THE reading 1 Corinthians 2 is a lot to absorb in one Sunday. Verse 15 alone is enough of a challenge. It raises an issue which is always important for Christians, but especially in the run-up to Lent, when thoughts turn to the personal dimension of our discipleship: “Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.”

This letter is an early New Testament witness to the faith. It reveals a tension which re-echoes down Christian centuries from north Africa to Asia Minor; in the nations of Europe at the Reformation; and in the Non-Conformist revivalism and Pentecostal, and Charismatic movements which, closer to our own time, have posed their different challenges to the established Church of England.

There are, of course, different ways of taking Paul’s statement, but even the most authoritarian hierocrat cannot completely argue away its key idea. In the apostle’s mind, there are different kinds of authority to which we are subject, as human beings and as Christians. Human rulers are a straightforward instance of authority. The living witness of the first apostles, and their successors, is another. Textual authority is beginning to emerge, in the shape of documents from Judaism. Other writings, too, are copied and circulated: their authorship will become the guarantee of their authority.

But there is another form of authority — one which has no shape or form, no visible embodiment, no human endorsement: the Holy Spirit. People who are touched by the Holy Spirit themselves become “spiritual”. Where the Spirit of God bestows authority, it also bestows power. This makes it potentially dangerous, especially to the leadership and influencers of the emerging communities of the faithful which were coming to be called “churches”.

A century or so after Paul, the Church’s first Latin theologian was an African lawyer, Tertullian. He joined a group of Christians known as Montanists. He did so because they regarded the authority of the Spirit as supreme over other forms of revealed truth. One potential consequence of this was a canon of scripture which could never be closed, because that would deny the possibility that the work of the Spirit was ongoing.

Being free to decide everything for ourselves, with “only” the Spirit to guide us, has a wonderfully romantic aura about it. What it does not have is any way of resolving disagreements in which both sides claim that their version is Spirit-authenticated truth.

When a person comes forward to offer themselves for ministry, they have to submit themselves repeatedly to the judgement of their fellow Christians. This tells us not that the Spirit is being ignored, but that we trust it to work, not only in individuals but also in groups, including committees and congregations. All authority is God’s. So, if we claim that our opinion is synonymous with the will of God, one of the key proofs is that we should not be alone in holding it. One person, one opinion, one voice, does not make a church.

When we turn to the Gospel, authentication and authority are clearly in Jesus’s mind as he preaches his sermon from the mount. He starts from what people are in their uncorrupt state: “the salt of the earth”, the “light of the world”. Neither image is encouraging us to think of ourselves in individualistic terms.

Salt without its saltiness cannot be salt. But light is different. Once it is covered, it turns the illumination of a whole room into a light cast for the benefit of one person alone (like a torch under bedcovers). Worse still, if that light is placed under a basket, it illuminates no one, no thing; it might as well not exist. God’s gifts to us are a fact, and they are shared among us all. We have all been baptised with the Holy Spirit; so any individual who claims to speak with the gift of the Spirit’s authority needs to be listened to — but tested, too.

In the end, like any gift from God, the gifts of the Spirit lie dormant until we bring them to life in our own lives, by responding to Jesus’s voice; our Lord speaking to each one of us individually, as well as to all of us together. Then, together, we will put our light and salt to work for our own and others’ good: as a beacon signalling the truth of Christ; and as heavenly-tasting food, offered to all.