Gifts of Grace
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Introduction
Introduction
This morning we are continuing our series on Life in the Spirit and we want to take a further look at the subject of spiritual gifts. For a topic that is so prevalent in the New Testament, it is something that is rarely discussed in the church today. And because of that, Christians tend to either abuse the gifts, ignore them, or under utilize them, not realizing just how important they are in the life of the believer. For this reason, Paul tells the Christians in the Corinthian church, “Regarding spiritual gifts, I don’t want you to be uninformed or lack knowledge of them.” The reason why these gifts are important is that without them, you cannot minister in the power and the anointing of God. It is my honest and humble opinion that many believers don’t enjoy serving God nor ministering to others because they have not experienced the power of the Spirit working through them. But once you see the incredible things that God can do through you, the lives that you can touch, and you taste the joy of being a part of the Father’s work, man there is nothing like it in the world. Believe it or not, it makes the church and the Christian life fun and exciting. This morning, my prayer is that we would rediscover the joy of serving the Lord.
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 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 12:3-8
As we go through this passage, we’ll look at three principles on how to use the gifts of the Spirit. We are to use these gifts of grace: humbly, accordingly, and properly.
Do you remember as kids receiving Christmas gifts that you didn’t want? You distinctly recall putting things you wanted on the list to Santa Claus, like video games or the hottest toy of the year and instead of getting what you asked for, your parents decided to give you gifts that you needed. As a father, I think it is funny when you watch children open up their gifts with excitement and great anticipation and then they pull out a new jacket, or a pair of shoes, or worse yet, books and you can visibly see the joy leave their face and the look of disappointment setting in. I’ve even seen tears begin to well up in children’s eyes as they realize what just happened and you know that those are not tears of joy. And as a parent, you are able to discern the difference between gifts that are useless or perhaps even harmful and those gifts that are going to benefit the child and have some value. In a similar way, we can have that same type of immature, childish, and ungrateful attitudes towards the spiritual gifts that God has given each of us.
Do you remember as kids receiving Christmas gifts that you didn’t want? You distinctly recall putting things you wanted on the list to Santa Claus, like video games or the hottest toy of the year but instead of getting what you asked for, your parents decided to give you gifts that you needed. As a father, I think it is funny when you watch children open up their gifts with excitement and great anticipation and then they pull out a new jacket, or a pair of shoes, or worse yet, books and you can visibly see the joy leave their face and the look of disappointment setting in. I’ve even seen tears begin to well up in children’s eyes as they realize what just happened and you know that those are not tears of joy. And as a parent, you are able to discern the difference between gifts that are useless or perhaps even harmful and those gifts that are going to benefit the child and have some value. In a similar way, we can have that same type of immature, childish, and ungrateful attitudes towards the spiritual gifts that God has given each of us.
When I first went into ministry, as I mentioned, I was a part of the charismatic movement and within those circles, there are definitely certain gifts that are more valued than others especially the ones that seem more supernatural. In those years, I saw men and women do some incredible things through the spiritual gifts that God had given them. I saw people being healed right before my eyes, prophesy that was alarmingly accurate, preaching that spoke right to the heart and brought the conviction/fear of God, and worship leaders who were so gifted that it felt like they were able to bring heaven right down into our meetings. So as I was seeing all these things happening around, I became envious of how God was using these other leaders. I tried to learn how to play the guitar but it is hard to be a good worship leader when you are tone deaf. Then I tried prophesying and I remember one meeting, a young woman walked into our church and I swear I felt like God was giving me her name and so I took a step of faith and asked her “Isn’t your name Grace Park?” No! I even tried healing people but no one I prayed for got better. At the end of my personal search of how God had gifted me, one of my students said, “Pastor, I don’t think you have the the anointing?”
During this entire journey of seeking after these more spectacular spiritual gifts, I knew that most likely, with 99% certainty that my primary gift was teaching but in so many ways, I was just like those children who receive what they need instead of what they want and they keep looking in the box wondering where their real gift is when in fact it is right in their hands. For a good many years, I was pretty disappointed that my main spiritual gift was the gift of teaching. I thought to myself, “How boring, how ordinary, and how mundane.” In hindsight, when I think about how my ministry has unfolded over the years, I realize that I could not have fulfilled God’s purpose for me without this gift. And more and more I see just how much of a gift of grace it is because I am a man of ordinary intellect but somehow the Scriptures and things of God make sense to me and hopefully I’m able to share it in way that makes sense to you.
