This week’s session in our course on healing is called "Are the Gifts of the Spirit Available Today?" We discuss the doctrine of cessationism, which asserts that the Gifts of the Spirit have passed away in part or totally, and are therefore not for today.
Our arguments include: (1) that the New Testament gives us no direct statement in favor of cessationism; (2) that 1 Corinthians 13 doesn't support cessationism; (3) that the Gifts of the Spirit never died out in history; and (4) that the Gifts were not just for the Apostles, and their purpose was not to authenticate the Apostles.
Class notes are available here as a PDF.
If you like, you can also watch on my YouTube channel.
EXCERPT: The Gifts did not authenticate the apostles; rather, they gave witness to the Message of the Gospel.
We often hear people say that the Gifts of the Spirit we see in the New Testament were “sign gifts” that authenticated the Apostles. There are a lot of ways people articulate this, but the basic idea is that the Apostles would have needed some authentication from Heaven for their message. But if that is so, why would we not need authentication for preachers today, especially when the Gospel is being taken to some new region that it’s never gone before? And, by the way, isn’t Jesus with us until the end of the age?
In fact, I believe the very idea of a “sign gift” is something manufactured by cessationists. The Bible never uses phrases like “sign gift” nor does it speak of some gifts as being special signs that would one day disappear, leaving only a few lesser or ordinary gifts.
We believe that Jesus heals people simply out of His love and compassion. In fact, don’t we know from the Gospels that seeing signs doesn’t necessarily produce faith in Christ? Jesus taught us that some people won’t believe even if someone rises from the dead. The problem isn’t with the eyes… it’s with the heart. Indeed, if you perform miraculous signs, people might even say that you’re empowered by the Devil. Didn’t they say that Christ Himself had demons?
But what does the Bible say? What did the Gifts testify to? And what do they testify to today?
At the end of Mark’s Gospel, after Jesus told the disciples what they would do in His Name, we read this, “So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs” (Mark 16:19-20).
In Acts 14, we read about Paul and Barnabas ministering in a place called Iconium, and the Bible says, “…they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord, who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands” (14:3).
I’ll give you one more, from Hebrews chapter 2. Cessationists like to claim that this passage proves the Gifts of the Spirit authenticated the apostles, but if we study it carefully, we will see it’s exactly the opposite. The writer says,
“Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?” (2:1-4)
Each time, what is really in view is God bearing witness to the Gospel of salvation through Christ. This helps us understand once again why the Bible speaks of the manifestation of the Spirit. When the Gifts are in operation, it is the Spirit of God appearing in His reality in that moment. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 14:
“…if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you” (14:24-25).
The Gifts don’t authentic YOU. God uses people in the Gifts to bless and edify people, and to bear witness to His own Word and His own activity.
