Fellowship With the Holy Spirit – Faith, Grace, and Spiritual Gifts
- 1 Peter 4:10-11 and Romans 12:3-8
- Faith looks away from our own resources and our own natural abilities; and faith desires, receives, and utilizes the all-sufficient person and work of Jesus Christ as the source of all grace.
- Faith is what turns natural abilities, actions, and personality into spiritual gifts because without faith our abilities and actions don’t transmit supernatural grace.
- Natural abilities transmit natural things. Spiritual gifts transmit spiritual things.
“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” 1 Peter 4:10 ESV
- You receive a gift to be used to serve others.
- But what are we serving others? What are we giving them?
- What we are serving others is God’s varied grace.
- Your faith causes you to step toward or reach for and receive God’s grace and then delivers that grace to serve others so that their faith is strengthened, that means of delivery or service (whatever it was) is one of your spiritual gifts.
“Having gifts (charismata) that differ according to the grace (charin) given to us.” Romans 12:6a
- Gifts differ according to the grace given to us.
- There are different kinds and degrees of grace that God intends to transmit or transport through us to others.
- Remember, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:” 1 Peter 4:10 ESV
- “Gifts(charisma) that differ” and “varied grace(charis)”.
- We need different grace (charis) at different times, sometimes we need the grace of comfort, or the grace of healing, or the grace of wisdom, the grace of joy or love, or peace, the grace of food, water, or clothing.
- God has a variety of grace gifts and this is why there is a variety of spiritual gifts.
“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;” Romans 12:6 ESV
- Here Paul makes explicit the relationship between at least one spiritual gift and faith.
- Gifts are real and life-giving only when they come from faith and in proportion to the faith we really have.
- Fight for that faith. Don’t fight to keep up a façade.
- Put your energy in building faith.
- So faith (which looks away from itself to God’s grace) makes all spiritual gifts, no matter how great or small, a tribute to God’s grace and not to ourselves. (1 Peter 4:11)
- In other words, in the life of the body of Christ at Living Hope, don’t try to look great. Just be real.
- Pray for faith, and seek to grow in faith. But do your ministry—use your gifts—in proportion to the faith you have.
“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;” Romans 12:4-6 ESV
- Don’t miss the truth that Spiritual Gifts are for the body and I believe primarily for a local body of believers.
- Paul is saying here and in 1 Corinthians 12 that the church is a body and the body has parts or members and those parts are not just committed to each other but they are connected to each other, dependent on each other.
- Every part has been designed to serve the body in some way.
- Note the relationship between function and gift.
- We all have different functions and, consequently, different gifts that enable us to fulfill those functions.
- I know in recent years there has been emphasis placed on discovering what one’s spiritual gift is but maybe not enough emphasis placed on discovering what one’s function is in the body.
- Gifts are given by God to enable us to fulfill our function.
- It’s about being used by God to give grace to specific people, situations and circumstances.
- It’s about the health of the body, the maturing of the body, the growth of the body, the multiplication of the body.
- It’s all about the gospel.
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