I believe that God continues to work through His Spirit in the
church via miraculous gifts and through His power. This belief is
called “continuationism.”
Cessationism is the belief that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased with the completion of
the canon of Scripture in the New Testament, or at the end of the first century when the last of
the original apostles died.
I am going to make a relatively simple argument in the hope that through simplicity, we can cut through the “War of the Verses”
that often arises when Christians debate theology. In other words,
each side of an argument can level a hundred Scripture passages at the other side and
perhaps overwhelm the
argument with the sheer number of verses that they use to buttress their view. It is not always a bad approach and I
have done it many times myself. But, for this argument, with
verses aplenty for both side, I hope to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. And, being
the good Biblicist that I am, I will, of course use verses as well.
1 Corinthians 1:4-8 says,

“ I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you
have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all
your knowledge— 6 because our testimony about Christ was
confirmed in you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord
Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will keep you strong to the end,
so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This passage tells us that grace(charis) is given us in Christ Jesus. Jesus is the source of grace and it is not from anything that we do, but it is the
gift of God. In Christ, we are enriched in every way. We are built up and strengthened in Christ for His glory. This is
what grace does. We are
enriched in speaking and in knowledge. It is interesting that
both of these things (speaking/utterances/word/logos as well as
knowledge/gnosis) are
mentioned later on in 1
Corinthians 12-14 in the section on spiritual gifts – so speaking
and knowledge are part of what it means to be enriched in Christ. This enrichment/strengthening in all speaking and
knowledge is part of what confirms Paul’s testimony about
Christ in them. It is essential.Because of this, they do not lack
any spiritual gifts (charism) or grace gifts. These gifts are
manifestations of grace given in Christ Jesus. They are not
separate from Christ, but flow from knowing Jesus and speaking of Him (witness). They
attend those who believe the gospel and who are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. This is confirmed by the statement
that the Corinthian believers do
not lack any spiritual gifts as they eagerly wait for Jesus Christ to be
revealed. In other words, while they are waiting for Jesus to return and as they know Him
now, they are enriched by grace that comes from Jesus and by
manifestations of that grace that are exhibited in spiritual gifts –
every spiritual gift. In verse 8, we
see that Jesus will keep them strong to the end so that they will be blameless when
Christ returns.
This passage connects all of the spiritual gifts (one can only think
that Paul’s treatment of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14 are what
is in view here) with the grace of Christ and His strengthening of
the church until the end of the age. The gifts have a purpose, which is to manifest the grace
that we experience when we come to know Christ. Since there is no passage that says that the
gifts will cease before Christ, the perfect, comes, then we can
judge from this that Jesus gives us His gifts by grace so that we will be strong and holy as we
wait in hope for Him to return (1Corinthians 12:4-7 for example –
given for the strengthening of the church. See also 1 Corinthians14:26).
But, to go further, let’s look at the very nature of the Christian
life itself. In a passage familiar to Evangelical Chrisitans. TBC