Blink and you’ll miss it. Hidden in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul lists the gift of discerning of spirits, or the distinguishing of spirits depending on the version of the Bible you use. And that is it. Like words of knowledge and words of wisdom very little is said. Why? Did Paul deliberately leave things vague or is there another answer? The reason for such a slight mention of this gift is probably because people knew what it was. That doesn’t help us as none of us know what teaching was going on to explain the gift. As such we need to take a step back from what people have said the gift of discernment is about and we need to look at what the Bible says about this gift.
Firstly, nowhere does Scripture talk about those with the gift of discerning of spirits only recognising the demonic. And nowhere does it speak of those with the gift being able to tell what type of demon is there in a situation. Yes, some people with the gift of discernment can do this, but to only teach this as the “gift of discernment” sells things short.
To start to define the gift of discerning of spirits we need to go back to the Greek and see what was said. In our 1 Corinthians 12 verse 10 (there are no chapters or verses in the original Greek) Paul speaks of discernings of spirits. The root of the word discernings (it is plural in Greek) is diacrisis, literally through (dia) crisis. Paul uses a related word to this when he speaks in 1 Corinthians 3:13 when he speaks of our works being tested by fire when Christ comes in glory and judgement, he also uses a related word when writing to the church in Thessalonica and commands them to test prophecy (1 Thessalonians 5:21). John also uses a related word when he tells the readers of his first epistle to test the spirits (1 John 4:1), as does Peter when he speaks of the world testing us so that we show the marks of our creator (1 Peter 4:12). This may sound contrary to how spiritual discernment is portrayed as working, but the writer to the Hebrews gives us a clue as to why Paul uses this word when they write about those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:14).
You may have seen a cooking programme with a wine expert who can, from a bottle with a covered label, tell you not only what grape a wine is made from but also the region, vineyard, and even, in some cases, where in the vineyard the grapes were grown. They can do this because they have trained their taste buds to this amazing level. On antique programmes we marvel at experts who can tell just from looking at the brushstrokes the artist, the handiwork of a master jeweller or clock maker, or the writing of a major celebrity or author. They can do this because they have spent so much time looking at the real thing. They have studied the work of Constable, Van Gogh, Fabrege, Lalique, Garrards, Ramsden and Carr, Elgar, and others that how something is made is as unique to them as a fingerprint. They are so used to seeing how someone works they can tell if it is fake, when it isn’t done right. In her book The Voice of God, Cindy Jacobs recounts how she was trained, while working in a bank, to recognise fake notes. Rather than looking at fakes the bank made their workers repeatedly handle the real thing. By knowing what the real thing was then they would know if something did not feel right. We learn to discern not by looking for what is not God, but by spending time in His presence. We are trained in discernment by spending time in His word, in worship, in prayer, and through learning to hear the voice of God.
This then is the discerning or distinguishing part, but what about spirits? The Greek word is pneumata. If you ride a bicycle or drive a car your tyres are pneumatic, workmen work with pneumatic drills. These come from the root word of pneumata, the Greek word for spirit, air or breeze pneuma. When Paul is in Philippi he and Silas are followed by a young female possessed by the pneuma pythona or python spirit. When Jesus teaches about the Holy Spirit he talks about us not knowing where the wind (pneuma) is blowing. Human breathe is also referred to in Greek as pneuma. Meteorologists look at the pneuma. They look at the air, how pure it is, what weather is the here and what is coming, the track the wind as it blows - whether as a gentle breeze or a mighty hurricane. Before D-Day in 1944 meteorologists studied the pneuma to help choose when Operation Overlord, the invasion of occupied Europe, could take place. Discernment of spirits is the same. We look not just at what is moving people, whether Godly or demonic, we test the atmosphere in a place, we look forward to what God wants to do. The difference is that, unlike the weather forecasters in May and June 1944, we can change the pneuma, the atmosphere, the spiritual air where we live, work and worship.
This is spiritual discernment – the ability to understand what forces are operating in a situation, what spiritual atmosphere is being created, and what can be done to change that atmosphere.