The thing that made it easier to accept the spiritual gift that God had given me was actually seeing the pride and the hubris of some of these ministers that God seemed to be using so powerfully. Not to judge, but some of these leaders were down right arrogant and seemed to have very little in the way of humility. After I came to the realization that spiritual gifting does not guarantee spiritual maturity. So no matter how gifted you are, it is vitally important that we first learn how to use our gifts with humility. The gifts of the Spirit have to be developed along with the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.
When God is using you so powerfully, it is easy to fall into the trap of pride, you see this over and over again. For this very reason, Paul reminds all of us that no one should think more highly of themselves than they ought to, because what you have has been given to you by the grace of God. But like everything else in our lives, we often forget this truth and instead of being grateful for God’s gracious gift, we can easily become prideful and use the gifts for our own personal benefit and glory. Paul describes this human pitfall in .
For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
There is a reason why these gifts of the Spirit are also called the gifts of grace by the apostle Paul. There is no way to earn these gifts, they are not a reward based on your performance, most times they are not even based on how spiritual you may or may not be. Back in the seventies and eighties, there was a Christian minister by the name of Lonnie Frisbee who was incredibly anointed by God. In many ways, he was the spark plug in starting two of the more prominent spiritual revivals in Southern California, the Calvary Chapel movement and the Vineyard. Sadly for his entire life, he struggled with drugs and the homosexual lifestyle until he passed way at an early age from AIDS. At his funeral, Pastor Chuck Smith described Lonnie as a modern day Samson. The story of Samson explains pretty well the dangers of the pride that comes as we experience the gifts of the Spirit. In the book of Judges, where the story of Samson is found, you’ll read repeatedly that when Samson needed to use his supernatural strength it was because the Spirit of the Lord came upon Him in power. Of all the things that I have experienced in life, there is nothing that comes close to the Spirit of God coming upon you in power. There is no rush like the sense that you get when the Spirit of God empowers you to fulfill the very purposes of God. If you have not experienced, you are missing out because it is better than dream vacation to Europe,
Back in the seventies and eighties, there was a Christian minister by the name of Lonnie Frisbee who was incredibly anointed by God. In many ways, he was the spark plug in starting two of the more prominent spiritual revivals in Southern California, the Calvary Chapel movement and the Vineyard. He struggled with drugs and the homosexual lifestyle until he passed way at an early age from AIDS. At his funeral, Pastor Chuck Smith described Lonnie as a modern day Samson. The story of Samson explains pretty well the dangers of the pride that comes as we experience the gifts of the Spirit. In the book of Judges, where the story of Samson is found, you’ll read repeatedly that when Samson needed to use his supernatural strength is was because the Spirit of the Lord came upon Him in power.
Unknown to many of us, this power is available to all who believe in the Christ as their Savior. I think all people, believers or not, struggle with feelings of powerlessness or the inability to do the very thing that they were created for. It is an incredibly frustrating part of life but for Christians, the answer to these feelings of powerlessness is the filling of the Holy Spirit or the indwelling presence of God. As believers in Christ, all of us have to wrestle with what Jesus tells the disciples at the beginning of the book of Acts.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
You’ll notice that the power of the Spirit is promised in conjunction with the purposes of God, namely that they would be witnesses of Christ wherever they go in life. If you are experiencing a lack of power in your life, it is not because that power is not available because the Holy Spirit is God and He is available to us without measure. The reason why we lack power is that we are not aligned to the purpose nor the mission of God. As long as you want to play religion and have no interest in the real thing, you cannot complain about having no power. The power of the Spirit is given for a purpose and if you don’t care very much about that purpose, then you have no use for the power of God.
