28 The Background and  Testing of  Counterfeit Spiritual  Gifts (12:1-3)

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. (12:1-3)

This passage introduces the section (chaps. 12-14) that focuses on spiritual gifts, a controversial subject today within many parts of professing Christianity. Perhaps no area of biblical doctrine has been more misunderstood and abused, even within evangelicalism, than that of spiritual gifts. Yet no area of doctrine is more important to the spiritual health and effectiveness of the church. Apart from the direct energizing of God’s Spirit, nothing is more vital to believers than the ministry of their spiritual gifts, their God-given endowments for Christian service.

Contrary to the thinking of many people, the true church of Jesus Christ is not a visible human organization run by a hierarchy of officials. It is not a social agency to meet the needs and demands of the community or simply a convenient place in which to be married, buried, or baptized. It is certainly not a religious social club in which people of like-minded beliefs and standards get together for fellowship and occasional service activities.

The church, as established by Jesus Christ and described and defined in the New Testament, is a living organism. It is the spiritual body of Christ, who is its Head, its Lord. The members of that body are entirely and exclusively those who have become new creatures through faith in Him as their Savior and Lord. Though composed of human members, it is not a human organization. It is a supernatural organism, created, established, empowered, and led by the Lord Himself. Because its Head is eternal and indestructible, the church is eternal and indestructible. Jesus assures us that even “the gates of Hades shall not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18).

Every member of Christ’s church has been given supernatural endowments, gifts of God’s Holy Spirit, which through the Spirit are God’s divine means of ministering His Word and power among His people and to the world. They are God’s supernatural provision for the edification of the church and the evangelization of the world. They are the means through which believers are to grow, worship, witness, and serve.

True spiritual gifts are given by God to strengthen and manifest oneness, harmony, and power. Satan’s counterfeit gifts are meant to divide, disrupt, and weaken. God’s gifts build up; Satan’s counterfeits tear down.

The Corinthian church, like much of the church today, was seriously affected by counterfeiting as well as by misunderstanding and misuse of spiritual gifts. Some of the Corinthian believers recognized the problem, and 1 Corinthians 12-14 continues to answer questions about which they had written Paul (7:1). In addition to the problems raised and reflected in that letter, Paul had learned of other problems from “Chloe’s people” (1:11) and from “Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus” (16:17). Judging by the apostle’s teaching in this section, the questions included those such as: What are spiritual gifts? How many are there? Does every believer have them? How can a person know which one or ones he has? How important are they to individual Christian living and to the life of the church? What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how does it relate to spiritual gifts? Are all of the gifts given for every age of the church, or were some given only for a special purpose and a limited time? Can the gifts be counterfeited and, if so, how can believers tell the true ones from the false? Those and many other questions Paul carefully answers.

Just as the Corinthians had perverted almost everything else, they also had perverted the nature, purpose, and use of spiritual gifts. This perversion, as the others, largely was due to ideas and practices they had dragged from their pagan society into the church. The old life continually contaminated the new They had not separated themselves from their former ways and were still handling, in fact strongly holding on to, that which was “unclean” (2 Cor. 6:14-17). Although they were rich and complete in spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 1:7), they were poor in understanding them and irresponsible in using them.

PAGAN BACKGROUNDS

The pagan cults of Greece and Rome were part of what are commonly called the mystery religions. By Paul’s time they had dominated the near eastern world for thousands of years and indirectly would dominate much of western culture through the Middle Ages and, to some extent, even until today.

The mystery religions had many forms and variations, but a common source. In his vision on the island of Patmos John was shown “the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters,” on whose “forehead a name was written, a mystery, ‘Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth’” (Rev 17:1, 5). Here the Lord pictures His judgment of world religion. At the end of the Tribulation the true church will have been raptured (1 Thess. 4:13-18; Rev 3:10) and the world will begin to establish a religion of its own that will be truly universal. It will be the composite of all the world’s false religions, which will “give their power and authority to the beast,” the Antichrist (Rev 17:13). The final form of that all-powerful, universal religion will represent the completion of the mystery religions that historically originated in ancient Babylon.

