Pastor Hunter Coultrap | September 21, 2025
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1 Corinthians 12:1-26 – Spiritual Gifts
When I was a kid, I played pee-wee football. I started when I was 8 years old and when you first start playing football, you do a bunch of drills to determine your strengths that ultimately help the coach decide where to put you. Now from my build, you might not have guessed that I played… lineman. That’s right. Offensive lineman. And you might ask, why did you play lineman if you are not a big strong guy? Well, after all the drills and testing, my coach decided that with my skillset, lineman offered the least amount of risk I could bring to the team. Keep the ball away from Hunter.
Like every kid, I dreamt of playing in the NFL and even getting my own football card. In preparing for this, I actually looked up the football cards of some offensive lineman. For a quarterback or running back you might see stats for touchdowns, yards passed/carried/receiving, etc. For defensive players, you would see stats for tackles, sacks, fumbles. You want to know what you get for an offensive lineman…a quote. Zero stats.
Here’s the funny thing though, we all know that if a football team has a weak offensive line, then the team struggles to do anything good on offense and win games. A team needs people skilled at all different positions to accomplish anything and win.
In our text today, Paul is reminding the church at Corinth that through the Spirit, we are all given a spiritual gift that is to be used to serve the church and if we do not all serve, the church suffers!
If you have your Bible with you today, I want to invite you to turn to 1 Corinthians 12.
As we get into the text, let me give us a bit of context.
The letter of 1 Corinthians is written by the apostle Paul. Paul used to be a Jewish religious elitist called a Pharisee that actually persecuted and even killed followers of Jesus until he was converted on the road to Damascus by none other than…Jesus. After this conversion, Paul joins the Christians in proclaiming Jesus is Lord and even goes on multiple journeys around the Mediterranean Sea to spread the good news – or the Gospel – of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection to all. On one of Paul’s journeys, he plants a church in the city of Corinth.
Now this church struggles with being in the world, like the culture around it. Corinth was a town of many opportunities to make money and raise your status in society. With everyone trying to establish themselves, there was a constant culture of comparison and competition. Does this sound familiar? The church of Jesus was never meant to be this way and Paul has to address this in this letter.
After addressing all kinds of issues in this letter such as divisions in the church, lawsuits, eating food offered to idols, and even the Lord’s Supper or communion, Paul begins chapter 12 by addressing the topic of spiritual gifts. Again, this church struggled with being like the culture around them so Paul needed to bring some clarity to the use of spiritual gifts. Paul actually spends the next few chapters unpacking this issue, but we will just do a brief overview and introduction of spiritual gifts.
Now there are a lot of theological discussions around the spiritual gifts that have garnered debates. Conversations and study around the continuation or cessation or the ceasing of the gifts, Spiritual gifts vs. Spiritual Fruit, Talent
vs. gifting and so on, they are worth consideration; however, my goal today is not to expand on these varying discussions but rather look at what Paul has to say about how God has given gifts to his people through the Holy Spirit for the purpose of building up His church.
As we look at the scriptures, the outline of our text will be this:
The power behind the spiritual gifts (1-6)
The purpose of the spiritual gifts (7)
The plethora of the spiritual gifts (8-11)
The people with the spiritual gifts (12-26)
Let’s begin by looking at the power behind the spiritual gifts. Let’s read together starting in verse 1. [Read verses 1-3]
Paul introduces the new topic of spiritual gifts here and we see his audience is to who? Brothers. Paul is speaking to people that claim to follow Jesus. That means us. He says, “I do not want you to be uninformed.”. Isn’t that interesting? From his opening line, there seems to be some confusion in the Corinthian church regarding the topic of spiritual gifts. Imagine that!
Paul continues in verse 2, “ you know that when you were pagans…” He reminds them of their life BEFORE they claimed Christ. They were what? “led astray to mute idols, however you were led.” The city of Corinth was entrenched in pagan worship of all kinds and prided themselves on being ‘spiritual’. However, there is a spiritual reality here that we are all led by something.
I want to pause here for a second. If you are here this morning and you read this in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and think, “That is a bit harsh. Does he have to call them ‘pagans’ that worship idols? Well, if we find your identity or security in things like beauty, money, fame, relationship status, parenting, material things – you name it – then we are running after idols. Idols do not
have to be carved images that live in a temple but they can be things that demand our affections, attention, finances, and time–our worship. Jesus says, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.” Ultimately, we would be looking in all the wrong places for true security, identity, belonging, and salvation. And we can fool ourselves into thinking that we aren’t so bad…but one look at the cross reminds us how far Jesus had to go to save us from our
sin as we fall short of the glory of God. We have no hope apart from Jesus and his Gospel, the good news of his death, burial, and resurrection for sinners like me and you.
