[This was delivered as a semi-scripted sermon; these notes represent the general drift of what was said. Text in bold was shown on the screen]
‘Final instructions’
Not a random collection of odds and ends. But a series of 17 quick-fire instructions, many of which are dealt with more fully in other letters by Paul and his associates. (E.g. prophecy – 1 Cor 14).
There is a single overall theme:
Becoming the community God wants us to be.…
The healing of Jairus’ daughter is recorded in Mt 9:18–26, Mk 5:22–43 and Lk 8:41–56.
Bart Ehrman sees a ‘clear contradiction’ between Mark’s account and Matthew’s. The former has the daughter on the point of death; the latter has her already dead.
In response: It is quite probable that Matthew’s version is a simple abridgement, with consequent telescoping of detail. (Matthew’s account has 9 verses, Luke’s 17 and Mark’s 23).
Sometimes, in the Gospels,
…‘a passage may be so abbreviated that it seems to contradict a fuller parallel.
Some while ago, Andrew Wilson wrote about four different types of healing.
Type #1: The ongoing healing that takes place every time I graze my knee, or a virus enters my body:
…‘My body is being healed all the time, and it’s a result of the grace of the God who created me, searches me, knows me and loves me that he has designed a body that functions that way. I never want to forget – although I often do – the daily wonder of living in a self-repairing physical body.’
Even more than C.H. Spurgeon, Dr D.M. Loyd-Jones has divided his hearers and readers in respect of his views on the spiritual gifts.
In his book Strange Fire, John MacArthur offers a single quotation which demonstrates (presumably to MacArthur’s satisfaction) that Lloyd-Jones was a cessationist.
Actually, I’m going to present a rather more extended quotation than MacArthur offers:
…‘A prophet was a person to whom truth was imparted by the Holy Spirit. . . .
It is a common fault of speakers and writers to quote sources and evidence that support their position, while ignoring those that would tend to undermine it.
I don’t regard myself as exempt from this danger. But I do realise the danger.
In an appendix to Speaking in the Spirit (2019), Stephen Wexler cites Wayne Grudem (a continuationist) and John MacArthur (a cessationist) as each quoting C.H. Spurgeon in favour of their own position on spiritual gifts.…
1 Thessalonians 5:19 (NET) — Do not extinguish the Spirit.
Is the reference here primarily to the ethical fruit of the Spirit (see Gal 5:22f), or to the charismatic gifts of the Spirit (or neither, or both)?
Let’s consider the possibilities.
1. It refers to ethical behaviour (the ‘fruit’ of the Spirit)
In support of this interpretation, note that joy and thankfulness have just been mentioned, and these are closely linked with the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5.…
‘Cessationism’ is the name given to the view that the miraculous or extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased at the end of the apostolic age, when the canon of Scripture was complete.
Following are some representative voices (from this source). I have seen the originals of some of these quotations, but not all of them.
John Calvin (1509-1564): ‘…the gift of healing, like the rest of the miracles, which the Lord willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished away in order to make the preaching of the Gospel marvellous for ever’ (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk IV:19, 18).…
Following Roger Olson, Matthew Lynch has outlined eight ways in which we might seek to understand the violence of the Old Testament.
I summarise.
1. Rejection. Marcion and his followers rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. Its wicked and violent God has been replaced by the kind and loving God of Jesus and the New Testament.
Objection: Fatal for this view is the fact that it rejects much of the New Testament as well. For, (a) the New Testament endorses the Old Testament in its entirety; (b) the New Testament has its own share of problematic teaching. …
Jn 14:16 – “Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—14:17 the Spirit of truth.”
Summary
There are two Greek words for ‘another’. In classical Greek, ‘allos’ meant ‘another of the same kind’, whereas ‘heteros’ meant ‘another of a different kind’. By NT times, however, the distinction had become less pronounced. In the present passage, there are contextual reasons for concluding that the Holy Spirit is an Advocate of the same kind as Jesus.…
