If you give me $100 and tell me to pass it on to someone else, you’d be less than impressed if I didn’t bother giving it to them, or worse, spent it on myself. We should recognize those gifts if they’ve been given to us, and be sure to use them. But some of us are particularly gifted by the Spirit in those areas. Now clearly, we should all be doing acts of mercy, we should all be serving, and so on. What are these spiritual gifts, exactly? Paul speaks in Romans 12 of the gifts of prophecy, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and doing acts of mercy. Paul said this, presumably, because then, as now, it can be tempting on the one hand to use our spiritual gifts as an opportunity to draw attention to ourselves, and on the other, to take our spiritual gifts and withdraw from other believers, thus depriving them of what is, by rights, theirs. Clearly, the foot doesn’t get to walk off for some alone time, and it doesn’t get to demand that every part of the body should be like him and become like a foot.Įach part of the body needs to be faithfully doing what it’s been gifted to do, in the service of the whole body, so that the body of Christ can be what it’s supposed to be. Paul describes Christians communally as being like a human body, which has many different gifts or abilities: we have eyes, feet, ears, hands, noses, and so on. These gifts have been given not so that we can make much of ourselves but so that we would serve others with them. If we’re believers, we’ve each been given the Spirit, and with Him, particular spiritual gifts. We too, if we’re followers of Christ, are living in that same age, enjoying that same enormous privilege, a privilege that Old Testament believers must have yearned for. Peter, in the sermon he gives on that very day, quotes Joel chapter 2 and confirms that they are now living in the age promised by Joel in which God would pour out His Spirit in His fullness on all believers-even, much to Peter’s surprise, on gentiles as well as Jews. John the Baptist heralds Christ’s arrival by announcing that Jesus will baptize “with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Luke 3:16).Īnd then, sure enough, on the day of Pentecost, after Jesus’ ascension, the Spirit is given in all His fullness to all the disciples. Well, with the birth of Christ, that prophecy begins to be fulfilled. The references to male and female, old and young, slave and free, not to mention the explicit “all flesh,” draw attention to the sweeping extent of this anointing it would be quite unlike anything Israel had seen in its history. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, That I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh When it came to spiritual gifts, only select people enjoyed the Spirit’s empowerment for ministry-usually particular leaders, and usually for a limited period of time.īut the prophecy came that at some point in the future, all Israel would share in the fullness of all that the Spirit has for God’s people: And it shall come to pass afterward, However, the Spirit was not present in all His fullness in the believers who lived before Christ. Before the time of Christ, the Holy Spirit regenerated God’s people and even dwelled in and among them. One of the great fulfilled promises of the Old Testament is that one day, all of God’s people would receive the Holy Spirit in all His fullness. But the whole sweep of Scripture points in the other direction. Amen.You can get the impression in some Christian circles that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given only to some believers. Help me to say “Yes” to You no matter what that leads to and help me to trust in this glorious “Yes” You are calling me to make. I want to be fully immersed in Your grace. Prayer: Lord, I do want to let You do whatever You want in my life. It’s up to you to decide if you will ration or not. Whatever the case may be, God is offering you an unlimited amount of grace by the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Or it may be that we do not fully want to change. What would change? How would your daily life, your relationships, your words, your actions and your future be different? Intellectually speaking, we know it’s right to fully embrace the will of God in all things.īut when it actually comes to doing it, there is often much hesitancy. Reflect, today, upon what your life would look like if you let God do whatever He wanted with you.
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