Paul continues, “Therefore, I want you to understand…” again he is trying to aid their ‘uniformed state’. He goes on, “no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!”. Now in our modern context, this seems like an obvious claim. However, in the Corinthian context there were all kinds of
‘spiritual’ people saying crazy things. Paul tells them the Spirit of God does not diminish or degrade Jesus. In fact it does the opposite! Paul says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It is the Holy Spirit IN US that proclaims that Jesus is Lord. This is the difference between being ‘spiritual’ and being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The power behind the spiritual gifts is the Holy Spirit, given by God the Father, through the Gospel of Jesus.
As we continue in our text, Paul states that there are a variety of gifts, services, and activities or works, but it is the same God that empowers them all. Paul recognizes that there are many different gifts in the church – again he is talking to brothers here – but it is the same Spirit, Lord, and God who empowers them. Notice the presence of the Trinity!
Look at these verses together [read verses 4-6]
Paul is emphasizing the variety and diversity of gifts in the church. Just like a football team, there are many different positions, but one team with one goal. There are different words in the Greek for each of the varieties that Paul mentions, one for “gifts”, one for “service”, and one for “activities” or “workings”. Each of these labels could be used to describe the categories of the various gifts but the point is there are multiple gifts and they are not all the same. HOWEVER, the source and power of the gift is the same. Look at the back half of verse 6, “it is the same God who empowers them all.” The power behind the spiritual gifts is the Holy Spirit.
Notice this. Paul says, “it is the same God who empowers them all IN EVERYONE.” Now remember, he is writing to ‘brothers’, meaning those that claim Jesus is Lord. He says EVERYONE. Each Person. This is significant. I don’t want you to miss this.
If you are a follower of Jesus, you have been given a spiritual gift that is empowered by God.
Now you might be thinking, “no way, not me. I’m just a _____.” Here is the truth that the Bible is saying to you today.
If you are a follower of Jesus, you have been given a spiritual gift that is empowered by God.
You are a new creation. You have been adopted into His family. You have a new identity. And you are filled with his Holy Spirit and given a spiritual gift.
Now why did God give us spiritual gifts? What is the purpose? We look to verse 7 to see the answer. Read with me. [read v7]
We have each been given a spiritual gift for the purpose of building up the church, for the common good. Now there are two things in this verse that are important that I want you to notice. First, Paul says, “to each”. Paul is going to continue to drive this point home in the following verses. Every person that claims Jesus is Lord is given a spiritual gift.
Second, we have each received a manifestation of the Spirit, why? “For the common good”. Although our God gives us many blessings in our lives that we personally enjoy, our gifts have been given to serve others. Your spiritual
gifts are not your own, they are for the church. We may benefit from these gifts in our lives, but we have been given these gifts to be a blessing and help to our fellow brothers.
The purpose of our spiritual gifts is to build up the body of Christ.
Now this does not mean that our aim is merely to “grow” the body of Christ in numbers or membership, but to train in righteousness, encourage in faith, and serve in humility and love our brothers and sisters in the faith. By serving in this way, we establish that Jesus is Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The purpose of our spiritual gifts is to build up the body of Christ.
We build up the body of Christ with our various giftings so let’s continue to see some of the gifts that Paul lists here. Read on with me. [read 8-11]
Now here Paul lists 9 different gifts that are given by the Holy Spirit. If we survey the rest of the Scriptures we see spiritual gifts listed elsewhere:
Romans 12:6-8
6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his
teaching; 8the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
Ephesians 4:11-12
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ
1 Peter 4:10-11
10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1 Corinthians 12:28
28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
Here we see various gifts listed throughout the Scriptures but I want you to notice a few things.
First, none of these lists are exhaustive, meaning that they cover all of the gifts in one place. There is overlap in some of the lists, but there are different gifts listed in each place as well. Not only are there varied gifts but there are varied lists! Because of this,
we can look at these lists as representative rather than exhaustive.
It would be similar to me stating that a football team has a quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker, lineman, and coach. These are some of the positions but not all of the positions possible in a football team.
Next, we see the gifts listed in the Scriptures vary in prominence. Some of the gifts like teaching, prophecy, and evangelism are public in nature. These gifts are exercised in front of others and often receive recognition and prominence in the church. However, there are many of these gifts such as helps, administration, service, and mercy that happen behind the scenes.
This variety of gifts and prominence downplays the significance of the specific gifting for the common good. All of these gifts are needed.
