1Corinthians 12:12-30 “God in His wisdom…”
1Cor 12:15 “Now, if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body”.
What is being said here? What I am, how I have been made, (is for) the part that I have been made to fill with the talents and gifts that I have been given. These have been given to me, as an expression of who I am in Christ, for what it is that God has created me in Christ Jesus to do - to reflect HIs goodness and bring Him glory.
How I have been made, knit together, and the talents and gifts that I have been granted, are what they are, because of what God, by His wisdom, has made me, as He sees fit, and in so, is what is best for me to be, for the goods works I am being created in Jesus to do.
Not only so, but God also knew the best place for me - where and with whom He has placed me to be a part, to bring my part, for the common good.
For me to look at myself in a mirror - to see a reflection of who I am, what God has made me to be - and to say that because I have been made this way, or I have not been made that way, I am not a part of the body, I cannot, I will not, or complain and grumble about what I see - is wrong, it is sin.
To resist how God has made us, to insist that He is wrong, is to not understand the goodness of God’s wisdom and the… of His grace and to make ourselves less and less effective in HIm (Phil 2)
To be sure, we are talking about our making here. There is no doubt that when we look in the mirror (and, the word of God - James 1 - we see those things that are contrary, sinful, and wish that they were not - and this seeing should produce sorrow, and that sorrow, repentance (1Cor ). But, what we are talking about here is God’s wonderful and good making of our person, our saving, our being created in Christ Jesus, all by God’s wonderful and loving grace - lavished on His children!
It is that I have been made a certain way, and that, by God (Ps 139), that makes me who I am and what I am - and this is according to His good pleasure! (Ephesians 1:3-14)
Every aspect of our being has been knit into us beginning with the very DNA that is established at our conception
Trusting God’s wise goodness - His character, His loving kindness toward His children, and His wisdom in our making and creating
Sometimes our perception of ourselves is a deception of our own heart (Jer 17:9). It is in and by the truth of God‘s word, the goodness of His wisdom, that with His Spirit, He tells us Whose we are, who we are, and what we have been made to be and created in Christ Jesus to do, that will enable us to be most fulfilled, find our greatest satisfaction, and experience our deepest peace and contentment, to enable us to live out of our righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus in us (2Cor 5:21), according to how we have been made, and gifted, and how and where we will be most effective in bringing His graces to bear - through us.
Yes, there are certainly times that a need arises that demands our attention, and love of God and one another commands my responding (Lk 10:25-37; Ja 2:14-17; 1Jn 3:17), but, as Paul admonishes us here, we each and all have as unique and distinct set strengths and gifts to bring to the body, as we are a person, as well as each and all of those with whom we serve.
Now to be sure, it is not merely about our “making” that matters, neither is it only about “my” spiritual gifts:
You see, there are also those things that are not given, but commanded, and necessitate of utmost attention, even our greatest effort (2Pe 1:5-9). Our propensity toward them may or may not have to do with our making, but certainly these things have to do with our heart, that is a matter of our (redeemed) heart's response to our Father’s merciful love (Rom 12:1-2).
Our effort will match the degree of our love for and gratefulness to God (Lk 7:47) and our willingness to trust Him and no receive from His hand all He has made me and is creating me to be - and that is our response to His merciful love - our subsequent effort to build character, our willingness to sacrifice, our attitude toward our brother/sister, our cooperation with the spirit, our discipline in and obedience to the word, our humility in service, and our defenses, your love, and fellowship.
Our love is expressed in our commitment to the betterment, and the welfare of others, to take our making, our spiritual gifts, and our willing cooperation with the Spirit, our making every effort in the development of our character, our growing in wisdom, and applying them to the needs of others - in the lives of our families, our marriages, our parenting, and in the body of Christ.
It is not only by our making, or even our spiritual gifts, but 1Corinthians 13 and 14 goes on to tell us “the most excellent way“ of love, and the attitude with which we are to do what we do, and that is a humble consideration of others.