The Christian life can be likened to a instrument with a dead battery, you won’t know it’s dead until you try to turn it on and use it for it’s intended purpose. In a similar manner, the gifts of Spirit were meant to be used according to the purpose of God, which is to build up the body of Christ. And in turn, the body of Christ becomes an instrument of salvation to the world. The reformers like John Calvin understood that the church was the chosen instrument of God to give birth, to nurture, and to grow healthy new believers in Christ. So when Paul says think about yourself in sober judgment in accordance to the measure of faith that God has given you in verse 3, he isn’t saying that we have different measure of saving faith. That’s ridiculous. Saving faith is the same for all believers. What he is saying is judge your life in accordance to what the full measure of the Christian life was meant to be and in turn turn evaluate whether or not you are you living up to that. He uses that to introduce to subject of the gifts of the Spirit because if you have no intention of functioning in your role within the larger picture of God’s purpose, you don’t really need the power nor the gifts of the Spirit.
When I share the story of Lonnie Frisbee, fundamental Christians get really uneasy because they can’t understand how God could use someone who openly struggled with drugs and homosexuality his entire life. Conservative Christians tend to overlook Samson’s sin because he wasn’t gay but essentially they are the same person in different generations. Why does God give so much anointing to such deeply flawed people? Here’s why. You and I make a distinction between sins of commission versus sins of omission. In other words, people who openly commit these grievious sexual sins are far worse off than those who simply don’t do the things that God asks us to do, like sharing our faith, serving the poor, reaching the lost, caring for those in the church and outside in the world. In the eyes of God, our sins of omission, our refusal to do the very things He asks of us is every bit as serious as committing sexual sin. We are all in need of grace and every once in a while, He will raise up someone like Samson or Lonnie Frisbee to remind us that God will anoint those who are at least trying to fulfill His purpose even though they are deeply flawed. Those of us who have attempted very little for God have no room to judge on these matters.
During this series on the Holy Spirit, I have quoted a lot material from Martyn Lloyd Jones, who is one of my go to resources on all things theological. Anybody who has delivered over 300 messages on the book of Romans alone needs to be taken seriously. Generally, I agree with him on his theology. After all who am I to disagree with such a spiritual giant of his time. There is one thing that I do disagree with and for the conservative Christians in this room, you might be surprised at where he stood on the baptism of the Spirit near the end his ministry. It seems like these messages were not published because of this error but his great grandson found these later messages and decided to share them publicly.
The area in question is whether or not you can be a Christian without being baptized in the Spirit and oddly Martyn Lloyd Jones came to this conclusion:
“We have seen that it is possible to be a Christian without being baptized with the Spirit, and that the experience of baptism is something that happens to us. Furthermore, it is something that is experimental, which is clear and unmistakeable both to us and to those around us.”
But makes this assertion doubtful because there, the apostle Paul writes:
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
It seems pretty clear that you cannot be a believer unless you have first been baptized in the Holy Spirit. So why did this man who understood the Scriptures so well make this mistake. I believe he was trying to find an answer for why so many self-professing Christians made so little in the world and why his own Presbyterian church was lifeless and powerless. In a later message, he would write:
When God is using you so powerfully, it is easy to fall into the trap of pride, you see this over and over again. For this very reason, Paul reminds all of us that no one should think more highly of themselves than they ought to, because what you have has been given to you by the grace of God. But like everything else in our lives, we often forget this truth and instead of being grateful for God’s gracious gift, we can easily become prideful and use the gifts for our own personal benefit and glory. Paul describes this human pitfall in .
For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
“We are living, let us remind ourselves in an age hopelessly below the New Testament - content with a neat little religion...”
I love this man because his greatest desire was to see revival come to the church before his death. As a former doctor, he was brilliant at diagnosing the sickness within the church. He knew that having neat and tidy religion was a recipe for spiritual death and so he assumed that baptism in the Spirit was the cure. It wasn’t.
All of us who have put our hope in Christ have already been baptized in the Spirit. In each one of us, there is a deposit of the indwelling presence of God. However, the manifestation of the Spirit and the demonstration of the limitless power that is in you, will not be revealed until you give yourself over to to purpose of God.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
You cannot experience the joy and the power of God working through your until you commit yourself to the body of Christ and devote your gifts to building her up. If you have a gift from the Spirit, it’s grieves the very heart of God that you are not using it properly and to its full potential. As odd as it may seem, I would rather take my chances with the person who has the faith to attempt big things for God and has some rough patches in their character than the Christian who warms the pews and simply plays at religion.
I want to leave you with this quote from the famous missionary to China, Hudson Taylor:
"Many Christians estimate difficulty in the light of their own resources, and thus they attempt very little and they always fail. All giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence to be with them."