the true gifts from the false gifts? Well, those are interesting questions, surely, and we might ask them today, but it is hard for me to understand how the Corinthians would have asked them at all. Even a cursory study of the historical setting of this letter makes it fairly clear the Corinthians were not asking those questions. And if we start with those questions, we will likely miss the point Paul is making and come away with an answer that Paul never intended. So let me review some of the historical background of this letter. The Corinthian church was divided over many issues, and most importantly, they were divided over the authority of the Apostle Paul. Some of them thought Paul was to be listened to and respected, and others thought he was a fraud and should be rejected. But in addition to that, one faction in the church strongly emphasized the necessity of speaking in tongues. They concluded that if you have a visible, obvious sign of the Spirit, like speaking in tongues, then you must be a true believer. You must have the spirit because everyone else can see it in this expression of tongues. Therefore, we know you're a truly spiritual person. But what about the people who have never spoken in tongues? Well, this faction believed that those people were not really Christians, or at least no one can tell if they truly are or not. They were kind of second-class Christians. And Paul is speaking into that situation. He's speaking to a group of believers who are judging each other and ranking each other by whether or not they speak in tongues, and that becomes really clear as we go on through the argument, but we won't cover all of that today. He's going to correct them on this idea that some gifts are better than others, and therefore some believers are better than others. He's going to correct their thinking on what gifts are and how they should be used, and he's going to correct the way they think about each other. All of that happens as he develops his argument through chapters 12, 13, and 14. Now, in the verses we're looking at, Paul states his first big point. He starts by telling them there is a mark that the Holy Spirit leaves on every believer, but it is not whether they speak in tongues, it is something else. Now that's a very important question for us to understand, and it's a very different question from what are spiritual gifts and how do I know what I have. Let's look again at the first verse. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. If you're reading a more literal translation like the New American Standard, you'll notice that the word gifts is in a gray font. When a word is grayed out in a translation, it means that the word is not in the text, but it has been supplied by the translators. So it wasn't in the original Greek, but the translators think that it's implied. Literally, 12.1 reads, now concerning spirituals. It's just the plural of the Greek word for spiritual. It could be spiritual gifts, it could be spiritual things, it could be spiritual people or something else. We have to supply a noun by the context. And you could make a case to translate this as spiritual gifts, but I think that that is misleading for modern Christians because we have this entire theology built around the term spiritual gifts, which you saw evidence in those questions I read from the commentary earlier. When we see that phrase today, we tend to read our modern understanding into it rather than letting the context tell us what Paul's talking about. So today the term spiritual gifts has become a kind of technical term with a very specific theology behind it. And I go into that more in my book, but I won't detail it all here. In short, we have in mind a supernatural enabling to serve God in a particular way. So if I say I have the gift of teaching or evangelism or mercy, I read this idea that God has supernaturally enabled me to help or serve the kingdom in that kind of way. And when we read spiritual gifts in this verse, we immediately assume that Paul is talking about this divine enabling. Well, I think that starts us off on the wrong foot. And we need to be careful not to read our modern understanding into this section. I would argue the commentator I read who gave that list of questions made exactly that mistake. He took the term spiritual gift in 12.1 and read our modern understanding of it into it and then came up with a list of questions based on our modern idea. Well, as I read chapters 12 through 14, I come up with a very different picture of the situation Paul is addressing. And I think that situation helps us figure out what Paul meant by spiritual things or spirituals here in 12.1. I would translate it something like signs of the spirit, spiritual signs or manifestations of the spirit. Because I think the question on the table is what is the mark of being a spiritual person? In other words, how do I know if I have been born again by the Spirit? What about me is different? Is there a mark, an experience, or a change that I can see that testifies to the fact that the Holy Spirit is at work in me? Now, the ancient Corinthians had answered, yes, there is a mark, and that mark is speaking in tongues. And Paul is addressing that conclusion. He's answering the question, what does