Spiritual gifts part 12
Why does God give us Spiritual Gifts?
Ephesians 4: 11 And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the [e]full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature [f]which belongs to the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness [g]in deceitful scheming, 15 but [h]speaking the truth in love, [i]we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being joined and held together [j]by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Today we are concluding our series of messages on Spiritual gifts. And we are concluding it in two ways. One way is my giving you a spiritual survey, which I have already handed out. Please take some time this week to fill out that survey, and if you can, fill in the response sheet and get it back to me. I would like to know what you discover about your spiritual gifts.
The second way that we are concluding this series is by answering the question,
Why does God give us Spiritual gifts?
As we move forward in our desire to know our spiritual gifts, and to put them into practice, it is helpful to have a good understanding of their purpose. Why did God make me a preacher? Why did he give you the gift of discernment or helps?
So, of course, in order to find that answer, I turned to the source of all wisdom; the internet. I did a search of a number of Christian websites to see how they answered this question. And I came up with a list of 12 different answers. 12 answers to the question “Why does God give Spiritual gifts?” Here they are.
1. To Equip Believers for Service 2. To Build Up the Church 3. To Foster Unity and Diversity within the Body of Christ 4. To Enable Personal Growth and Maturity 5. To Demonstrate God's Love and Grace 6. To Empower Believers for Spiritual Warfare 7. To Advance God's Kingdom 8. To Test and Strengthen Faith 9. To Manifest God's Presence on Earth 10. To Promote Justice and Mercy 11. To Demonstrate the Supernatural Nature of God 12. To Increase Joy and Satisfaction in Life
Now some of those reasons sound good, a couple have little to no Biblical basis. But, what I found interesting was that none of them explicitly state the reason that we find in our passage of Scripture for today. Do you want to know why God has given you your Spiritual gifts according to Ephesians 4:12?
Ephesians 4: 11 And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints
God gave these various gifts to the church to make the church, the body of Christ perfect---verse 12 “perfecting the saints”
And might I add, the reason for making the Church perfect is for the glory of God.
In 1 Peter 4:10-11, Peter writes, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God; if anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”
But the practical reason for giving you Spiritual gifts is so you can be a part of making the Church perfect in holiness. Let’s get really practical here. You have the gifts you have, not only to move you to the place of perfection, but to get me there as well, and everyone else in this room. That can be a mind-blowing thought. Because we live in such an individualist culture, we often apply individualistic ideas to our spiritual journey. We understand the idea that we are to be perfect individually.
Jesus said this in the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 5:48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
2 Corinthians 7:1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
James 1:4 And let perseverance have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect a
We think our role in this world is to get me right, to grow me, to mature myself. And if I accomplish that, if I know all the doctrines, if I’ve quit my bad habits, if I say my prayers and read my Bible, then I have arrived.
But, if we really study the Word of God, we come to realize that our lives are about far more than an individual self-improvement plan. So, what is the purpose of the spiritual gifts? The perfecting of the Church. The perfecting of every believer. And we are going to look at 4 points this morning. First, we need to further define perfection, second we need to talk about the types of perfection we are striving for; perfect in unity, knowledge, maturity, and Christlikeness.
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Now, before we can go on to talk about the types of perfection for which we are aspiring we need to come to understand what the Scripture means by the word “perfect.” There are three kinds of perfection described in Scripture. First, we have the perfection imputed to us at our salvation. This is positional perfection.
Hebrews 10:14 14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
What that means is that when you became a Christian, you were justified, you were made perfect before God. Jesus' righteousness was imputed to you. In God’s eyes, it is as though you have no sin. That’s the first kind of perfection.
Second, we have the perfection that we will receive when we pass out of this life and enter the presence of our Lord. This is the perfection that comes at glorification.
Hebrews 12:23 23 to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,
The Bible says that one day, either at your death, or at the return of Christ, you will be changed, you will instantaneously be made like Christ; perfect in holiness. This is a second kind of perfection in Scripture.
But when Paul talks about the gifts of the Spirit being given for the “perfecting of the saints” is he talking about these two kinds of perfection? No, because we have no say over either of those kinds of perfection. The positional perfection you received at salvation wasn’t anything you or I did. The perfection you will receive at your death, is nothing you or I do either.
But there is a third kind of perfection. It is the process of becoming perfect that is ongoing in this life. It is called sanctification.
Philippians 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
This is the spiritual perfection, completeness, maturity that we strive for in this life.
