1 Corinthians 12:1, spiritual gifts, two clean words sitting over the passage like a label on a jar, but Paul never wrote that heading, he never even wrote the second word “gifts.” The word translated gifts is not actually in the Greek, Paul wrote one word there, a word that means something closer to the spiritual things or just the spirituals. The word gifts got added by translators trying to be helpful, trying to tell you in advance what the spirituals are and they were not wrong to do it. The word fits, but they made a decision for you before you read the first line and that decision quietly shaped everything you think you know about the subject.
The category you think you know so well is a little blurrier than the bold heading lets on. The jar is labeled, but Paul never wrote the label, that matters more than it sounds, because when Paul finally does reach for a word of his own to describe these things, the word he picks is not the one anybody would expect. Paul skips the word for talent, he skips the word for raw power, he even skips the ordinary Greek words for a present, the kind you would wrap and hand across a table. Paul reaches instead for a word with a secret buried inside it and the secret reorganized the whole subject, once you see what is hiding in that one word, you cannot read the chapter the old way again.
The word is charisma, you have heard it in English, you can say a politician has charisma, a singer has charisma, that one person walks into a crowded room and somehow everyone turns to look. You can use it to mean charm, magnetism, star power, the invisible thing that makes people lean in. Consider that English meaning for a moment, because it is a long way downstream from where the word started and the drift tells you something. In English, charisma is about the person who has it. In Greek, the word points the other way entirely, it points at the giver.
In Greek, charisma is built on a root you already half know, the root is charis and charis means grace, favor freely given, kindness that lands on someone who did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Charis is one of the load-bearing words of the entire New Testament, the word behind every sentence about being saved by grace and not by works, from that root grows a verb charizomai which means to give freely, to hand something over as a pure gift, to bestow a kindness, even to cancel a debt or forgive an offense. And from that verb you get the noun Paul reaches for when he finally names these things.
The category you think you know so well is a little blurrier than the bold heading lets on. The jar is labeled, but Paul never wrote the label, that matters more than it sounds, because when Paul finally does reach for a word of his own to describe these things, the word he picks is not the one anybody would expect. Paul skips the word for talent, he skips the word for raw power, he even skips the ordinary Greek words for a present, the kind you would wrap and hand across a table. Paul reaches instead for a word with a secret buried inside it and the secret reorganized the whole subject, once you see what is hiding in that one word, you cannot read the chapter the old way again.
The word is charisma, you have heard it in English, you can say a politician has charisma, a singer has charisma, that one person walks into a crowded room and somehow everyone turns to look. You can use it to mean charm, magnetism, star power, the invisible thing that makes people lean in. Consider that English meaning for a moment, because it is a long way downstream from where the word started and the drift tells you something. In English, charisma is about the person who has it. In Greek, the word points the other way entirely, it points at the giver.
In Greek, charisma is built on a root you already half know, the root is charis and charis means grace, favor freely given, kindness that lands on someone who did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Charis is one of the load-bearing words of the entire New Testament, the word behind every sentence about being saved by grace and not by works, from that root grows a verb charizomai which means to give freely, to hand something over as a pure gift, to bestow a kindness, even to cancel a debt or forgive an offense. And from that verb you get the noun Paul reaches for when he finally names these things.