In its organized form false religion began with the tower of Babel, from which Babylon derives its name. Cain was the first false worshiper, and many individuals after him followed his example. But organized pagan religion began with the descendants of Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, who decided to erect a great monument that would “reach into heaven” and make themselves a great name (Gen. 10:9-10; 11:4). Under the leadership of the proud and apostate Nimrod they planned to storm heaven and unify their power and prestige in a great worldwide system of worship. That was man’s first counterfeit religion, from which every other false religion in one way or another has sprung.

God’s judgment frustrated their primary purpose of making a grand demonstration of humanistic unity. By confusing “their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech,” and scattering “them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:7-8) the Lord halted the building of the tower and fractured their solidarity. But those people took with them the seeds of that false, idolatrous religion, seeds that they and their descendants have been planting throughout the world ever since. The ideas and forms were altered, adapted, and sometimes made more sophisticated, but the basic system remained, and remains, unchanged. That is why Babel, or Babylon, is called “the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth” (Rev 17:5). She was the progenitor of all false religions.

From various ancient sources, it seems that Nimrod’s wife, Semiramis (the First), apparently was high priestess of the Babel religion and the founder of all mystery religions. After the tower was destroyed and the multiplicity of languages developed, she was worshiped as a goddess under many different names. She became Ishtar of Syria, Astarte of Phoenicia, Isis of Egypt, Aphrodite of Greece, and Venus of Rome—in each case the deity of sexual love and fertility. Her son, Tammuz, also came to be deified under various names and was the consort of Ishtar and god of the underworld.

According to the cult of Ishtar, Tammuz was conceived by a sunbeam, a counterfeit version of Jesus’ virgin birth. Tammuz corresponded to Baal in Phoenicia, Osiris in Egypt, Eros in Greece, and Cupid in Rome. In every case, the worship of those gods and goddesses was associated with sexual immorality. The celebration of Lent has no basis in Scripture, but rather developed from the pagan celebration of Semiramis’s mourning for forty days over the death of Tammuz (cf. Ezek. 8:14) before his alleged resurrection—another of Satan’s mythical counterfeits.

The mystery religions originated the idea of baptismal regeneration, being born again merely through the rite of water baptism, and the practice of mutilation and flagellation to atone for sins or gain spiritual favor. They also began the custom of pilgrimages, which many religions follow today, and the paying of penance for forgiveness of sins for oneself and for others.

Several pagan practices were especially influential in the church at Corinth. Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most obvious, was that of ecstasy, considered to be the highest expression of religious experience. Because it seemed supernatural and because it was dramatic and often bizarre, the practice strongly appealed to the natural man. And because the Holy Spirit had performed many miraculous works in that apostolic age, some Corinthian Christians confused those true wonders with the false wonders counterfeited in the ecstasies of paganism.

Ecstasy (Greek, ekstasia, a term not used in Scripture) was held to be a supernatural, sensuous communion with a deity. Through frenzied hypnotic chants and ceremonies worshipers experienced semiconscious euphoric feelings of oneness with the god or goddess. Often the ceremony would be preceded by vigils and fastings, and would even include drunkenness (see Eph. 5:18). Contemplation of sacred objects, whirling dances, fragrant incense, chants, and other such physical and psychological stimuli customarily were used to induce the ecstasy, which would be in the form of an out-of-body trance or an unrestrained sexual orgy. The trance is reflected in some forms of Hindu yoga, in which a person becomes insensitive to pain, and in the Buddhist goal of escaping into Nirvana, the divine nothingness. Sexual ecstasies were common in many ancient religions and were so much associated with Corinth that the term Corinthianize meant to indulge in extreme sexual immorality. A temple to Bacchus still stands in the ruins of Baalbek (in modern Lebanon) as a witness to the debauchery of the mystery religions,

A similar form of mystical experience was called enthusiasm (Greek, enthusiasmos), which often accompanied but was distinct from ecstasy. Enthusiasm involved mantic formulas, divination, and revelatory dreams and visions, all of which are found in many pagan religions and philosophies today.