it look like when the Spirit makes himself known in someone's life? And that brings us to verse 2. Let's look at one and two together. Now, concerning spiritual things or signs of the spirit, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however, you were led. Okay, Paul brings up their pagan background and how they used to worship idols. And we want to ask the question, why? How is that helpful to his argument? And he says that background that they had in their pagan worship is leading them astray. It's leading them to the wrong conclusion. And that gives us another clue as to what's going on here. The Gentiles in the Corinthian church, who are now believers, grew up going to pagan temples. Those pagan temples formed their concept of religion and what worship looks like. In pagan temples, the idols were mute, because obviously they were simply statues made by human hands. But the priests and the worshipers in the pagan temples spoke a lot, mostly through ecstatic experiences, which they claimed were the voice of the temple god. In pagan worship, worshippers drank a bunch of wine, sniffed the incense, and danced themselves dizzy until they lost control and the idol god took control of them. They would begin babbling and speaking whatever the idol god told them. That's how an idol manifested itself. So what does a spiritual person look like in a pagan temple? Well, the spiritual person is the one who is babbling out of control. Well, the Corinthians imported that concept into their Christian lives and they expected a similar kind of experience in the Christian church. What looks most closely like that in the Christian church? Well, speaking in tongues. And that's the question on the table. Is that true? Are tongues really the mark of being a spiritual person? And if not, what does a spiritual person look like? So Paul reminds them that their background gives them this certain perspective on what spirituality is all about. As pagans, they were carried away supposedly by the idol and had these ecstatic experiences. Now they've become Christians. They have turned away from the idols, but their mental image is still that worship is all about these emotional experiences of being carried away by the Spirit. With that mental picture, they've concluded: well, the only way to know if someone is a Christian is if the Holy Spirit has given them the supernatural speech. And Paul reminds them of all that so he can correct them. He says, Remember what you used to do when you were pagans? Now let me tell you what the true mark of spirituality is. So let's bring in verse 3. Now concerning spiritual signs, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however, you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. I think this is a really important statement that Paul makes here. No one who has the Spirit says Jesus is accursed or anathema, and the opposite, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit. Now we don't want to take Paul too literally here. There is no magic in these particular phrases. Paul is not claiming that I am physically unable to utter the phrase, Jesus is Lord, unless I have the Spirit, or conversely, that once I have the Spirit, I will be physically unable to say Jesus is cursed. There are all kinds of people who have said these phrases with and without faith. The words themselves are not magic. Paul is talking about what they believe. The phrase Jesus is Lord summarizes the fundamental belief of the speaker. When we're confronted with the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, there are only two responses. We can accept and embrace his claims, or we can reject his claims and reject Jesus. To say Jesus is cursed is to say Jesus is under the band. Jesus is someone I dismiss, reject, and avoid. I don't accept his claims and I don't want to follow him in any way. He's to be rejected. On the other hand, to say that Jesus is Lord is to embrace and accept a fundamental truth of the gospel, that Jesus is the Messiah and I want to follow him. Now why does Paul include both the positive and the negative? Because in pagan trances, when you were under the influence of a temple idol, you could say just about anything. You could say one thing and another person could say the exact opposite thing, and no one cared. Didn't matter. But in Christianity, it matters what you say. You can't believe Jesus is both Lord and not Lord at the same time. You have to take a stand. Paul tells them, look, your pagan background has confused you about what constitutes a sign that the Spirit of God is at work. The sign of the Spirit is not have you experienced a trance or spoken in tongues or felt a certain way in worship. The sign of the Spirit is how you respond to Jesus. If you have embraced the claims of Jesus, then you are a spiritual person, regardless of whether you have ever spoken in tongues or what kind of emotional worship experience you had last Sunday. We can only recognize the truth that Jesus is Lord by the power of God. It takes the Spirit of God working in us to open our eyes so that we believe and embrace the truth. And we may never speak in tongues, but when we speak, if we show that we believe that Jesus is Lord, then we are spiritual. On the other hand, if you