The gift of healing included everything that would contribute toward increased human health and well-being as a result of the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the application of the Trinitarian perspective that produced modern science and technology. Indeed, increased health and healing of people under the influence of Christianity have resulted from faith in Jesus Christ. Modern medicine and the health industry must be included in the fruits of this gift.
The gift of helping or helps (antilepsis) is a very interesting word. It means aid or help and is correctly translated. And yet, to translate it as "helping" doesn't really say very much. What does helping mean? Helping what? Helping how? The Greek Lexicon provides this definition: a laying hold of, apprehension, perception, objection of a disputant. It sounds like the gift of helping is a perspective. Does this help? Not much. What perspective?
The word is composed of two parts: anti and lepsis. Anti means opposed, and lepsis is a medical term that means seizure. Together they literally mean opposed to seizure. We can see how the word suggests a kind of helping. And it could be taken in one of two senses. It could suggest a kind of medical helping that would serve to prevent or treat seizures. Here it would be a kind of helping to oppose or overcome or treat seizures in the medical sense.
Or it could suggest that it was opposed to the medical (or medicinal) treatment of seizures, where seizures may be associated with demon possession. Demon possession was common in Christ's time, and the Lord treated several cases of it that were related to seizures. The word "seizure" can also mean to take possession of something. In this sense demon possession was a kind of seizure of the person who was being possessed.
Consider Mark 9:16-29. Take a moment, find a Bible and read it.
This may have been the context for Paul's inclusion of helps on his list of gifts. The father of the boy wanted help, but the disciples could not give the help that was needed. With the dispensation of the Holy Spirit upon the whole Christian church in Acts 2, this kind of help may have been provided more widely.
Here the sense might be that the treatment of demon possession would be more spiritual than medical. The opposition (anti) would be directed more against the purely medical or physical aspects of seizures and focused more on demon possession. This perspective would then point to Christ's preferred treatment of demon possession, which was to cast them out. With the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church, this gift -- which would have been a gift of prayer according to the context above -- may have been given to Christians as part of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. And perhaps we don't know much about it because it was so successful in its elimination of demon possession as the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ's church in Acts 2. Demon possession appears to be rare today, but it was not rare then.
I'm out on a limb here, but there isn't much that is known about this particular gift. Calvin suggested that it may have to do with some church function or office that has been lost in antiquity. Most other commentators suggest that it indicates a generic kind of helping one another. And, of course, helping one another is good, and particularly helping through prayer. We may be content with such a definition because of the value of prayer in the lives of believers. In addition, it may be that prayer itself serves to keep the demons at bay. If so, this is a wonderful gift that we cannot afford to lose. Everyone needs the gift of prayer and the help that prayer affords.
The next gift on Paul's list is administrations, which again is not a very helpful translation. The KJV translates it as "governments." Calvin understood this gift to mean the presbyterial functions of the church -- oversight of the church by the elders. And that is a sufficient understanding, as long as we don't limit it to the modern or contemporary understanding of church government. Paul had more in mind than a kind of board of directors who would meet monthly to discuss church administration.
I suspect that Paul had in mind a system of church courts that would be much like the Old Testament elder system that had been developed by Moses on the model given to him by his father-in-law Jethro (Exodus 18:13-24).
Moses set up a system of courts that served to adjudicate conflict among God's people. At the time of Jesus' ministry the Pharisees and Sadducees were teaching wrong doctrine, substituting the teaching of men for the teaching of God (Matthew 15:9). And if that was true, then it could be surmised that the Temple courts were also corrupt. Paul would have been acutely aware of such corruption because of his experience as a Pharisee. In addition, because Paul was dealing with the grand design of Christ's church, he probably had such courts in mind when he put governments on his list of gifts. I suspect that this is the case. Consequently, Paul's gift of governments must include the whole of the biblical teaching regarding government, which includes self-government, family government, civil government and church government, and their various jurisdictions and courts.
And indeed, we know that the Early Church set up a system of church courts to adjudicate disputes. Roman courts had become corrupt and inadequate. They could not deal with the flood of local conflicts that came with the expansion of the Roman Empire. And as a result of this backlog and failure of the Roman court system, people turned to church courts, and even brought civil matters to the church courts. Paul no doubt saw the beginnings of this as he journeyed up the Roman government appeal system to Rome in his quest to take the gospel to Caesar, and anticipated this need by putting governments on his list of gifts. He was able to anticipate it because of his knowledge that the Mosiac court system had grown corrupt in his own time.
About the Author
Phillip A. Ross has been a pastor and author for over 25 years. He founded http://www.Pilgrim-Platform.org in 1998, which documents the church's fall from historic Christianity. His book, Arsy Varsy -- Reclaiming the Gospel in First Corinthians, demonstrates Paul's opposition to worldly Christianity and shows how Paul turned the world upside down.
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