Today we’ll look at the gifts of encouraging and contributing to the needs of others. These gifts are important to the ministry of Christ’s body, as are the other gifts we’ve talked about this week.
Today we’ll look at the gifts of encouraging and contributing to the needs of others. These gifts are important to the ministry of Christ’s body, as are the other gifts we’ve talked about this week.
Today let’s look at two more of the gifts God gives us for the building up of His body of believers.
How many gifts are there? Nineteen are mentioned in the New Testament. But the number is not absolute. Different words may describe the same gift, for example, serving and helping, and there are probably gifts that could be mentioned but are not. In Romans 12 there are seven items, and we’ll look at all of them as the week goes on.
Different gifts! It is hard for many of us to recognize this and accept it, because we are always wanting other Christians to be like ourselves and function like ourselves, or be cogs in our machine rather than contributing to another Christian work. Paul knew Christians who had this trouble too, but he tells everyone that we must accept this diversity if the church is to function as it should.
Since we are part of a body with many members, what is the challenge we face in an individualistic age like ours? Well, the answer is not the ecumenical movement. Our task is not to create the unity of the body, above all not from the top down. The unity of the body is a given for those who are “in Christ.”
It strikes me, however, that today the problem is not so much our institutions, since they do not mean a whole lot to most people anyway, but rather our individualism, which I would define as hyper-personalized religion. It is the religion of “Jesus and me only.” It is what sociologists and pollsters uncover whenever they explore America’s religious attitudes and practices.
There is a second important truth about the Church taught by Paul’s image of it as Christ’s body. Not only does that image define the Church as the community of those who have been joined to Christ. It also teaches that there is but one Church. That is, there are not multiple churches, even less mutually competing churches. There is but one Church, because Jesus has but one body.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
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