have rejected the claims of Christ, it doesn't matter how visual or dramatic or emotional or intense our experience is, that experience is meaningless if we reject the claims of Christ. The mark of the Spirit of God at work in someone's life is not what kind of religious experience they have or how they feel after Sunday services. The mark of the Spirit of God at work in a person's life is how they respond to the claims of Jesus Christ. Now, since this is so foundational, I want to make sure we understand it. What am I saying when I say Jesus is Lord? That phrase Jesus is Lord is a shorthand for the specific beliefs that make up the gospel. When we say Jesus is Lord, we're saying Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He is the anointed king over all of God's creation, which is to say, He is Lord. He is the one God has given rule and dominion and authority to. And all of that is summarized by saying he is Lord or He is Christ. Paul puts it this way in Romans 10. This is 10. If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Peter says something similar in his sermon in Acts. This is Acts 2.36. Peter says, Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. That's a quick summary of the gospel. Jesus is the one, God made Lord in Christ. God demonstrated that Jesus is Lord through the sign of raising Jesus from the dead. So coming to faith involves humbling yourself before God. Faith requires us to realize God is our creator and God has the right to determine our destiny. He is the standard by which we will be measured, and he has the authority to judge us. God appointed Jesus to represent him, to proclaim the truth about him and the way to find him and to find life. That is, he appointed Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord over all. I know this is true in part because God raised Jesus from the dead. So to say that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord is to say that he is the one Messiah appointed to speak for God. What he said is true. His teaching is the truth I must follow. His words are the words of life. He is the one who has the power to judge, condemn, and destroy me. And he is the one I must worship and obey. As I look at his teaching, I see that I'm called to love the Lord with all my heart. I'm called to love my neighbor as myself. And of course, I profoundly failed at both of those because I'm a sinner. Yet, Jesus, the Messiah, has come to offer his life as the payment for my guilt so that I might find forgiveness and be reconciled to God. True life is not found in the things of this world, but is found in the coming kingdom of God. I'm not saved by how nice I am or my religious performance or how well I keep the law on the outside or how well I can pass a theology exam. I am saved by the mercy of God through the blood of Christ. And if the Spirit is at work in me, I see that set of ideas as the truth. I know that what Jesus is teaching is teaching from God, that He has the words of eternal life. The truth is what he says is true, and my eternal destiny is in his hands. So to summarize Paul's point in these first three verses, Paul is speaking to a Group of believers who are grading and judging each other by whether or not they speak in tongues. They think God is clearly working in those who speak in tongues, but they're not sure about everybody else. Because of their pagan background, they think that the mark of spirituality, the mark that the Holy Spirit is actually at work in someone's life, is whether or not that person speaks in tongues. If you're speaking in tongues, you are definitely a child of God, and if you're not, you better be worried. And Paul says, no, that is not the mark of a child of God. You can tell a truly spiritual person by how they respond to Jesus. The person who is truly spiritual, the person in whom the Holy Spirit is clearly at work, is the person who can say and mean in a profound way that Jesus is Lord. The thing that I believe so profoundly that it changes my life is the fact that Jesus is Lord. Now to wrap this up, I want to stop and think about that perspective on what spirituality looks like and compare it with how we think of spirituality today. Several years ago, it was very popular to talk about kingdom-oriented vocations. Some argued all jobs are not created equal. They claimed believers ought not to choose a vocation based on the work or the income that it offered. They claimed what was important about a job was not providing for your family. What was important was choosing a job that allows you to do, quote, kingdom work, unquote. Not surprisingly, they defined kingdom work in very specific ways. Companies that made lipstick or frozen yogurt or pet food did not qualify as kingdom work. Those kinds of jobs were meaningless and trivial. But companies that say brought clean water to remote regions of Africa or championed the fight for the rights of the poor or worked for racial reconciliation, well, that's kingdom work. I heard one speaker use those exact examples to argue that God would never call you to design lipstick, dog food, or ice cream flavors. Further, she said, if you mistakenly did think that God called you to that, then you had wasted your life. Because in this speaker's