Modern day gifts of the Spirit
Tim Challies, of challies.com, interviews Dr. Wayne Grudem on the topic of Continuationism and Cessationism.
This interview was incredibly helpful to me as I thought about my position and belief on this topic. Simply put, I am led to believe that gifts of the Spirit can, and do, still occur within the church. I have not personally viewed these sort of gifts (speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, etc.) but would never think to limit the power of the Godhead. I believe that many of the cessationists would agree to this point but would state that these gifts have filled their use and are no longer necessary. Where I get lost in this viewpoint is that God still has so many lost people to reach. The Lord’s grace will shower down on people and they will believe in Him, if He so deems it. If it means that a person needs to witness a gift of the Spirit for them self, that is God’s plan — not to be thwarted by simple humans.
Where I struggle is my view of charismatic churches from the past. In several of these situations, I was made very uncomfortable. As I think back, I try to recall why. Two reasons stand out in my mind: (1) they were different than me and I didn’t know how to respond and (2) I was not experiencing the same thing as them. Do they (or did they) love God any less? I can’t answer that for sure, but there was certainly a great amount of enthusiasm about the Lord in the church. How can that be a bad thing?
My modern day concern is for exclusion to others that still don’t understand it. The other concern is that there are those that would try to profit (financially, pridefully, whatever the means may be) from the gifts. The churches that do not approach continuationism in a careful manner, in my opinion, stand to exclude themselves from many others and get a bad reputation as a church. This is certainly not good for the glory of God’s name. As long as people are welcomed with open arms and do not feel excluded, threatened or “trapped”, I think it is a great thing.
I want to also add that Adrian Warnock has had several blog postings on this topic here, here and here.