Love is the theme of 1 Corinthians 13. About 75% of the time I’ve heard 1 Corinthians 13 mentioned is in the context of marriage. Seemingly every wedding has it read, which is fine, it’s the most redeeming aspect of most weddings.
But the context is not at all about weddings or marriage.
1 Corinthians 12 is about spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 14 is about using spiritual gifts within a church gathering.
The theme of love is brought up in the middle of those chapters.
If you don’t have love, all your spiritual gift does is cause problems.
This isn’t a weakness or fault with spiritual gifts; it’s a fault of ours. We are proud. Pride warps spiritual gifts.
Spiritual gifts are for the benefit of the church, but proud people turn them into, “Hey everyone! Look at me! Look at me!” This causes division and confusion. This is especially true if there are multiple arrogant people who think they have spiritual gifts.
The first three chapters of 1 Corinthians are about division in the church. Pride was the cause. Lack of love and pride go together. Love thinks about other people; pride thinks about me, me, me.
Throughout my years as a pastor there were many needs in the church. I thought of people who could help meet those needs. I asked them to help.
Guess what I heard approximately 98% of the time?
“It’s not my gift.”
Oh gag.
I have some thoughts about the people who say, “It’s not my gift.”
1. People who say “it’s not my gift,” never exercise any gift. They don’t do anything. If a person had a discernible gift that they were using regularly, I’d be happier hearing “it’s not my gift.” But that’s not what happened. “It’s not my gift” was said by those who never did anything.
2. “It’s not my gift” is a most sanctimonious excuse for Christian laziness. The bottom line is that you don’t feel like doing what is needed. Just say that. Just say you don’t want to do it. Be honest. I don’t want to. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money. I can’t stand those people. Don’t put some fake spiritual veneer on top of you apathy. Don’t spiritualize laziness.
3. Love is the motivation for the use of spiritual gifts. Love thinks about the other person. If you love the people in your church you will look for ways you can help them. Whenever you help someone in the church, that’s you exercising a spiritual gift. People who never find a spiritual gift, are simply people who don’t love people in their church.
4. Paul says to “covet earnestly the best gifts,” which makes it sound like you can get as many spiritual gifts as you want. The idea you are locked into one or two gifts is nonsense. This is especially true if you see many needs in your church. Why not be the person who develops the gift the church needs right now?
5. There’s a notion that spiritual gifts are things we naturally enjoy doing. Spiritual gifts often get confused with natural ability or pleasure. This is nonsense. Spiritual gifts must at some level be spiritual; they can’t just be natural talents or things you were born enjoying. Biblical love includes sacrifice. Love hurts. Yet people in churches seem to think that if my service inconveniences me or costs me something, it must not be my gift. I think they assume people with a spiritual gift just love using that gift all the time and are always happy and free of sacrifice. This isn’t the case. I’d suggest that you know you’re exercising a spiritual gift when you are laying down your life for someone, as Christ did for us, which doesn’t always feel great.
That’s not to say that spiritual gifts must feel terrible. There are people who are good at things, but it must be discerned whether they are naturally talented or spiritually gifted. Lots of good speakers speak in churches, yet the content of their speeches let you know they don’t have the spiritual gift of preaching or teaching.
The proof of a spiritual gift is that people are edified and helped, not whether the person who did it is good at it.
In the end, all the times I was told “it’s not my gift,” guess who ended up doing that stuff? I did. I can attest to you not all these things were my spiritual gift. But I did it anyway because it had to be done I loved the people who needed the help.
That’s not me patting myself on the back. This was hard. It stretched me, but it also made me better at exercising spiritual gifts. I learned a ton and I think was able to help people. I wanted others to get this same great experience.
But I couldn’t get them off their butts to go help.
Spiritual gifts are not determined by you looking at yourself and seeing what your pride thinks you’re good at.
Spiritual gifts are determined by what needs your church has and by how your love responds to those needs.
The church has really messed this issue up and most Christians, instead of seeing spiritual gifts as reason to be helpful, instead use them as excuses to be lazy.
This shouldn’t be so.
There is a more excellent way: LOVE. Love people and spiritual gifts will take care of themselves.
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Failing Pastor 