YOU ARE GIFTED TO SERVE

By Akin Ojumu

Everything that humans touch, we defile. It’s the reason the whole of creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth since the Great Fall. There’s nothing that escapes the corruptive influence of the Adamic nature. Not even the spiritual gifts.

Today, the Church is bedeviled with the very same confusion and ignorance about the spiritual gifts that Paul tried to correct in his letter to the Corinthian Church. What’s supposed to be pure and holy has been defiled by abuse and misuse.

A spiritual gift is a graciously given, supernaturally designed ability granted to every believer by which the Holy Spirit ministers to the body of Christ. The Greek word (charisma) emphasizes that this is a gift…freely given.

A spiritual gift cannot be earned, pursued, or worked up. It can only be “received” through the grace of God. God gives the gifts according to His will.

1 Corinthians 12:4, 7, 11, 18

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit...To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good…All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills…But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.”

There are categories of spiritual gifts. Each believer has one specific gift, often a combination of the various categories of gifts blended together uniquely for each Christian.

Romans 12:3-8

“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.”

Although it claims to give the highest reverence to the Holy Spirit, no Christian sect in modern times has dishonored the Holy Spirit more than the Pentecostal Movement. With its single-minded fascination and preoccupation with the working of the Holy Spirit, endowment of spiritual gifts and the operations of those gifts, Pentecostalism has done great and irreparable damage to the Church.

As a religious system, the Pentecostal Movement – along with its bastard child (i.e., Charismatic Movement) and degenerate grandchild (i.e., New Apostolic Reformation) – is singularly responsible for spreading the mendacious belief that spiritual gifts are meant for self-edification. Preachers of this movement popularized and mainstreamed the erroneous notion that the Charismata are for personal aggrandizement and self-promotion.

Unfortunately, this perverse understanding of the purpose of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit stems from the malignant narcissism of the human soul. It’s a view of the spiritual gifts that’s antithetical to the teachings of the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christs handed down to the Apostolic Fathers who succeeded them.

In their accurate biblical understanding, spiritual gifts are meant to be used, not for the exaltation of the one with the gift, but in loving concern for the benefit of others in the Church. Instead of being self-serving and inwardly oriented, spiritual gifts are designed by God to be directed outwardly to serve others. God gives out spiritual gifts to be used to build up others and not for building up oneself. This is the reason why God gives different gifts to different people in the Church.

1 Corinthians 12:7 (ESV)

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT)

“A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.”

1 Peter 4:10 (ESV)

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…”

1 Peter 4:10 (KJV)

“As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

1 Peter 4:10 (NASB 1995)

“As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

1 Peter 4:10 (NLT)

“God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.”

When God entrusts us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we become stewards of the Heavenly gift. A steward, in the First Century Roman Empire, was a slave given the responsibility of managing his master’s household. He was charged with supervising the other slaves, dispensing resources, and handling the business and financial affairs of the master.

A steward is responsible for another’s resources. All believers are responsible for managing the abilities and resources God gives them. A Christian does not own his gifts, but God has given him gifts to manage for the Church and His glory.

This is what the Bible teaches. It’s the traditional doctrine or teaching of the original Twelve Apostles. Until the advent of the Pentecostal movement in the 20th Century, this was how the Church had historically understood the purpose and use of the spiritual gifts. Then came Pentecostalism, and everything went south.

Using spiritual gifts in a way that deviates from the teachings of the Apostles is nothing but a phoney and a sham. A “spiritual gift” that inflames one’s pride or vanity is a cheap knockoff of the original. A “spiritual gift” reduced to an ego-massaging tool is nothing but a satanic counterfeit.