1 Corinthians 12:1, spiritual gifts, charisma, a thing produced by grace, a grace-thing, you could almost translate it clumsily, but accurately as a graced-thing, something that exists only, because grace handed it over. Charisma is the word sitting under the bold heading, not a talent you were born with, not a skill you sharpen through practice, not a badge that marks you out as one of the advanced believers who made it to the next level, a grace-thing, something that is in your hands for one reason and one reason only, which is that grace put it there. Watch what happens when you take that route and go looking for it elsewhere, because the same word turns up in places that have nothing on the surface to do with prophecy or tongues or healing.
Paul uses charisma in Romans 6:23, the free gift, eternal life itself is called a charisma, a grace-thing sitting in the exact same category as the ability to teach or to encourage or to show mercy, sit with what that quietly does. The word for the gift that rescues you from death and the word for the gift that equips you to serve are the same word, the grammar refuses to pull them apart. The grace that reached down into the grave and pulled you out is the same grace that having pulled you out presses something useful into your hands and turns you toward the people around you.
One generosity expressed twice, first in salvation, then in service and the Bible uses one word for both, because as far as the giver is concerned, it is all one motion. Paul uses the word that way again and again, he uses it for being rescued from deadly danger, he uses it for the deepened life God plants in a believer, he uses it for eternal life and he uses it for the abilities the Holy Spirit hands out to a church. Across all those uses, the constant is never the size of the gift or how spectacular it looks, the constant is that it was free and it came from God and nobody earned it.
So the very thing to unlearn is the idea that spiritual gifts are a reward for spiritual achievement, a prize handed out to believers who finally reached a certain altitude, the word itself rules that out before the argument even begins. A grace thing by definition cannot be earned, the instant you earn something, it stops being grace and starts being wages, and that same verse in Romans 6:23 has already drawn that exact line for you, wages of sin on one side, free gift of God on the other, spiritual gifts are filed by Paul’s own choice of word on the free side of that line.
Paul uses charisma in Romans 6:23, the free gift, eternal life itself is called a charisma, a grace-thing sitting in the exact same category as the ability to teach or to encourage or to show mercy, sit with what that quietly does. The word for the gift that rescues you from death and the word for the gift that equips you to serve are the same word, the grammar refuses to pull them apart. The grace that reached down into the grave and pulled you out is the same grace that having pulled you out presses something useful into your hands and turns you toward the people around you.
One generosity expressed twice, first in salvation, then in service and the Bible uses one word for both, because as far as the giver is concerned, it is all one motion. Paul uses the word that way again and again, he uses it for being rescued from deadly danger, he uses it for the deepened life God plants in a believer, he uses it for eternal life and he uses it for the abilities the Holy Spirit hands out to a church. Across all those uses, the constant is never the size of the gift or how spectacular it looks, the constant is that it was free and it came from God and nobody earned it.
So the very thing to unlearn is the idea that spiritual gifts are a reward for spiritual achievement, a prize handed out to believers who finally reached a certain altitude, the word itself rules that out before the argument even begins. A grace thing by definition cannot be earned, the instant you earn something, it stops being grace and starts being wages, and that same verse in Romans 6:23 has already drawn that exact line for you, wages of sin on one side, free gift of God on the other, spiritual gifts are filed by Paul’s own choice of word on the free side of that line.