Lastly, we see that in all of the different gifts, there is one God empowering and apportioning them all. Not multiple spirits that give us different gifts — this was part of the ‘spiritual’ confusion of Corinth. The Holy Spirit is the power behind these gifts and notice verse 11, “who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” God is the one that chooses which gifts each of us has. We do not determine our giftings, God does. Likewise, we do not downplay or elevate our gifting because it is FROM GOD!
The plethora of gifts is given to us by God to serve one another!
As we look at the last part of the chapter, Paul gives his thesis statement and leads us into his illustration of the body. [Read v12]
Paul has been talking about the power behind the gifts, the purpose of the gifts, and the plethora of gifts, his last portion of this chapter speaks of the people with spiritual gifts. He reminds the Corinthian believers, and us by extension, that we all make up the body of Christ. Regardless of our background or our status in society, we all are a part of the body of Christ.
Paul begins this final section with the emphasis on diversity in unity. We as the church are one body with many members and the members are not all the same. Just like we need all of our extremities and multifaceted organs to thrive and survive, the same is true in the church. We need all different types of gifts exercised and celebrated for the church to be built up and effective for the glory of God.
Knowing that some people will still struggle with the idea of serving with their gifts, Paul identifies two groups of people that need help in their understanding of using spiritual gifts. Let’s take a look. [Read v14-20]
First, we see a group of people that believe their gifting is INFERIOR.They DOWNPLAY the significance of their gifting.
The foot says, “Since I’m not a hand, I’m not a part of the body.” Likewise, the ear says the same thing about the eye. Notice too, the differences in prominence in these body parts: Feet are hidden in shoes while hands are presented to others for greeting. Hands have thumbs for crying out loud! Ears and eyes, it’s the same thing. No people caught in love say, “Man, I could stare at those ears all day!”
Even with all of that, we would never say we don’t need our ears or our feet. This is the point Paul is trying to make. Even though your gifting may not be prominent, it is still important, needed, and apportioned by God. Imagine if an offensive lineman on a football team said, “I don’t get any stats, I’m not a part of the team”, does that make it true? No!
[Illustration: I don’t know if you have done this but I definitely have. I have thought before, “anybody could play guitar or sing these songs. They are four chords and the truth. But man, I wish I could pray with such faith as I see others pray.”]Some of you here today might say, “I can’t teach like that person, or sing like that person, or lead a group like that person…I’m not needed in the body, I don’t have anything valuable to offer.” And I’m here to tell you, that is just not true! Remember verse 18
[read v18].God has given each one of us different gifts and we use those various gifts, those many parts, to build up one body.
The second group of people we see in the analogy is a group of people that believe their gifts are SUPERIOR. They OVEREMPHASIZE their gifts. Look with me at verse 21 [read v21-26].
Where the first paragraph has people stepping back because they do not have prominent gifts, now we have people that have prominent gifts telling others they have no value.
Paul makes the claim that the people that serve in seemingly weaker ways are, don’t miss this, INDISPENSABLE. We cannot do without them. We need them. He goes on and talks about parts of our bodies that we cover up and how we do that because they receive greater honor. We need all different types of gifts and God designed it this way. And Paul closes this section this way, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
Through the Spirit, the people of God are given a spiritual gift that is to be used to serve the church and if we do not all serve, the church suffers!
The body of Christ breaks down if we decide we do not have a need for someone else’s gifts. We all need to serve with our various and diverse gifts to build up the body of Christ. We need administrators, teachers, helpers, evangelists, craftsmen and more! As we all participate in this, we establish as God’s church that Jesus is Lord!
Now we have flown through the spiritual gifts and hopefully you have a bit more of an understanding of this passage and of the gifts.
The power behind the spiritual gifts is the Holy Spirit, given by God the Father, through the Gospel of Jesus.
The purpose of our spiritual gifts is to build up the body of Christ. The plethora of gifts is given to us by God to serve one another!
Through the Spirit, the people of God are given a spiritual gift that is to be used to serve the church and if we do not all serve, the church suffers!
Now you may be asking, HOW DO I KNOW MY SPIRITUAL GIFTS?
There are two ways that I believe are most effective to discover your spiritual gifts: First is to serve and second is to walk in community with the church.
[Illustration: When Hurricane Helene hit and we began relief efforts at the church, there were all kinds of ways to serve. Some could go do manual labor and cut down trees and mud-out homes, others facilitated parking thousands of cars, some gently cared for hurting people that came to have their needs met, while others sorted truckloads worth of donations in a way that we could make sense of it all. And that is just a few of the ways people served.What I noticed is how many of you guys came to serve our community here at the church. The question that each of you asked was, where do you need me? How can I help? Apart from any physical limitations, you all were willing to serve wherever
you were needed. ‘I may not be the best at organizing, but I’ll help sort goods.’ ‘I may not be the best at praying but I’ll pray with people as they come.’
