God pours out his Holy Spirit

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Remarkably, every person reborn in Christ arrives in the local church with a supernatural bequest from a gracious God, a gift of the Holy Spirit, a special and unique talent. It could be the gift of service or teaching or faith or administration or any number of other gifts (for lists see Rom. 12:6–8; 1 Cor. 12:7–10).

No gift should ever be played down; each represents a mammoth benefaction, allocated “according to the measure of Christ’s own gift” (Eph. 4:7), and each is dynamically effective, “empowered by one and the same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:11). God strategically distributes the gifts among his people, insuring that local churches are vested with the resources necessary to thrive for his glory; he arranges “the members of the body, each one of them, just as he desires” (1 Cor. 12:18).

Here is the most important thing to understand about spiritual gifts: they are given by the Holy Spirit in order to be given away, to be lavished on other members of the body for the growth of the body, “for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). When every member of the local church gives away his or her gift, when each person is investing spiritually in others, the result is absolutely stunning: members of the church are bound together in a glorious union. “The whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:16). Indeed!

When people lavish their gifts on other members of the body, they draw others into a nearly seamless constitution with themselves. Pouring themselves out, they draw others in. The laws of physics would appear to be violated (who ever heard of an outward thrust creating a seamless union?) and yet it makes perfect sense. When each member of the body engages in an outpouring of service, all members become increasingly united, so much so that they actually begin to resemble Christ himself.

Indeed, what is being passed back and forth among them is precisely the love of Christ that indwells them. Characterized by multiple expressions of his cruciform love, the local church attains “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13) and “[grows] up in every way into him who is the head, even into Christ” (Eph. 4:15). To look at this body of people is to behold—in a very real sense—the Lord Jesus himself.



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