THE SITUATION IN CORINTH

New Testament Corinth was filled with priests, priestesses, religious prostitutes, soothsayers, and diviners of the mystery religions who claimed to represent a god or gods and to have supernatural powers that proved their claims. Unbelievably, some of their dramatic and bizarre practices were mimicked in the church.

The Corinthian believers knew of the prophet Joel’s prediction:

They also knew that Jesus had said that the coming of the Holy Spirit would be accompanied by amazing signs and events (Mark 16:17-18). They had heard, perhaps firsthand from Peter, of the miraculous events of Pentecost, with the tongues of fire and speaking with other languages (Acts 2:3-4). Perhaps they were so determined to experience those wonders that they tried to manufacture them.

First Corinthians was one of the earliest written epistles of the New Testament. Yet even in a short period of time Satan had begun to confuse believers about many doctrines, practices, and signs. The pure water of God’s truth was being muddied, and nowhere more than in Corinth. Satan began to counterfeit the gospel and its wonders in earnest, and the gullible, worldly, self-centered, thrill-seeking Corinthians with their pagan backgrounds were prime targets for his assaults.

People do not counterfeit what is not valuable. Satan counterfeits the Spirit’s gifts because he knows they are so valuable in God’s plan. If Satan can get God’s people to become confused about or abusive of those gifts, he can undermine and corrupt the worship and work of the church. Counterfeit gifts, whether through false manifestations or through misguided and selfish use, poison God’s spiritual organism and make it weak and ineffective.

One of the chief evidences of the spiritual immaturity of the Corinthian Christians was lack of discernment. If an occult practice seemed to have supernatural effect, they assumed it was of God. If a priest or soothsayer performed a miracle, they assumed it was by God’s power. Like many Christians today, they believed that if something “works” it must be right and good. Some of the believers, however, realized that the confusion, division, and immoral practices that characterized many of the church members could not be of God. They asked Paul to tell them how to determine what was of the Holy Spirit and what was of some other spirit (cf. 1 John 4:1).

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. (12:1)

Paul’s use here of Now concerning was much like saying, “Now in the second place,” the first being mentioned in 11:18. Just as the Corinthians had been abusing the Lord’s Supper, they also had been abusing their spiritual gifts.

As indicated by italics in many translations, gifts is supplied by the translators to indicate a word only implied in the original. The Greek (pneumatikos) literally means “spirituals,” or “spiritualities,” referring to that which has spiritual qualities or characteristics or is under spiritual control. Because the masculine and neuter forms of the word are the same, it can indicate either spiritual persons or spiritual things. Some interpreters have taken it to refer to spiritual persons, in contrast to the unspiritual and carnal ones about whom Paul has been saying so much. But the context makes it clear that the reference is to spiritual things, specifically to “gifts” of the Spirit (12:4, 9, 28, 30-31). The same word is used in 14:1 (cf. v. 12), where it could not possibly refer to persons. Except in Ephesians 6:12, the word spiritual is always used in the New Testament of that which is in some way related to the Holy Spirit.

Paul wants to make sure that the Corinthians have a clear and complete understanding of their spiritual gifts, the special equipment for ministry that the Holy Spirit gives in some measure to all believers and that are to be wholly under His control and used for Christ’s glory.

After the harsh words he has just given about abusing the Lord’s table (11:17-34), Paul again assures the Corinthian believers that he considers them to be brethren, his spiritual brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. They were not acting spiritual or acting like Christian brothers, but they still belonged to Christ.

Paul was deeply concerned that those brethren have a proper understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit, especially in relation to His gifts to them. He uses the same phrase here (I do not want you to be unaware) that he used in 10:1 concerning the experiences of Israel in the wilderness under Moses. It was an idiomatic phrase often used to introduce an exceptionally important subject. Paul used it to encourage his readers to pay close attention to a critical truth (see Rom. 1:13; 11:25; 1 Thess. 4:13). The Greek agnoeō literally means “not to know,” or “to be ignorant of.” It is the term from which we get agnostic. Paul wanted the Corinthians to have no ignorance and no doubts, no uncertainty or agnosticism, about the identification and use of their spiritual gifts. The church cannot function, and it certainly cannot mature, without properly and faithfully using the gifts God gives His people for ministry. Satan will try to counterfeit the Spirit’s gifts, and he will try to induce believers to ignore, neglect, misunderstand, abuse, and pervert them. Consequently, Paul’s teaching here is critical.