What was amazing to watch over the first week and moving into the second week was the settling into different roles. Some people discovered, “I’m really not good at the chaos of the parking lot and loading and unloading donations”, so they settled down with a phone and checked up on our church and thrived. I also saw others that served in mercy ministry because there was a need and served there the whole time and found they loved hearing people’s stories and sharing the hope of Christ with them.]
Through serving, people were able to find their giftings and their strengths through the power of the Spirit. The same is true today! There is still a need for your gifts. We do not need a natural disaster to call us to serve, the calling is now! We served our community in Helene because we are a part of our community, we should serve our church now because we are a part of the body. Start serving somewhere if you need help discovering your spiritual gift.
Second, as we are serving in the church, we should also be walking in community. We need Christians in our lives that walk in close enough proximity to be able to tell us where they see our giftings. Sometimes we are great at spotting greatness in others, but have a massive blindspot on ourselves. This is one benefit of being plugged into the church. And at our church, the way to be known best is through life groups. I would encourage you to ask members of your life group where they might see your gifting. If you are not in a life group right now, I would love to encourage you to join one!
We can discover our spiritual gifts through serving and being in community with the church.
Now we can talk about spiritual gifts all day, but until we are using them for the common good, we are not serving the church! A parked car never gets to where it needs to go. However, if we are using our gifts only for our work or hobbies or families, then we miss the purpose of building up the church. And I want to challenge you, if God calls you to a work, then he will equip you for that call. And it may be within your gifting; however, God sometimes calls us to a work that is outside of our gifting and he expects humility and a servant hearted spirit. I think of Jesus here in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We serve because he first served us!
I want you to consider two ways that you can serve to build up the body.
First, serve in a volunteer position here at the church. We have enough people in this church to fill every serving position for all the different ministries that happen in this building AND have a rotation. My God sized prayer is that each and every one of you would serve in a role in our church to build up the body. If you don’t know where to start, ask where there is a need. Talk to our ministry leaders, they would love to help you find a place to serve!
[Illustration: Mary Lee and I have started serving in the children ministry on Wednesday nights with AWANA. I’ve had my spiritual gifts glasses on as I’ve been preparing for this message and I noticed that even as a class leader I saw opportunities to lead, administrate, show mercy, and teach. This is just one role in one program on one night. There are so many ways we can servein roles with our giftings. Now, to be clear, I do not have all of those gifts, but I serve alongside an awesome wife and a faithful college student!]
One author wrote:
“Comfort, passion, gifting, and confidence aren’t prerequisites for service. Weakness and humble desperation for God’s help are. I’ve never once felt gifted or confident in unclogging toilets. It’s not my passion. Yet I have done it many times in my house and in the church. Why? Because there was a need. There are needs in your church. All kinds of them. So stop waiting for the perfect opportunity that “aligns with your gifts.” Instead of refraining from service until you figure out your calling or your spiritual gifts, serve in various kinds of ways, and your gifts will surface through your service.”
Further, I want you to see that building up the body can happen by serving in a role and it can happen outside the church building. I was thinking about this on the way in this morning. If all the serving roles disappeared in the church for some reason like a global pandemic, or the underground church with no programs, or you are part of a church plant and there just aren’t that many places to serve in a role, does this command to serve with our gifts disappear? No! Not at all. The church at Corinth probably looked more like a house church than a large church and they were still commanded to serve!
[Illustration: I have a friend in this church that I have walked with since we came to Boone and I believe he is gifted with the spiritual gift of helps. He serves in a few different roles here at the church but his greatest ministry to me has been his care for me and my family. He has shown up in the rain to help me with my house. He came at 10pm at night because I needed a truck. He has lent me tools and helped me move. And all of these thingsstrengthened my faith because I’m reminded I am not alone. God has surrounded me with an awesome family and often provides help through his people.]
Rather than protecting our homes as a place of sanctuary, our schedules as a place for our agendas, our things and money as blessings for us – what if our homes were sanctuaries for our brothers and sisters too? To be comforted, fed, and loved. What if our schedules were open enough and openhanded enough to meet the needs of others? What if our cars, our tools, toys or money were like Acts 2:
44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and
belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number
day by day those who were being saved.
We can serve in the church and build up the body and we can serve with our lives and build up the body. This is the purpose of our spiritual gifts for the glory of God!