The Spirit Does Not Distribute a Hierarchy of Human Worth

“Now concerning” is peri de, the phrase Paul uses to take up each subject the Corinthians raised in their letter (7:1, 7:25, 8:1, 16:1, 16:12). “Spiritual gifts” is a single Greek word, pneumatikon, which can mean spiritual things or spiritual people; the King James supplied “gifts” in italics.

“Gentiles” here means pagans, and Paul speaks of it as something the Corinthians were, not something they are. “Carried away” and “led” are both passive, the vocabulary of being swept along; some hear in them the frenzied processions of Corinth’s cults, though that is an inference from the verbs.

“Accursed” is anathema, the word Paul pronounces over anyone who does not love the Lord in 16:22. “Jesus is Lord”, Kyrios Iesous, was among the earliest Christian confessions (Romans 10:9), and in a Roman colony where Caesar was hailed as lord it was not a neutral thing to say aloud.

“Gifts” is charismata, built on charis, grace: a gift is grace given a particular shape in a particular person. Verses 4 to 6 run Spirit, Lord, God in turn, a threefold pattern later theologians read as an early witness to the Trinity, though Paul does not stop to comment on it.

“Administrations” is diakoniai, services or ministries, the word from which “deacon” comes. Attached to “the same Lord”, it casts every gift as work done for a master rather than a possession held for oneself.

“Operations” and “worketh” share a Greek root, energemata and energeo, from which English takes “energy”. “All in all” returns at 15:28, where the end of history is God being “all in all”, so the phrase quietly ties the church’s worship to the close of the letter’s argument.

“Manifestation” is phanerosis, a making visible: the gift is the Spirit showing himself through someone. “To profit withal” renders a Greek phrase built on sympheron, advantage, the root behind “expedient” in 6:12 and 10:23, “all things are not expedient”.

The list opens with speech, a “word” of wisdom and a “word” of knowledge. Both were Corinthian prizes, and Paul punctured confidence in each earlier (1:20, 8:1). Here he hands them back as things given by the Spirit, not attainments to boast of.

“Faith” cannot mean the faith every believer has, or it would not be given to one and not another; it is usually read as the wonder-working faith of 13:2 that could “remove mountains”. In Greek both nouns of “gifts of healing” are plural, which suggests particular healings given on occasion.

Each speaking gift has a partner that tests or explains it: prophecy beside discerning of spirits, tongues beside interpretation. Chapter 14 turns that pairing into practice (14:27–29). “Divers kinds” means various sorts; “divers” is the older spelling of “diverse”.

“Severally” means individually, to each one separately. “As he will” gives the Spirit a will, a personal verb: the Spirit does not merely flow but decides. “Selfsame” gathers up the six uses of “same” that ran through verses 4 to 9.

The sentence sets up “so also is the church” and ends instead “so also is Christ”. Ancient politics used the body image to keep lower orders in their place, most famously in Livy’s account of Menenius Agrippa and the belly; Paul borrows it and puts Christ where the state had stood.

Being “baptized into one body” and being “made to drink into one Spirit” may glance at the two rites just discussed, baptism and the cup of chapters 10 and 11. The drinking also recalls 10:4, where Israel in the wilderness “did all drink the same spiritual drink”.

The principle in its barest form, and the premise for everything that follows: if a body is many by nature, a member unlike the others is not a defect. Ancient writers on the body politic usually drew the opposite lesson, that each part should keep to its rank.

Paul gives the body parts voices, a device ancient teachers of rhetoric called prosopopoeia. The foot compares itself with the hand, its nearest counterpart, which is how envy usually works: not with the distant but with the neighbour.

The ear measures itself against the eye, again the nearest organ of sense. The Greek packs in a double negative, roughly “not for this reason not of the body”, so the sentence itself sounds like the tangle the ear has talked itself into.

Paul deletes senses one at a time: first hearing, then smelling. “Smelling”, osphresis, appears nowhere else in the New Testament. It is the least dignified sense to name, and that is the point: even the humble nose would be missed.

“But now” is logical, not temporal: as things actually stand. “Set” is the verb that returns in verse 28, “God hath set some in the church”, so the placing of eyes and ears and the placing of apostles and teachers are described as one act of God’s pleasure.

A body of one kind of member is not a better body but no body at all, only an organ. The same fault of sameness returns in 14:23, where a gathering in which “all speak with tongues” looks mad to an outsider who walks in.

The paragraph closes on the words that opened it in verse 12, many members and one body, so the complaints of foot and ear are framed inside the fact they deny. “But now” repeats from verse 18, setting the real body against the imagined ones.

The eye and the head were the governing organs in ancient thought, the one guiding and the other reasoning. Paul gives them the line of self-sufficiency, “I have no need of thee”, which is in effect what the Corinthian factions of 1:12 had been saying to one another.

“Seem” is dokeo, a verb Paul uses to puncture reputations, as in 3:18, “if any man among you seemeth to be wise”. Heart, lungs and liver are soft, hidden and look weaker than a hand, and they are the organs life cannot lose.

“Uncomely” means unseemly, the parts of the body kept covered; “comeliness” is the decency of clothing. Paul points to an ordinary habit: people dress the parts they are least proud of with more care than the face, and so honour them more.

“Tempered together” is synkerannymi, to mix or blend, used of compounding ingredients or mixing wine with water. God did not simply line the members up; he blended them, and gave the larger share of honour on purpose to the part that lacked it.

“Schism” is schisma, the word Paul used in 1:10 and 11:18 for the divisions at Corinth, so the anatomy lesson lands squarely on the church. “Have the same care” is merimnao, the anxious caring of 7:32–34, turned outward toward one another.

Pain and honour are set side by side, and both are shared. “Suffer with” and “rejoice with” are compound verbs in Greek, sympascho and synchairo, so the common life is built into the grammar itself.

The first direct “ye” since the image began: the Corinthians are not like a body, they are one. “Members in particular” is literally “members from a part”, the same phrase ek merous that returns in 13:9, “we know in part”.

Only the first three are numbered, and they are people: apostles, prophets, teachers. After that the list turns to activities. “Governments” is kybernesis, steering, from the word for a ship’s helmsman. Tongues come last, which is roughly the reverse of Corinthian esteem.

Each question opens in Greek with me, a particle that tells the hearer the answer is no. The rhythm does the arguing: four questions in a row, and no reader can honestly answer yes to any of them.

The questions reach tongues last and add interpretation, which chapter 14 will insist must accompany tongues in the assembly (14:27–28). “Interpret” is diermeneuo, to translate or explain, the verb Luke uses when Jesus “expounded” the Scriptures on the Emmaus road (Luke 24:27).

“Covet earnestly” is zeloo, to be zealous for, the verb 13:4 turns negative, “charity envieth not”. The Greek form could also be read as a statement, “you are eager for the greater gifts”. “A more excellent way” is literally a way beyond measure, kath’ hyperbolen, and chapter 13 is the way.