And that is the type of perfection that we will be exploring today. It is the work of the Spirit in us, the Word of God working on us, our brothers and sisters ministering to us, in order that we all may become perfect. Now, how are we to be made perfect? When will we know when we have achieved perfection? We will know that we have arrived when we are perfect in unity, knowledge, maturity, and Christlikeness.
for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints... 3 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, 14 so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness [g]in deceitful scheming,...
You are to exercise your spiritual gifts among your brothers and sisters in Christ in order to bring all of us to perfect unity. Unity in the church has always been a high priority of our Lord.
The unity of the church was the final prayer of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. And this prayer helps us define the kind of perfect unity our Lord desires for the church.
John 17:23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
But what does unity mean? Well, Jesus' prayer here it isn’t just a prayer for some superficial togetherness. It is the unity that He and the Father have.
20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us,
And what kind of unity does the Father and Son have? It is a unity in doctrine, and love.
In doctrine, just before Jesus prayed for the unity of His followers, He prayed this,
verse 17: "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." He and the Father agree on doctrine.
love
25 “O righteous Father, [j]although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; 26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
And that’s what Paul says here. The perfect unity that we work toward is a unity of the faith, where no one will be deceived by false doctrines, winds of doctrine, and the trickery of men.
So, does that mean we have to agree on everything? No, the general principle is “on essentials unity, on non-essentials charity.” That means that there are some essential doctrines of Scripture on which we cannot compromise. But, in less important areas, we have charity toward each other. So, we preach, teach, and exhort using our spiritual gifts to bring everyone together to a unity of doctrine.
But unity is not just agreeing on doctrine, it is also a unity of love. And I think Paul illustrates that unity well with these verses.
16 from whom the whole body, being joined and held together [j]by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
And he uses a beautiful illustration of that unity of love. He talks about the human body, and how the whole body is a interdependent whole. Christ is the head, or the mind that directs the whole thing. And it is important that each member of the body get the directions from the head correct. That is the doctrinal side of unity. But each part of the body is not only related to the head. Each part of the body depends on, and is connected to other parts of the body.
Let me give you an example. If I want to wiggle my toe, there has to be all kinds of cooperation take place from my head to my toe. The head sends the signal to the toe to wiggle. But that signal has to travel through nerve endings through the neck, torso, mid section, thighs, calves, and feet. In addition to that, the toe cannot wiggle without an adequate blood supply, which also depends on signals from the head and blood vessels and arteries through the body. The toe also cannot wiggle if the waste systems and muscular systems of the body don’t function properly. There is a whole network of interdependence in the body.
And so it is with unity in the church. It is not enough to just agree on the directions, the doctrines. Each member of the body has to cooperate with each other. And the spiritual gifts work together to lead us to that perfect unity. The speaking gifts teach us the doctrine and exhort us to follow it, and the gifts of service, Administration, helps, mercy, bring us to a unity of love toward each other.
Your gifts were given you so that we can be perfect in unity.
II. Perfect in Knowledge vss 13, 14, 15
for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints ... until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the [e]full knowledge of the Son of God, ....14 so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness [g]in deceitful scheming, 15 but [h]speaking the truth in love,
Now, we just talked about coming to perfect unity in doctrine and now we are talking about knowledge. So, aren’t those the same thing? No, because it doesn’t say “the full knowledge of doctrine, but the full knowledge of the Son of God. Our perfection, as a church is not complete, until we know our Lord fully. Not just about Him. We know Him. Paul describes that knowledge in an earlier passage.
Ephesians 1: 16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the [p]Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the [q]full knowledge of Him, 18 so that you—the eyes of your heart having been enlightened—will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the [r]saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of the might of His strength,
The knowledge that He wants us to have of Him is not just a knowledge of a set of doctrines. It is not just the knowledge of obedience. It is experiential knowledge. It is fellowship and love for the Son. It is a deep trust in Him. It is an intense desire to please Him. It is the kind of knowledge that comes with a lifetime of shared experiences and challenges.
The best illustration I can give of that is the kind of knowledge of a person someone acquires when they are married and committed to each other for many years. Denise and I are about to reach our 37-year anniversary. And we have been committed to this relationship for those 37 plus years. And you know, those of you who have been married for a lot of years, that you get to really know a person. You can interpret the flickers of the eye, the silence, the subtle movements that indicate pain or discouragement. You know when the best time to talk is, and the best time not to talk. You can anticipate need. You can interpret this person’s words, and even the pauses between their words.
And, the goal of the Christian life is to have that kind of knowledge of the Lord, to know Him as He knows us. To get there is to reach perfection in our relationship with Christ, but that is not your final goal. Your final goal is to get every other Christian within your reach there as well.
