Baptist Fellowship Church

The Distribution of Spiritual Gifts - by Bro. Chua Eu Tiong

1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Once again we see Paul responding to the Corinthian Christians’ misunderstanding and misuse of spiritual gifts. In four verses, he sums it all. There are diversities of gifts for different ministries, they come from one and the same source, God, and they profit all.
Let us look at the summary of the sermon and ask,

What, When, How and Why which are some questions that the Corinthians must have asked and so do we today.

The Corinthians had become divisive, quarrelsome, factious, and party or people centred. They were using the spiritual gifts as a way of promoting themselves. To bring them back to the purpose of these gifts, Paul emphasized that these gifts were diverse in nature but they all came from the same source, the same Spirit, the same Lord and the same God. The spiritual gifts are not natural talents that both believers and non-believers possess. They are bestowed upon Christians for a specific purpose. The importance of diversity must surely be to allow the body in Christ to maximize their use. The analogy is to have a team of football players with different abilities, each playing a part so that as a team they function cohesively. The alternative is to have all forwards or midfielders without anyone playing the unglamorous part of protecting the goal mouth!

What are these spiritual gifts? How do we know they are the correct gifts? (See previous sermon)

There are different ministries. Each person may have one or more “different” spiritual gifts and may have “different” degrees of them. Having said this, we are merely classifying these spiritual gifts in the ways that we know. In fact, each different gift should be special to every Christian. They are to be used to minister to others and thus fulfill their purpose. These may be the gifts of mercy, of evangelizing, of discernment etc. Each of us has a gift which is the unique single enablement for us by God’s design and grace so that we are unique in our service for Christ.

How are these spiritual gifts manifested and Why do we not manifest these gifts more often in church? Is it a lack of opportunity, a fear of failure, a failure to recognize them or plain nonchalance and unwillingness to explore these gifts. Is it just plain selfishness?

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each for the profit of all. This must surely be the purpose, to profit all. It must be emphasized that it is not to profit the person with the gift. All too often knowledge and abilities puff up a person and cloud the purpose. It is often the gifts that seem to be successful, be easily seen, or more important which catch the eye of fellow believers just as it occurred in the Corinthian church. It is thus these abilities that gain favour with the various factions. The result is to lose sight of the purpose of these gifts which is to edify all, profit all and lift the entire body in Christ.

Why are there spiritual gifts? Is it true to say that success in any form often leads to losing sight of the purpose, to give glory to God?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.