opinion, lipstick, dog food, and ice cream don't bring any value to the kingdom the way inventing a way to get clean water to a remote location does. So I want to ask the question: what would the apostle Paul say to that? Would Paul say that's what being a spiritual person looks like? Would Paul really say the mark of a spiritual person is that they choose to design a water filter rather than a new flavor of ice cream? Well, I think Paul would be more concerned about how those workers conducted their lives. Suppose the worker in Africa was prideful and arrogant about his work. Suppose he thought of himself as better than the natives because he chose to come and work on water filters for them. Conversely, suppose the worker designing lipstick colors in the factory was kind and compassionate and loving to his or her co-workers, that this worker genuinely cared for their souls and tried to teach them about the word of Christ. Who would you say is the spiritual person? Well, I think Paul would say the mark of the spiritual person is not what you do on the outside. The mark of a spiritual person is believing that Jesus is Lord so profoundly that it changes your life. I think it's quite possible that God could call you to design ice cream flavors and minister to the other people in the factory just as easily as he could call you to work on a clean water filter for some remote village. I think that's the same kind of mistake that the Corinthians were making in elevating tongues over all the other gifts. We've just changed the mark to something more modern. But we can define spirituality in other ways too. We sometimes think that the spiritual person is the one who likes to meditate on the meaning of life and is above mundane daily chores. Or we think the spiritual person is the one who has forsaken worldly possessions and simplified their life like Thoreau on Walden Pond. Or maybe the spiritual person is the one who has devoted her life to serving the poor like Mother Teresa. Or the spiritual person must be the one who has traveled to a foreign country to be a missionary and maybe even given his life for it, like Jim Elliott. The non-Christian world tends to define a spiritual person as someone who does something extraordinary, something other than just hold a job and raise a family. But the fact is, the vast majority of us are called to hold a job, keep a marriage together, and raise a family. And that is a high calling, and we should value it more. Paul has a very specific definition of spirituality in these verses. And Paul's definition does not depend on whether your job is kingdom-oriented, whatever that means, or not. It's not dependent on being a missionary, it's not dependent on being a professional minister, it's not dependent on starting a nonprofit, curing cancer, working on racial reconciliation, being a great philosopher or thinker, or being above the daily grind. Those are all good things to do, but they don't mark you as a spiritual person. They don't make you better than a Christian who works at Walmart, raises their children, and strives to love God and neighbor. For Paul, to be a spiritual person means that the Spirit of God is working in you, and the work that the Holy Spirit is doing is to transform you into the kind of person who can say and mean that Jesus is Lord and then live like that is true. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit changes us from rebel sinners who reject the claims of Christ and hate God to forgiven, repentant sinners who embrace the claims of Christ and love God. That's the goal of a Christian life, to embrace the claims of Christ and to love God and our neighbors. Spirituality for Paul is very specific. It's not necessarily flashy outward emotional experiences. It's not the feelings I have after singing the right songs. It's not the feelings I have after a motivational sermon or devotional talk. It's not maybe the mystical feelings I get when I meditate on God's words. It's not marked by social justice causes or giving money to worthy causes. It's not marked by my choice of profession or my lack of material things. It's not even being a nice person. For Paul, to be a spiritual person is to be someone who can say and mean in a profound way that Jesus Christ is Lord. And they believe it so profoundly that it changes the way they live. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You'll find the blog version of this episode, including links and resources, at WednesdayInTheWord.com slash Start Strong Podcast 7. You can listen to all the episodes in this series at WednesdayInTheWord.com. There is no charge, no spam, no ads, just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider following, rating, or reviewing it on your favorite podcast platform. And most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in the Start Strong Book, please read chapter 8 before the next episode. You can find the book wherever books are sold, or start with the free resources at Startstrongbook.org. And if you are reading the book, I would be most grateful if you would leave me a positive review on Amazon of Goodreads. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear more of Reggie's wonderful music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.