Ephesians

Spiritual Gifts and the Ongoing Incarnation

During my time as pastor of Peninsula Bible Church, there was a statement printed on the back of the Sunday bulletin that read:

This church advocates both evangelism and edification. People must be saved by grace through faith, but, having been saved, they must be faithfully helped to grow in grace. The two-fold task of every church is evangelism and edification—not a lopsided stress on one but the consistent practice of both.

Here is the two-fold emphasis of the church: evangelism (which is directed outward toward the world) and edification (which is directed inward, toward building up the body of believers through teaching and fellowship). This is the two-fold emphasis we see in Ephesians 4, and every local church should maintain an absolute commitment to fulfilling these two tasks by encouraging every member to understand and exercise his or her spiritual gifts.

When the members of a church fulfill their unique, God-given roles by utilizing their unique, God-given gifts, something amazing and miraculous happens: Jesus Christ becomes physically present once more on earth. Does that sound like an astounding claim? Then let me explain:

When God chose to visit this earth to offer us a new and eternal kind of life, He did so by “incarnating” His life in a body. The word incarnate means “to become flesh.” When Jesus was born of a virgin, God Himself became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God.

But that was only the beginning of the incarnation process. The incarnation is still going on. Open the book of Acts and read the opening words, and you will find that the writer of Acts, Luke, says that he has set down “in my former book” (that is, in the Gospel of Luke) “all that Jesus began to do and to teach.” Note that word began. Jesus is not finished doing and teaching in the world. His work continues, even though He has ascended to the Father. The book of Acts, Luke implies, is a continuation of the Lord’s doings and teachings. And what is the book of Acts? It is a record of the early years of the Christian church, the body of Christ.

The story of the book of Acts is still being written, two thousand years later, as we move into the third millennium of the Christian era. And the incarnation is still continuing. Christ Himself is still physically present in the world, still incarnate, still doing and teaching through His body, the church. You and I are members of that body, uniquely gifted to carry on His work because of the spiritual gifts He has given us.

What is His work? We hear it from His own lips in Luke 4:16-21:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

We tend to read that passage and think, “This is Jesus, announcing His earthly ministry—a ministry of preaching good news, liberating the oppressed, healing the blind, and more—and making it clear that He had come in fulfillment of a prophecy first issued 725 years earlier by Isaiah.”

But I would encourage you to read it again—not as a description of the Lord’s ministry back then, but as your ministry now. Read it as a demonstration of what Jesus Christ intends you to do right now, today. As you read it, remember what the Lord said in John 14:12— “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Greater in what way? Well, anything done in the realm of the spirit is greater than that done in the body.

And why will we do greater things than Jesus did? “Because I am going to the Father.” Here, Jesus specifically tells us that His leave-taking from earth, His return to the Father, will result in the sending of the Spirit. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the church, the body of Christ, will perform far greater works than Jesus did in the flesh, for the works of the Spirit accomplished through the church take place in the very core of humanity, in the spirit.

Note that Jesus quotes a line from Isaiah that promises the coming of the Spirit: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Notice that the coming of the Spirit upon the body of Christ instantly produces a ministry that goes out to the world—the ministry of evangelism, of preaching the good news to those who need to hear it. Our Lord always begins with the poor and needy, just as He did in the first phrase of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). God is able to give the kingdom of heaven to those who come to him with empty hands and humble hearts. We are to exercise our gifts in spreading this Good News to those who are hungry to hear it.

Jesus goes on to read that God has sent Him (and therefore, God has sent us) to proclaim freedom to prisoners and the recovery of sight for the blind. Release and recovery. Liberty and light. All around us we see people who are bound by sin, by emotions of self-pity or bitterness or hopelessness. We see people who stumble blindly through life. God has anointed us in the body of Christ with spiritual gifts, and we are to use those gifts to set prisoners free and to restore sight to the blind.

