Thoughts on Lists of Spiritual Gifts

In one of the sermons I heard this morning (I attended services at two different churches), the scripture reading was from Ephesians 4:1-12. When Ephesians 4:11 was read, I remembered a discussion I had some time back about whether pastors and teachers here was intended to refer to one group of people. The individual with whom I discussed this found it fairly important. He thought that it would be better that authoritative church teaching be done by the pastor. Others could work under him, but the that would be the authority source.

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers — Ephesians 4:11 (NRSV)

I can see how this might work together with a complementarian view of gender roles, reserving authoritative teaching to the ordained, who would all be male. I have never heard that specific argument made by any actual complentarians, so I don’t know that it is used. There are quite a number of commetators, however, who maintain that either these two groups are the same, or that they are much more closely related than are the other groups in the list.

In looking at it, I would note that Daniel Wallace discusses the matter on page 284 of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, and maintains that the Greek does not require that these two groups be identical. Nonetheless he also makes the point that they are more closely connected to each other than to the rest of the list. In general I think he makes a good point.

But does Ephesians 4:11 mean that pastor and teacher are the same office in either case? Whether or not we place a great deal of weight on this, it’s an interesting question.

I think the answer lies in the lists of gifts that Paul gives. He speaks of spiritual gifts in three different places, here in Ephesians 4:11, in 1 Corinthians 12 twice, and in Romans 12:6-8. The list is not identical in any two of these places. They are not identical even between 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 and then in verses 28-30. The two lists give a different perspective. I would suggest that there is an important point in these differences.

And this leads me to the reason I wanted to write a blog entry on this. It goes back to something I say repeatedly about Bible study, and most recently about interpreting parables. The key to understanding is finding the right question, and in this case we have to look at the questions Paul is answering in these passages. If you look at the context, not a single one of these passages was written to answer the question “What are the gifts of the Spirit?” Rather, the questions all relate to unity. In 1 Corinthians the primary issue is spiritual pride, and the gifts are used as an example of how all of us, coming from varied backgrounds and with various gifts, are brought together by one Spirit to become the church. In Romans 12 the topic is becoming conformed to Christ rather than to the church, with the issue of unity again key. Similarly in Ephesians 4:1-16, though we tend to stop at verse 12.

What would Paul’s answer be if he was asked just what were the gifts of God’s Spirit? I suspect he would decline to try for an exhaustive list. Rather, we need to look for the simple test. Is this gift useful (and hopefully used) to spread the gospel message and to build the kingdom? If the answer is “yes” it’s a good candidate to be called a spiritual gift. Otherwise, not so much!