Spiritual Gifts According to Grace
“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
Romans 12:6-8
Over the next three weeks we will examine the question of spiritual gifts. This week we will talk about what spiritual gifts are and why God gives them to us looking at the first example of prophesy. In the following weeks we will explore several other common spiritual gifts. We need to recognize that other gifts are listed in different passages, these listed here are representative of how God equips the church to minister more effectively.
First, Paul says that we all have gifts. If you are a Christian, God has given you one or more spiritual gifts to minister to others in the church. Spiritual gifts are special abilities of the Holy Spirit that he gives to believers at salvation or after salvation to equip him or her to fulfill a ministry to other believers and sometimes unbelievers. These are different from natural abilities that one has from birth or discovers he has while growing up whether he is a Christian or not. Those are gifts also, but they are not spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts also differ from talents that one may learn or build upon through practice and effort. This doesn’t mean you can’t grow in your spiritual gifts, but the origin of those gifts is different from these other two. Since everyone has at least one gift, that means there cannot be a “gift-less” believer so we can deduce that every true believer has at least one gift from the time of conversion.
Secondly, he observes that we don’t all have the same gifts. Quite simply, he tells us that our gifts differ. This means that no one has all the gifts and that we all will have the gifts that God decides. Some mistakenly believe that some gifts must be had by all, but the text explicitly say this is not the case. Earlier in this passage Paul likens it to a body made up of many different parts with many different functions. We shouldn’t want other people’s gifts, nor should we expect everyone to have the same ones.
Thirdly, Paul states that we have gifts by God’s grace. This is important because the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts as he decides. He knows what is best for us and he knows how he wants to use us so we should expect to be given gifts that fit our purpose and calling. Since they are by grace means that we don’t earn them, we don’t deserve them, and we cannot demand them. He gives them out of his sovereign goodness, not because we feel strongly that we should have it. We rest in God’s goodness stepping out in faith to do what he has put before us and placed on our hearts, even if we have never done it before.
Fourthly, he notes that we don’t all have the same level of gifts. In one sense this is obvious, some people are more gifted than we are. There are some who have exceptional levels gifting such as leadership or teaching. We can never hope to scale those heights. There are at least two implications from these truths. First, we should be content with the gifts that God has given us and not be jealous of those who have greater gifts then us. Second, we should not expect that others should have the same level of gifts as these few highly gifted individuals. As a pastor I should not expect to preach like John MacArthur or Tony Evans (and neither should you!).
Finally, Paul begins by listing the gift of prophesy. Oh man, we are out of room! Just kidding. The Bible differentiates between the prophets that we find in the Old Testament which were infallibly speaking for God and the New Testament prophets who were to weight their comments with the revealed word of God and the judgments of the spiritual leaders of the church. The Old Testament prophets spoke the very words of God and if they were wrong or hadn’t spoken for God, they were stoned to death. In the New Testament, if God moved within a person, he was to say only those things that were in keeping with faith in Christ and those things that were in accordance with sound doctrine. Paul says that he should speak in proportion of his faith. The person should not go beyond what God has given him to speak and everything spoken was evaluated by the certain rule of faith, the Bible.
