"How Important Is it to Know Your Gifts?" - Kimberly Renner “Giftings” might be a better term to use, since it carries these important connotations better. The purpose is to build up the community (14:3–5) and serve outsiders (14:23–25), not merely to improve the quality of worship. The community or organization, not merely the individual, benefits (12:7). The Holy Spirit does not dispense with our bodily abilities, but honors and employs them (12:14–26). All of these are false assumptions, according to 1 Corinthians. It makes us think that worship, rather than service, is the primary purpose of the Spirit’s working. It implies that the recipient of the “gift” is its intended beneficiary. It suggests that God’s Spirit supersedes or ignores the “natural” skills and abilities God has given us. The exclusive use of the term “spiritual gift” to refer to what Paul also calls “manifestation of God’s spirit for the common good” or “kind of service” tends to skew our thinking. In chapter 12 alone, he calls the various gifts “services” (12:5), “activities” (12:6), manifestations” (12:7), “deeds,” “forms,” and “kinds” (12:28). And “gift” is only one of a number of terms Paul uses for the phenomenon he has in mind. They are “spiritual” in the broad sense of originating from God’s Spirit, not in the narrow sense of being disembodied or paranormal. The first thing to observe is that the term “spiritual gifts” is too narrow to describe what Paul is talking about. In countering, Paul articulates a broad understanding of the gifts of God’s Spirit that has major applications to work. It seems that the gift of tongues (i.e., Spirit-led ecstatic utterances) in particular was being used to accentuate status differences in the church, with those who practiced this gift claiming to be more spiritual than those who didn’t (see 12:1–3, 13:1, 14:1–25).
The use of what have come to be called “spiritual gifts” (12:1) seems to have caused much contention in the church of Corinth.
#Many gifts one spirit scripture how to#
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