The apostle assured the Corinthians that it was possible for them to know the truth about spiritual gifts and that he was determined to teach them. He therefore proceeds to tell them how to determine which gifts were true and godly and which were counterfeit and satanic. Because they misused the true gifts, he also tells them how to use those gifts properly.

All the gifts are given to the church to build up God’s people into the image of Christ its Lord. In Ephesians Paul speaks of the specially gifted men who are given to the church “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (4:11-13). Christ indwells each believer (Rom.8:9; 1 Cor. 3:16) and He indwells the church (Eph. 2:22). Individually and corporately the church represents Christ. Spiritual gifts are the Lord’s primary channel of making Christians become Christ in the world, His visible and manifest body.

Spiritual gifts are divine enablements for ministry, characteristics of Jesus Christ that are to be manifested through the body corporate just as they were manifested through the body incarnate. Each gift the Holy Spirit now gives to believers had its perfect expression in Jesus’ own life and ministry. His church continues to live out His life on earth through the power of His Spirit working through His gifted people.

THE SOURCE OF COUNTERFEIT GIFTS

You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the dumb idols, however you were led. (12:2)

Pagans translates ethnē, which commonly was used to represent all non-Jews, that is, Gentiles in general. But in the New Testament the term also is sometimes used, as here, to refer specifically to non-Christians (cf. 1 Thess. 4:5; 1 Pet. 2:12).

One of the chief characteristics of most pagan religions was idolatry. As former pagans, the Corinthian Christians had once been led astray to the dumb idols. Led astray (apagō) was often used of prisoners being taken under armed guard to prison or execution (Mark 14:44; 15:16; Acts 12:19; cf. 2 Tim. 3:6). Before a person is saved he is a captive of Satan and of his own depraved nature. He is spiritually blind and spiritually weak, and cannot help being led into idolatry.

One of the most common misconceptions about the ungodly life—a misconception shared by many immature believers—is that it is free, in contrast to the Christian life, which is hemmed in by rigid restrictions. As Paul teaches in this passage, just the opposite is true. The unbeliever is a captive of sin and of Satan. He has some choice as to the type of sin, but he has no choice as to whether or not to sin. However you were led, the apostle says, you were led. You had no choice. Whether you went into idolatry willingly or not, you could not help it.

I often think of a man to whom I have witnessed for many years. Each time I ask him to believe in Christ and confess Him as Lord he says, in one way or another, “I would become a Christian, but I don’t want to give up my freedom. I don’t want to be restricted. I want to do what I want.” I have shared with him 1 Corinthians 12:2 and other texts that teach the same truth. I remind him that all unbelievers are “slaves of sin” (Rom. 6:17), that they are not free at all. But he is convinced that he is doing entirely what he wants and refuses to give up his delusion.

Unbelievers not only are bound but blinded. They cannot see their chains. They live “in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (Eph. 4:17-18). Unbelievers think they are free because they are “deceived,” unknowingly “enslaved to various lusts and pleasures” (Titus 3:3). It is true, of course, that most people are quite content to be in sin; they like it and want to stay there (John 3:19). But the point is that, even if they wanted to do so, they could not escape.

Part of the unbeliever’s bondage is to the worship of false gods, which even the atheist and agnostic have. They can no more keep from worshiping their sophisticated idols of various sorts than a primitive tribesman can keep from worshiping his carved fetish. Each is a slave of sin, led astray to the dumb idols, however [he is] led.