And we are to be here for each other, using our spiritual gifts to help each other reach that level of the relationship with Christ.
III. Perfect in Maturity vss 13, 14
for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints .... 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the [e]full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, .....14 so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness [g]in deceitful scheming,
We were talking earlier about the definition of perfect. And, in Scripture that are shades of meaning that we need to understand. We often think of “perfect” as being flawless, or sinless. And the word is used that way when we talk about our positional perfection, or our perfection at our glorification. But often when it speaks of perfection during the time of our sojourn in this life, a better word would be maturity.
The Lord wants you to come to maturity. And what that is referring can be illustrated by the life of a man or woman. We know that we all start out in this world as babies, then children, then adolescents, then young adults, and finally we reach full maturity. We know that physically, and mentally, we don’t get to our full maturity until we are in our early to middle twenties.
We become mature physically starting with puberty. Our bone density isn’t fully mature until around the age of thirty. Recent evidence indicates that the prefrontal cortex of the brain isn’t fully developed until about the age of 25.
Now let’s apply that idea of perfection, that is maturity, to our spiritual growth. So, the perfection that we are referring to is the perfection of spiritual maturity. Spiritually becoming an adult. It doesn’t mean that we arrive at a place where we never sin again any more than becoming adult means that we never act childishly again. It means that we have the pieces and functions in place to live as adult believers. And spiritual maturity not childishness, is what characterizes our lives.
So, what does Christian adulthood, or maturity look like? Well, there are a number of things that the Bible ascribes to the mature believer. This passage we have been studying says that a mature Christian isn’t easily swayed by false teaching.
A mature Christian is able to move beyond the basics of faith and engage deeply with God’s Word.
Hebrews 5:12-14 "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
Spiritual maturity involves enduring trials and testing.
James 1:4 "Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
A mature Christian is always striving to grow closer to Christ, forgetting past failures, and pressing forward toward spiritual goals and the calling of God.
Philippians 3:12-14 "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
Maturity involves leaving behind childish ways, including selfishness, immaturity, and incomplete thinking, and embracing a more responsible, loving, and selfless approach to life.
1 Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
Spiritual maturity requires a growing, deliberate effort to cultivate virtues like goodness, self-control, and love. These qualities lead to an effective and productive life in Christ.
2 Peter 1:5-8 "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
There are many more verses of Scripture to which we could refer about what it means to be a mature believer. But that is the goal, perfection, maturity, growing up Spiritually. And not just my maturity, but everyone else in the Church.
IV. Perfect in Christlikeness Vss 13, 15
for the equipping/perfecting of the [d]saints....13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the [e]full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature [f]which belongs to the fullness of Christ, ....15 but [h]speaking the truth in love, [i]we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ,
I don’t think that we need to belabor this point. Perfection is to be like Christ.
Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.
And the point that we are trying to make today is that each of us are given Spiritual gifts. And they are not given for your selfish purposes. They aren’t given in order to make you feel good, give you some sort of spiritual euphoria. They aren’t given to elevate one church member over another or to create some hierarchy of gifts. Each of us were given spiritual gifts
“15 but [h]speaking the truth in love, [i]we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being joined and held together [j]by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
We were given our spiritual gifts for the perfecting of the saints. perfecting them in unity, knowledge of the Lord, and maturity. And until that work is done, none of us has the right to become a “casual observer” in the life of the church. You are not done with the perfecting work until everyone is perfect.
I have heard it said by some that preachers never retire. Have you noticed that? Those who have a true calling to the role of preaching and teaching the Word of God, they may slow down, they may quit a paid pastoral position, but they still have that internal drive to open and share the Word. So many of them continue to preach, maybe in smaller churches, they find a place to teach in a church.
And the reason they do so is because they have a Spiritual gift that is like “a fire in the bones”
Jeremiah 20:9 But if I say, “I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name,” Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot prevail.
And sometimes we think of preachers as unique in that way. But really, they are not. Does any Christian really ever retire from being a Christian? So, can we say that any of them ever set their Spiritual gifts on the shelf, and let someone else do it? No,
The preacher and teacher continue to preach and teach. The one with the gift of exhortation doesn’t stop his work of encouragement, the leader or administrator continues to offer advice and counsel, the Christian with the gift of faith still seeks to inspire others to trust God, those with the gifts of service, giving and mercy, continue to love and serve people to the best of their ability.
So, as we discover our Spiritual gifts, we put them to use for the perfecting of the Church.
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