Gifts of the Spirit

Gifts of the Spirit

Introduction

God created the world around us. God created us. God didn't build a toll booth to collect user fees for life. Instead, life is free, and being in the created world is free; it's a gift. We humans are the ones who attach fees to what's been freely given to us.

Concept of the Ultimate Gift

The biggest gift of all, however, isn't other people, and isn't nature, or the universe, or family. The biggest gift in all of existence is that we are given the Giver - the same Greatest One who was Job's only satisfaction and Moses' only strength is now given to humankind. God chooses not only to put up with us, but to be with us. That's what all this Jesus talk means - that's why Jesus matters. He is, in Christmas-talk, "God-with-us", Immanuel. That is the gift of Jesus.

But Jesus is not walking among us today. So another gift has been given - God in yet another way, the divine Spirit through whom Christ is still in effect right here and now. This Spirit leads, shapes, empowers, and gives us joy. The gift a Christian lives in every day, most fundamentally, is the Holy Spirit.

Understanding of Gifts of the Spirit

When speaking about "gifts of the Spirit", we're not talking about the gift of God, though that's what lies behind all other gifts. Nor is this about the gift of creation, or the gift of other people or of family or nation or culture -- great gifts all. When speaking of gifts of the Spirit, spiritual gifts, charismata, or things like that, it's about what the Spirit gives as part of bettering people's life in general, and specifically for the life of following Christ.

Paul's Letter and Paul's Spiritual Gifts

Those who look back on the early Church as 'the good old days' forget what those days were. The Mediterranean of the apostle Paul's day was a brewing stew of cultures and beliefs all having to live with each other amidst poverty, disease, and Roman rule. There were official cultural norms, but in many places these were often ignored or even deliberately breached, with few attempts to stop it. It could get ugly, perverted, and violent. And no matter how bad it got, there was always some set of beliefs out there which could be used for excusing or even endorsing it. No place was more of a stew pot than Corinth. Corinth was the leading Roman colony in Greece, where retired soldiers, bureaucrats, and functionaries would go to live. Goods were carted over the isthmus to ships on the other side, avoiding the treacherous way around Greek Achaia by sea. On top of all cities was almighty Rome, in the prime of its power and glory, beyond anything that came before it.

Paul's specific gifts lists were written to aid local fellowships which were growing, usually slowly. These fellowships were also growing in another, more rapid way: they were experiencing the pains of developing the ...