Dumb (aphōnos) does not mean unintelligent but speechless, literally “without voice.” No idol can respond to man’s needs. By definition an idol is man-made and impersonal. No idol, primitive or sophisticated, can answer a person’s questions, give him revelation, assure him of truth, forgive him of sin, or endow him with dignity, meaning, and peace. Just as no unregenerate person can help being led into some form of idolatry, no idol can help being dumb. Whether or not a demon is behind it (1 Cor. 10:20), an idol is totally helpless to benefit the one who worships it.

Tragically, many of the Corinthian Christians had fallen back into some of their old idolatrous beliefs and practices. They could no longer distinguish the work of God’s Spirit from that of demonic spirits, God’s true spiritual gifts from Satan’s counterfeits, or true worship of God from the perverted worship of idols. They forfeited God’s blessing and received none from their dumb gods.

THE TEST OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. (12:3)

Satan spends a lot of time in church. Nowhere is he more anxious to pervert God’s people than where they are worshiping. Some members of the church at Corinth apparently became so fleshly and confused, and their worship so paganized and frenzied, that they even allowed the Lord to be cursed within their own congregation. Paul rebukes the entire church for allowing such ungodliness and for being so undiscerning about what is spiritual and what is demonic. He gives two principles, one negative and one positive, for testing the validity of gifts and their use. It is the first of several tests the apostle mentions in chapters 12-14.

THE NEGATIVE TEST

The clear implication, as recognized by most evangelical interpreters, is that those who were saying Jesus is accursed claimed to be speaking by the Spirit of God. They actually claimed to be “speaking in the Spirit,” manifesting some gift of prophecy or teaching, while cursing the name of the Savior and Lord they were supposed to be worshiping! Accursed (anathema) refers to severe condemnation. To say that Jesus is accursed is to condemn His nature, His character, and His work—not to mention His holiness and glory.

Paul tells the Corinthians that no such blasphemous utterance could possibly be by the Spirit of God. Nothing should have been more logical and obvious, but the Corinthians had come to judge the nature and use of gifts on the basis of experience rather than content. The more impressive, showy, unusual, and bizarre, the more a practice was accepted and respected. They had fallen back so deeply into ecstasy and enthusiasm that their judgment was completely warped. As long as it took place in the church and was presented by someone who claimed to be a Christian, any teaching or practice was accepted without question. Content was ignored, even to the extent of disregarding that which was obviously immoral and blasphemous.

It is possible that the person who called Jesus accursed was Jewish. Because the law taught that a person who is hanged on a tree “is accursed of God” (Deut. 21:23), many Jews considered Jesus to have been cursed by being crucified. It may have been that the apostle himself, as Saul the persecutor, had once urged Christians to blaspheme the Lord by saying, “Jesus is accursed” (see Acts 26:11).

But whether a person is Jewish or Gentile, his claiming to be a Christian and claiming that what he says or does is spiritual does not make it so. Paul hits them over the head with the obvious. Incredulously he asks, “How can you possibly be so confused? When you were pagans you could not help being blind and deceived. You could not help being led astray. But how can you who are truly Christians fail to recognize those who so obviously are not? How can you who have been so blessed with spiritual gifts be so utterly incapable of recognizing Satan’s counterfeit gifts? How can you even believe that cursing the Lord and Savior could be of the Holy Spirit?”

Only one thing seems to explain why such a wicked condition could have come to exist, especially in a church established and pastored by Paul himself. During the first century the philosophy of early-developing gnosticism was a great threat to the church. It taught that everything physical and natural is evil and that everything supernatural and spiritual is good. When adapted to Christianity it taught that the supernatural Christ only appeared to be the natural Jesus. The human Jesus was an imperfect, evil, and poor representation of the spiritual Son of God, who, because of His divine nature, could not possibly have taken on a physical form. Christ’s Spirit descended upon Jesus at His baptism but returned to heaven before the crucifixion. Therefore Jesus died an accursed death as no more than a mere man. So while glorifying the divine Christ the Corinthians may have felt perfectly justified in cursing the human Jesus.