Who am I that you, God, would care about me? The humble response of the “poor in spirit” (Mt 5:3) recognizing that it is by God’s mercy that I stand and His grace that I live and love - He loves me! This is astonishing! He, our heavenly Father (Ga 4:6), has, by His love, expressed through His mercy and grace, saved me and made me His dearly loved child (Ep 5:1) and given me the privilege of being His representative, His hands and feet, His vessel for noble purposes - that, in cooperation with His Spirit and word,I prepare myself to be by cleansing myself of sin and a wrong perception of the Father (Je 24:7; Ez 18:31; 2Tm 2:20-21; Mt 25:24-26)
How is it that God has made me?
How do I see, view, and perceive how God has knit me together?
His good intentions for me from the moment I was conceived? Giving me everything that I have just as He desired, according to the pleasure of His wisdom
What talents and strengths have I been endowed with?
What gifts has He granted me?
Having saved me, by His grace, through faith in Jesus – redeeming me, adopting me, making me His child… He is fulfilling His promises to me – promises of forgiveness and acceptance, adoption into His family – as a dearly loved child. Life in Him in abundance, the privilege of joining Him in His work, humbly serving Him and one another with all that I am and all that I have been given.
With whom has He placed me to bless and edify with what He has made me to be?
What are those works prepared in advance for me to do? Who are those people for whom I do those works?
Roles and responsibilities to those I am responsible for and accountable to
Acts of kindness and service to my family and my church family
The exercising of my gifts on behalf of the body
What do I bring to the table? What has God made me to be and do – made and created purposely to express His glory, to speak of His graces, to encourage the saints, and share with the lost? Just the way I have been made and saved?
Our gifts begin well before the things I can do. They begin with what I have received from God, what I have had “knit” into me – from who I am as a person, as made in God’s image and likeness, to my becoming a child of God through Christ, loved by my heavenly Father, to the body in which I live, this tent, that He has made for me – that is the intended expression of the person He’s made me, and then, the gifts God as given me as an expression of Him and me - together.
How do the following aspects of how God has knit me together help me express the person I am in relationship to Him and others? Though there is some environmental effect on how my personality expressed itself, we cannot deny that there are good and healthy
My God given sex and gender - that God has made me either male, a man or female, a woman as a fundamental way we live our lives and express our person to the world - reflecting perfectly the One who made us according to His loving and wise mercies (Gen 1:26-27; 2:
Am I single or married? Expressing the beauty of God’s image and likeness by reflecting the beauty of His loving divine community in their us/our relationship with God and the church in undivided devotion in fidelity, holy and chaste, helping raise the children of God in holiness, fellowship, and service (“eunuchs” Isa 56:3-5; Mt 19:11-12; unmarried 1Co 7:32-38) or in marriage, loving and serving one another as husband and wife, in holiness in devotion and fidelity to God and one another - each bringing their unique and distinct reflection together to become one and raise children in love and grace. (Gen 1:27-28; 2:18-25; Mt 19:4-9)
Find Timothy treat younger women and sisters and Jesus talking about lusting after someone in the heart
He might be asking why I placed single in front of Mary, it is because we all started single, and we were made to be single, and God, both in the person of Christ, and by the Holy Spirit through Paul, encouraged us to consider what it would be to remain in that station, if we are able to receive it.
My personality - how I express my person - among SO many other things, and not everything is such an “either/or, but for the sake of understanding - here we go: am I… an introvert or an extrovert? Verbal or non-verbal? Active or passive? Corny or dry? Romantic and sentimental or pragmatic and practical? Observant or a little oblivious? Big picture or emersed in the details? Neat and tidy or not so much? Extravagant or thrifty? Expressive or reserved? Bold or shy? A verbal processor or more introspective? Artsy or sciencey or somewhere in between? Academic or hands-on or a decent mix of the two? Love to read the instructions and go by the book or dump the parts and pieces on the floor and go for it? Love to teach or be there to help? Lead through vision and enthusiasm or quietly, by example?
My God given strengths and talents - those things that seem to come naturally, or without a lot of effort, that I see and am quick to respond
My love language(s) - how I tend to give and/or receive love and affection most naturally (as we are to learn and grow in our love and loving, but there are ways that seem knit into our fabric)
Even my likes and dislikes - what appeals to me, or not (be careful here, that means natural tastes that are natural aspects of my person that lead me to make everyday choices - not to be confused with sinful desires that would cause lead me to respond to what appeals to me in an ungodly or sinful way)
Add to that, that at my salvation, I have been given gifts of the Spirit
· My gifts granted by the Spirit of God
· And it is up to me then, to cooperate with the indwelling Holy Spirit to redeem all that I have been granted, and as He sanctifies and empowers me to use all that I am and all that I have been given - to bring glory to Him, to edify the body, and be an example of His grace to the world (because of Whose I am).