Jesus proclaims a ministry of releasing those who are oppressed, who are laboring under a crushing burden. A man once drove 600 miles round-trip to tell me of a burden that oppressed him. For over a year he had been simmering with anger and hate over an injustice that was done to him. He could barely eat or sleep. He felt no peace. He was so burdened with hatred that he had actually contemplated murder. As we sat and talked, I told him that he could be liberated from that oppressing burden by handing it over to Jesus Christ. I proclaimed to him release from oppression, and he acted on it by praying with me for healing and release. A miraculous transformation took place in this man right before my eyes. I could see in his eyes and his face that the burden was gone, the poison of hatred had been drained from his heart, and the love of Jesus Christ had come flooding in. He had been set free.

What did I do for this man? Nothing. As a mere human being, I could do nothing for him. But the Spirit of God, operating through my God-given gifts, transcended my mere humanity. I became the body of Christ, the eyes, ears, lips, and hands of Christ, and He touched this man through me.

This man didn’t have to drive 300 miles one way to find someone to set him free. God could have used any yielded, Spirited Christian to set this man free from his oppression. Every Christian is gifted and has access to the infinite spiritual resources of God.

Finally, in Luke 4:19, Jesus reads that the Spirit of God has anointed Him—and, of course, us as well—”to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is one of the most remarkable statements of the Bible. If you look up the original passage in Isaiah from which our Lord is quoting, you find there is a comma at the point where Jesus places a period. In the original passage in Isaiah, the prophet goes on to say, “and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2). The Lord Jesus did not read the rest of that sentence. He stopped at the comma, rolled up the scroll and handed it back, and announced, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). He implies, then, that the rest of Isaiah’s statement is not yet fulfilled. The day of the vengeance of God awaits the return of Christ. That is a future day; but now is the year of the Lord’s favor, the time of salvation.

People need to hear that they live in a time of God’s favor, a time when the door of salvation is open to them. Most people live in the grip of fear—fear of death, fear of out-of-control events in the world, fear that God has lost control, if He ever had it. They need to know that while a day of vengeance and judgment is coming, now is the time to take refuge in the Lord. He restrains evil and calms our fears. He is in control. He loves us.

So this is the ministry that Christ proclaimed for Himself during His earthly ministry—and also for us, for the body of Christ. We are to use our spiritual gifts, acting in His stead, carrying on His ministry. This may be a scary and intimidating idea to you. “I don’t have time to evangelize the world,” you might say. “I have to earn a living! Using my spiritual gifts sounds impossibly hard!”

Actually, it’s easier than you think. Spiritual gifts are a God-given part of you, so using this part of you is perfectly natural. You simply have to be yielded to God in every aspect of your life. You use your spiritual gifts in your home, at the office, and everywhere you live your life. You simply make sure that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your entire life, not just the Lord of your Sundays, your margins, and your spare time. Remember, the most important figures in the Bible are not pastors and priests but ordinary “working stiffs”—shepherds, fishermen, soldiers, tentmakers, carpenters, physicians, and tax collectors. You can carry out the ministry of Christ and exercise your spiritual gifts over lunch with a friend, around the water cooler with a co-worker, or in the car pool on the drive home.

We must put our gifts to work. The Lord Jesus has given us a precious gift, and we dare not waste it, as the unfaithful servant did in our Lord’s parable (see Matthew 25:14-30). The Lord will one day demand an accounting for our use of the gifts He has given us. He will ask us, “What did you do with the gift I gave you—the gift I bought for you with my earthly life, death, and resurrection? Did you value it? Did you put it to good use? Did you multiply it in the lives of others? Or did you ignore, neglect, and reject it?”

The matter of spiritual gifts is a serious matter. We exist for the purpose of serving God with our gifts and praising Him with our lives. Our faith means nothing if we neglect this crucial, core issue of what it means to be a Christian, a member of the body of Christ.

But as serious as it is, the matter of spiritual gifts is also a matter of joy. As Christians today discover what it means to literally become the living, bodily extensions of Jesus Christ on earth, then life becomes gripping and exciting—an adventure beyond human imagining. You and I, as members of the body of Christ, prove to the world that God is not dead—He is alive and active in the realm of human lives and human events.

So now, I trust, you begin to catch a glimpse, just an introductory glimmer, of how eternally, universally important it is that you understand and exercise your gift. The spiritual gift within you is unique and irreplaceable. It may be lying dormant in you. So it is critically important that you discover and develop your gift, and that you learn how to fulfill that gift in the power of the Holy Spirit, not in the power of the flesh.