“Gifts are sovereignly bestowed by God. You possess the gifts you have because the sovereign God of the universe wanted you to be that way. He ordained a plan for your life even before you were born, and He has gifted you specifically to carry out that plan. Never disparage your gift. If you do, you are disparaging the plan of God and perhaps complaining against Him. Similarly, never look down on the gift of another. If you do, you are scorning the plan of God for that person.”
God gives all his people gifts to use for the service and enrichment of others. Peter put it this way: God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another (1 Pet. 4:10 NLT). Because the Bible talks about gifts this way, the Westminster Confession echoes this truth: “Saints by profession are bound to maintain an holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification” (ch. 26.2). I appreciate how Jerry Bridges talks about this in his excellent book, True Community. Here are Bridges’ seven points on spiritual gifts (I’ve summarized/edited the following for length):
“The purpose of all spiritual gifts is to serve others and glorify God. Our gifts are not our property to use as we please; they are a trust committed to us by God to use for others and for His glory as He directs.”
“Every Christian has a gift, and every gift is important. We have already stated earlier in this chapter that God has assigned every believer a function in the body of Christ and that God has, consequently, gifted every member to fulfill that function. To say ‘I don’t think I have a gift,’ is to say, ‘I don’t think I have a function in the body of Christ. Such an idea flies in the face of the whole of New Testament teaching. God has a job for every believer. It may be seen or unseen, big or small, but each of us has a job to do.”
“Not only do we each have a gift but each one of our gifts is important. Again, we tend to recognize the more public, noticeable gifts as important and the low-profile gifts as perhaps not so important. The apostle Paul anticipated this tendency when he envisioned the foot saying, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ and the ear saying, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’ (1 Cor. 12:15-16).”
“Gifts are sovereignly bestowed by God. You possess the gifts you have because the sovereign God of the universe wanted you to be that way. He ordained a plan for your life even before you were born, and He has gifted you specifically to carry out that plan. Never disparage your gift. If you do, you are disparaging the plan of God and perhaps complaining against Him. Similarly, never look down on the gift of another. If you do, you are scorning the plan of God for that person.”
“Every gift is given by God’s grace. None of us deserves the gift he or she has been given. All gifts are given by God’s undeserved favor to us through Christ (Rom 12:6, 1 Pet. 4:10). The highly gifted person should not think he is so gifted because of his hard work or his faithfulness in previous service to God.
“All gifts must be developed and exercised. Even though gifts are given by God’s grace, it is our responsibility to develop and exercise them. Paul exhorted Timothy to rekindle or ‘fan into flame the gift of God,’ and elsewhere Paul told him, ‘Do not neglect your gift’ (2 Tim. 1:6; 1 Tim. 4:14). The effective use of our gifts does not occur without diligent effort on our part.”
“The effective use of every gift is dependent on faith in Christ. Although gifts are sovereignly bestowed and their effective exercise involves hard work and diligent effort, it is also true that no gift is exercised apart from faith in Christ. The necessity of conscious dependence on Christ for His enabling power is a fundamental fact for every aspect of the Christian life, whether in spiritual growth in our own lives or in serves within the body.”
“Only love will give true value to our gifts. In any discussion of spiritual gifts we should give careful attention to the fact that the classic Scripture passage on Christian love, 1 Corinthians 13, is set right in the middle of the Bible’s most extensive treatment on spiritual gifts. If we have not love, it all amounts to nothing.”
These seven points are very helpful biblical notes on spiritual gifts. In fact, it is one of the best treatments on spiritual gifts that I’ve read. I very much recommend this chapter to those who want a solid treatment of spiritual gifts in the body of Christ. Furthermore, I recommend this entire book! It’s an outstanding resource on the fellowship of the saints: True Community by Jerry Bridges.
Rev. Shane Lems is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and serves as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hammond, Wis. This article appeared on his blog and is used with permission.
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