How might I develop these God given strengths to make myself more and more effective?
Where and with whom, for whom can I apply these things
Notice I said “my”. Why? What I have been given, does not make me who I am, they do not possess me. But in fact, it is I, me, who have been given, first, life, and then every-thing that I now possess – as there is NOTHING I have that I have not been given by God and I will be rewarded according to what I do with what I have been given. (Matthew 25; ) May we join in Him in redeeming every aspect of what He’s made us to be! And that, is every part of me!
We must see, that I am, at all, because God has made me. And it is me, I, made by God, loved by God, possessed by God, who has been granted everything that I possess to express my God-li-ness to His glory - my being made in His image and likeness (as to exhibit His invisible qualities - Rom 1:28); and being created in Christ Jesus to do good works prepared in advance for me to do! (Eph 2:8-10)
How am I currently utilizing what God has given me?
What do I need to do to make myself useful to Him?
More effective in my:
Relationship with God in Christ, by His Spirit? See: Gal 5:; 2Pt 1:3-11
And let us not forget - that my limitations are as much a gift as my strengths, talents, and gifts - as “my limitation is your invitation”
One might say “He is talking about spiritual gifts here, what does my making have to do with that?” Because, our making, to some degree, affects the gifts, roles, and responsibilities that I am granted to use within the body. We see, later, Paul emphasizing the difference between what a woman and a man can do in the church, the offices held, and the gifts that are necessary to accomplish those offices, how it is that their gifts are used, and with whom - so our making, when speaking of our part in the body, and how we bring what to the body, to serve the body, has much to do with our making.
As for me, as an example, God is not surprised that I am a male, a man, an Italian/Welsh/Scott, with ADHD. That I am incredibly masculine in some aspects of my personality and surprisingly feminine in others. He is not surprised that I am an artist, temperamental, or easily hurt. He knows that I have a terrible sense of direction, a memory like a sieve, and the attention span of a gnat. That my favorite color is orange, I love the smell of South Carolina, and I cry at the drop of a hat. He is not surprised that I love to talk, especially in front of people, that I care deeply for the marginalized and the disadvantaged, that I hate injustice, and, man, that I need His Spirit of gentleness to temper and tame - well, my temper, and that I needed a wife, the very stature of the one with whom I am blessed - to be a very big part of my making’s being made better.
He is not surprised that I can shepherd, teach, advise, counsel…
Etc.
And neither is He surprised by what (my) sin has done to me and what He has made me to be and given me… sometimes distorting, perverting, misunderstanding, misappropriating, and misusing - so I see my need for forgiveness, and repentance, restoration, and healing - to accept and be grateful for all that He has made me to be and look to please Him, by being pleased with His handy-work, His workmanship - from conception to reception.
And in that, maybe, most amazingly, He promises to make good, turn to good, all things, for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purposes. (Rom 8:
As Paul said “Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ,” Eph 3:8 (1Co 15:9)
By none of this is God surprised, and all of it He is redeeming, and that for His glory, that I, you, we, might, by His gracious provision of graces, show all of creation the incomparable riches of His grace lavished upon us - beginning with my inception, at conception, my life lived in Him, til my glorious reception.
How about you?
We have been made new, born again of the Spirit, new creatures and in Christ - and by His divine power, according to the pleasure of His will, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness
2 Corinthians 3:3
It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Jeremiah 24:7
I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD. They will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with all their heart.
Jeremiah 32:39
I will give them one heart and one way, so that they will always fear Me for their own good and for the good of their children after them.
Ezekiel 18:31
Cast away from yourselves all the transgressions you have committed, and fashion for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel?
Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Treasury of Scripture
And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:
I will give
Ezekiel 36:26,27
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh…
Deuteronomy 30:6
And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
2 Chronicles 30:12
Also in Judah the hand of God was to give them one heart to do the commandment of the king and of the princes, by the word of the LORD.
I will put
Ezekiel 18:31
Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
2 Kings 22:19
Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the LORD.
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
