THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES ON THE GIFT OF PROPHECY
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There arises a curious thing when you begin to study scripture from the lens of what it tells you about the inter-relationship between the members of the Trinity. Some of the great theologians of history have reflected on this extensively.
Jonathan Edwards observed that when the scriptures speak of the relationship between the Father and Son they often speak of the love the Father has for the Son, or the love the Son has for the Father. And they also speak of the love the Father and Son have for creation. Curiously, they never speak of the love of the Spirit:
“Christ promises that He and the Father will love believers (John 14:21,23), but no mention is made of the Holy Ghost, and the love of Christ and the love of the Father are distinctly mentioned, but never any mention of the Holy Ghost. This I suppose to be the reason why we have never any account of the Holy Ghost’s loving either the Father or the Son, or of the Son’s or the Father’s loving the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Ghost’s love for the saints, these things are so often predicated of both the other Persons.”
Augustine the Great, in reflecting on the nature of the Godhead, reflected on his own thought life and relationships. For him to have a relationship required another party. And for him to be connected with that other party required a love shared between the two. The composition of any relationship is then the one that loves, the object of love, and the love itself. For me to love someone, I must exist, and the other must exist, and I must have love for that other person.
““Well then, when I, who make this inquiry, love anything, there are three things concerned—myself, and that which I love, and love itself. For I do not love love, except I love a lover; for there is no love where nothing is loved. Therefore there are three things—he who loves, and that which is loved, and love.”
In addition to that, I have a mind that is full of thoughts. I also have an image of myself that I can reflect on. Each of us holds an image of ourselves in our thoughts to some degree. That image of ourselves pains us at times or pleases us at times. It made sense to Augustine that the Father would have an image of himself as scripture is clear that the Father thinks. If the Father were to think of himself, what he would conceive of would be fully and completely him, it would be his image, and it would be all of his attributes. That image would not be born but would be begotten. Here Augustine has arrived at the Divine Word, the expression and thought of God. This is the “In the beginning, God was with God” of John 1.
“For he who loves and that which is loved are the same when anyone loves himself; just as to love and to be loved, in the same way, is the very same thing when anyone loves himself. Since the same thing is said, when it is said, he loves himself, and he is loved by himself. ”
Not only would the Father’s thoughts about himself be the full and complete revelation of himself (the Son), but the Father would then have a disposition about himself, and that disposition would of course be love. Hence, we have the three components of a relationship: the one that loves, the object of their love, and the love itself.
In this, you can see a picture of the Trinity.
The Spirit is then the love that exists between the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the love of God.
This makes an incredible amount of sense when we begin to investigate scripture. Galatians 4:6 states:
And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”
Why does the Spirit cry out Abba Father? Because the Spirit is the love of God working itself out in your inner person.
Also, consider 1 John 4:12-13 in light of this:
No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit.
His love is perfected in us by his abiding, and his abiding is because of his Spirit within us.
Again, the Spirit is the love of God abiding within us. Of course, that is also simplifying a very mysterious thing that affects us without our fully understanding it. This is essentially what Jesus says of those born of the Spirit in John 3:
John 3:8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
What does all this have to do with 1 Corinthians 13? Well, all those manifestations of absent love amount to nothing because it isn’t the Holy Spirit if love is not the primary pursuit and motive. If the Holy Spirit is love, then the manifestation means nothing absent it. This means that to truly walk in and understand the manifestation of the Spirit I must divest myself of my own self-interest and begin considering others more often than I consider myself. The most-apt description of love ever given was succinctly put by Jesus:
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
I think what we call the gifts of the Spirit could more accurately be dubbed the “Love Gifts.” They are the means by which we are equipped, empowered, and enabled to love those that God has given us to love. The Father’s love for his creation, his thoughts are made known by each of these manifestations. The revelation of his heart is central to these gifts.
What we have said so far pertains to the life of every believer, because God has sent the Spirit of His Son into the heart of every Christian to yearn for him. However, what Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 have to say about gifts has a very different application than 1 Corinthians 12-14.
1 Corinthians marks out what should be normative for the life of love. For some, love will truly be prophesying uplifting things from the heart of the Father. For others, the manifestation of that love will be giving all they have to the poor. Still for others, it will be to pursue God for miraculous intervention on behalf of others.
Not every person will work with every gift, though every gift is of the Holy Spirit, and every gift is the means by which God loves his creation.
So, how is He calling you to love today?
Many times throughout the Old Testament we see prophetic words bringing significant blessing and prosperity. Take for instance the prophetic ministry of Haggai and Zechariah:
Ezra 6:14 So the elders of the Jews built, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they built…