Because they considered everything physical to be evil, Gnostics vehemently denied the idea of resurrection. The human body was the last thing with which they would want to be reunited after death. It is this part of the heresy that Paul so strongly challenges in 1 Corinthian 15. In the following chapter Paul states that it is the person who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ who is accursed (16:22-24). Some manuscripts do not have “Jesus Christ” in verse 22, but the two following verses show that the three names are inseparable. There is no Lord apart from Jesus and there is no Christ apart from Jesus. The resurrected, historical Jesus is the divine, heavenly Christ. A person who will not claim the resurrected Jesus as Lord cannot claim the divine Christ as Lord. The incarnated Lord is the only Lord.

The heresy obviously continued to plague the Corinthian church for many years. “I am afraid,” Paul writes in his next letter to them, “lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully” (2 Cor. 11:3-4). The basic meaning of “simplicity” (haplotēs) is singleness, oneness. The Corinthians were still being led astray concerning the unity of Jesus and Christ. Some of the church members were still holding to false teachings about the nature of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the gospel. They had heard “another Jesus” preached and had received “a different spirit” and “a different gospel.”

The first test of a spiritual gift is doctrinal. If a person holds a derogatory view of Jesus Christ, then what he says and does is not of God. We should always compare a teaching or a practice with God’s Word. That is the test of its being of the Holy Spirit. A Christian today cannot receive new revelation. The only way to be sure if something is spiritual is to be sure it is scriptural. If it agrees with Scripture, a new revelation from the Spirit is unnecessary; if it does not agree with Scripture, a new revelation cannot be from the Spirit and is false.

THE POSITIVE TEST

The second part of the test is also doctrinal and is simply the reverse side of the negative. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. Paul is of course speaking of sincere confession. An unbeliever can easily utter those words. Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). True confession is based on true faith, of which obedience to God’s Word is the true mark. Confessing Jesus as Lord means nothing unless it involves affirming who He really is and obeying what He commands. One whom we do not really know and obey cannot truly be our Lord (Luke 6:46).

The title Lord (kurios) implies deity. Kurios and its Old Testament Hebrew counterpart (adonay) are often used in the Bible as terms of respect shown to people of high rank or distinction, much as we use “your honor” when addressing a judge. But they are also used in a unique way of God. Because Jews considered God’s covenant name (Yahweh, or Jehovah) to be too sacred to say aloud, it was instead spoken as “Lord.” The custom is reflected in many translations by the use of capital and small capital letters (LORD) to render the Hebrew YHWH (Yahweh).

The early church soon came to reserve kurios entirely for use in referring to God. Confessing Jesus is Lord, therefore, was always understood as confessing Jesus as God. A Gnostic may have confessed Christ as Lord, but he would not have confessed Jesus as Lord.

Lord implies sovereign authority. There is overwhelming biblical evidence that the word means rulership. If the Lord is creator, sustainer, and controller, He obviously is sovereign. Thomas’s words, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) must mean more than deity, or “my God” would have been sufficient. In Romans 10:9-10, confessing Jesus as Lord indicates His sovereign rule, because the context (v 13) includes a quote from Joel 2:32 (Greek Septuagint version), where the Greek kurios translates the Hebrew yhwh, which means sovereign authority, and is most often rendered in English as LORD. In the use of “Lord” in Acts 2:36, the context again gives us insight; verses 34-35 are from Psalm 110:1, where the Hebrew adon means sovereign rulership.

The term Lord is used about 700 times in the New Testament (“Savior,” under 10 times). The lordship, deity, and sovereignty of Jesus Christ was and is central to the true faith, and such affirmation is the work of the Spirit.

What a person truly believes about Jesus Christ is the test of whether or not what he teaches and does is by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always leads men to ascribe lordship to Jesus Christ as one indivisible and divine Person, to be obeyed completely. That is the testimony of the Father (Matt. 3:17; 17:5; John 5:26-27, 36-38; Acts 2:36; Eph. 1:20-21; Phil. 2:9-11), of the Holy Spirit (John 15:26; 1 Cor. 2:8-14; 1 John 5:6-8), and of Jesus Himself (Matt. 16:27; 26:64; 28:18).