Follow Jesus Christ

Jesus and Paul taught differently about spiritual gifts. At first glance, Paul surpassed Jesus in the complexity of the concept of spiritual gifts and their place in the structure of the church. Jesus’ parables (about the talents, for example) seem simple, even rustic, in comparison. However, if you look more closely, Paul’s complexity turns out to be more of a rhetorical device aimed at inspiring Christians. In real everyday life, it is Jesus’s idea that works, not Paul’s elegant philosophical model.

Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matthew 25) and the parable of the minas (Luke 19) depict gifts as heterogeneous in quantity, but homogeneous in essence (gold, silver). They are often interpreted as responsibility for knowledge, truth, the Word of God, faith. The main emphasis is fidelity, fruitfulness, multiplication. A spiritual gift in Jesus’ teaching is something that needs to be “multiplied”, brought to a result. There is no emphasis on the diversity of functions as in Paul, but there is an emphasis on responsibility and the universality of spiritual values.

In Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4) gifts are presented as diverse abilities given by the Spirit for the building up of the Church. Examples: prophecy, healing, tongues, teaching, service, mercy, wisdom. Paul emphasizes diversity, interdependence, the body of Christ. A gift here is a unique function of a person in the Body of Christ, where no one replaces another.

Thus, Jesus refrains from describing in detail the church as a body or the gifts of the Spirit as a variety of charisms that create a certain structure. And there is a reason for this. In Jesus’ teaching, the gift of the Spirit is truth, that is, something that comes from above through the human mind. It is something universal in nature. In Jesus’ parables, a talent invested in a business or a bank ultimately brings a net profit: the same additional talent. Most likely, this means that this truth is revealed in the mind of another person. In Paul’s teaching, everything is somewhat different. He does not speak on a global scale, like Jesus, he is focused on the church and everything is deterministic for him: “The eye cannot say to the hand: I have no need of you …”. That is, having received the gift of being a “hand”, a person clearly cannot become a “foot”. And here we find a lack of confirmation of this theory from real life.

While Jesus’ teaching of using spiritual gifts and passing them on to others in preaching works and has proven its worth, Paul’s idealized vision of the church suffers from a discrepancy with human capabilities. Imagine a preacher being reassigned to the role of “usher”, that is, obliged to seat people in empty seats or distribute communion. Will he cope? He will certainly cope: the work is not difficult. Can a priest perform the function of a church watchman or a bell ringer? He can do it. It all depends on the mental and psychological characteristics of a person. Obviously, a bell ringer cannot always be a preacher. Although, theoretically, with appropriate training, he can. Imagine when a family that played a significant role leaves a church or community: others take their places, no big deal. A social organism, including a church community, is not a deterministic organism, a structure. There are no irreplaceable people. Under certain circumstances, a leg becomes a hand or vice versa.

Paul’s concept of spiritual gifts is an idealization of society, it has inspired many generations of Christians, even if they have not seen anything like it in real life. Perhaps Paul’s vision refers to the future structure of human society, when each person will easily determine the correct place in society. In the absence of such integration, such an ideal local community simply does not exist. And we return to the definition of a spiritual gift in the teaching of Jesus: it reflects reality accurately and without error. Every spiritually born person receives as a gift a precious ingot of Truth. He can do with it anything, just not bury it in the ground. He can occupy any place in the church, move from one to another, change ministries: all the details are not important. The main thing is to invest spiritual talent in the work.