<p>12:3 <i>Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit- </i>The speaking of the Spirit is very different to the speaking of the gods represented by the idols- see on :2. It deeply costs us to accept Jesus as Lord. Yet for so many moments of each day, we deny Him His Lordship in practice. In the first century, accepting Jesus as Lord was a life and death issue. Pliny wrote to Trajan how accused Christians had to both say &quot;The emperor is Lord&quot; and also curse Christ. Polycarp was urged by a Roman official to submit: &quot;What harm is there in saying &quot;Caesar is Lord?&quot;&quot;, and yet because he refused, Polycarp was killed (<i>Martyrdom of Polycarp</i> 8.2). It would seem that there were some Christians who gave in- and even justified it. For 1 Cor. 12:3 warns that &quot;no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says &quot;Jesus is cursed&quot;, and no one can say &quot;Jesus is Lord&quot; except by the Holy Spirit&quot;. My suggestion is that this is a reference to Mt. 10:17, which comforts believers that when we are delivered up, &quot;what you are to say will be given you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you&quot;. It would appear that some of the Christians who gave in were claiming that in accordance with this verse, it was the Spirit of God which had made them say &quot;Jesus is cursed&quot; and deny that &quot;Jesus is Lord&quot;. Paul is pointing out that this simply doesn't happen. In our context, the point simply is that to constantly affirm &quot;Jesus is Lord&quot; demands an awful lot from us, and as in the first century, so in the twenty first... we will be sorely tempted to think that just a few moments of denial when in a tough situation is quite OK. But in this there is the true test as to whether really we are under His Lordship or not. We have no court to face, no lions to fear. Instead, we have the court of human opinion, the lions of social mockery, financial loss, the human negatives that arise from the unselfish living which Christ's Lordship demands of us. Paul had forced Christians to blaspheme under torture- to say things like &quot;Jesus is accursed&quot;. He knew from experience that those who truly had the Spirit somehow had the strength not to say those words. And through that same Spirit had had the power to answer Saul: &quot;No, Jesus is Lord&quot;, as he tortured them to say &quot;Jesus is anathema / accursed&quot;. It could also be that there were false teachers at Corinth claiming to be inspired by God, who were claiming that Jesus is accursed.</p>