Truth Unites - Why God Gave You Spiritual Gifts

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Gavin Ortlund explores what the Bible teaches about spiritual gifts and how they help build up the church in unity, maturity, and gospel-centered love.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

The Bible has a lot to say about spiritual gifts, but many Christians are uncertain how to think through this topic. We have lots of questions like, what even are spiritual gifts? How do I know what mine is? When do I use it? How do I use it? Obviously, there's concerns about abuses and counterfeits and even which gifts are valid for today and all of that. Let's work through a passage in Ephesians 4 in this video. It's kind of like a sermon video, devotional video, trying to bless and equip and help people who have questions about this topic.

Here's my burden. when we use our spiritual gifts, it brings joy and flourishing to both others and ourselves. It's like you've been batting left-handed when you're right-handed, and suddenly you switch, start batting right-handed. It just feels so good, you know, in terms of the joy and the edification of it. So I want Christians to use their spiritual gifts, but we sometimes don't know how. Let's talk it through from Ephesians 4 here. Starting off with this, though, this summer, Esther and I were on vacation. We watched one of the World Cup games. I love watching soccer. one of my favorite things is seeing how well people play together as a team, at least professional

soccer when I'm watching my kids play soccer. It's not always good teamwork. But I love teamwork. You know, for me, the best thing about any sport is watching a good pass, even more than a good goal because of this sense of teamwork and working together and the selflessness of that, the beauty of that, everybody playing their role. When I was growing up, Chicago suburbs, 90s, and baiting myself here, I love the Chicago Bulls. I actually find it hard to watch any other basketball since then because they're

They were so great to watch. During the Michael Jordan era, Chicago Bulls were amazing. One of my favorite players was Scotty Pippin, and I just loved the fact that he could play his role so well on the team. Incredible defensive play skills. Lots of rebounds, lots of assists. He could have been the best player on so many other teams, but he learned his role on the team.

And he talked about that in interviews, and I always admired that so much. I wonder if you've ever been a part of a team, and you know that joy, maybe in a work setting or a sports setting or music. In a musical band, everybody comes together and plays their role It's another experience like that. It's really a joyful, happy thing. So here's the question.

What does that look like in the church? When everyone is playing their own distinctive role in the church and you have this beautiful symmetry of teamwork, what does that look like? The answer to that in Ephesians 4 and so many New Testament passages is it has to do with, at least, spiritual gifts. Now, I've found that the topic of spiritual gifts brings up lots of different reactions.

Sometimes it can be divisive and sometimes it can bring up fears, My hope is this video would lead us toward joy and freedom in pursuing spiritual gifts. So let's just go real quickly and simply and talk about two reasons that God gives spiritual gifts to help us pursue them. And I'll be very practical then thinking through how do we respond to this. Number one, spiritual gifts display the triumph of Christ. This is not what I would have expected to say, but this is what Ephesians 4 says. Let me read this passage and see if you can follow the first.

the logic of these verses. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Leave this on screen for a moment. You're going to see language about ascending and descending. And then in verse 11, you get to various gifts or offices in the church. Just to explain this a little bit, that's a quotation from Psalm 68. Here's what's going on. In the ancient world, after a military conquest, there would be a sharing of the spoils. So the enemies conquered, and then the victorious king distributes the plunder among his people, oftentimes in a triumphal procession, like a victory parade.

So maybe you can picture in your mind a triumphant king returning to his own city from a battle. The streets are lined with people cheering. Concord captives are being marched behind the procession. and the king and his generals are tossing gold coins and other spoils from the victory out of their chariot to the surrounding people. That's the image, and Psalm 68 uses that image to describe God depicting him as a divine king who defeats his enemies and then gives gifts to his own people. And fascinatingly, that's the passage that Paul quotes to describe spiritual gifts. And essentially what he's saying here is the spoils of victory. that Christ has achieved and now distributes include spiritual gifts.

The connecting tissue throughout this passage is the word gift or give. You can see it four times as it's underlined on screen. I'll leave this up and explain the flow of thought here. Verse 7, you have the reference to spiritual gifts. It's interesting that they're called grace, and we'll talk about that. Verse 8 is the Psalm 68 quote that introduces the victory spoils imagery. verses 9 and 10 tell us what Christ's victory was. His descent in verse 9, including his death and burial, his descent of the dead.

And then his ascent in verse 10 is resurrection and ascension to heaven. And then in verse 11, you see what are the gifts that he's giving, the prophets, the apostles, etc. So you almost think of it like this. Jesus has triumphed through his death and resurrection. And you can see the victory celebration happening when Christians use their spiritual gifts in church. Spiritual gifts manifest and display the triumph of Christ. They are, as it were, the victory spoils of the gospel. That's what spiritual gifts are, among other things we can also say. You see this in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter one, we have the ascension of Christ

to heaven, and note how Peter then in his sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two interprets this. He sees this as the result of Christ's exaltation. Christ is pouring out the spirit because he's been exalted. Here's a modern, imperfect analogy that will come back to and improve at the end of this video. Think of the tour to France, where one cyclist wins the race and receives prize money, but traditionally the prize money is then distributed among his other teammates and support staff so that his victory becomes their enrichment. And Paul is saying, by analogy, Christ has achieved the ultimate victory. He died on the cross so you could be forgiven and restored to God. He rose from the dead, defeating death and evil forever. He now reigns from

heaven as the promised Davidic Messiah, ushering in a new era of the advance of God's kingdom. Because of those events, anyone who turns from their sin and trusts in Jesus can be reconciled to God. That's the gospel message. And Ephesians 4 is saying one way you can see that message manifested and displayed, part of the victory spoils, so to speak, is spiritual gifts. I love this. Isn't that cool? So you say, okay, here's the question for application is you say, when people look at the church today, do they see the beauty of teamwork?

Do they see service and humility and love that makes them conclude, oh, that's who Jesus is? The gospel must be real. That is what spiritual gifts should manifest to the world. This is what Paul envisions happening in 1 Corinthians 14, when an unbeliever comes to church and sees spiritual gifts. They don't merely say, wow, these Christians really love each other, though hopefully that's also true. But he says, wow, God is here. Spiritual gifts display the glory and triumph and reality of Christ and his gospel. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, was once preaching a sermon, and he looked out at a man in the audience

whom he'd never met, and he pointed to him and referenced a particular theft that this man had committed and named the exact number. By the way, he recounts that happened to him about a dozen times in his ministry. And the man met with a reporter afterwards and explained and said, I did take nine pence that day, and four pence was just the prophet. But how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul through him. So I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first I was afraid to go hear him, lest he should tell the people. more about me. But afterwards I went and the Lord met with me and saved my soul. By the way, when we feel the invasive pressure of the Holy Spirit's conviction, we can remember that is from love to lead to our

restoration and healing, as this man discovered. So we don't need to feel threatened and freaked out when the Holy Spirit speaks like that to us. But the point is, Spurgeon, this is a great image of this. Of course, many spiritual gifts will not be this dramatic. But it's a great image of how God gives gifts and the exercising of these gifts should display the truth of the gospel. Now here's a question for us. Why is it that spiritual gifts, per se, manifest the kingly victory of Jesus? And one reason may be that spiritual gifts are not reducible to our natural talents that we can manage purely in our own strength and wisdom.

They may be related to natural talents, but they're more than what just we can do. A spiritual gift is something the Holy Spirit. especially gives you to build up his church. J. I. Packer helps us with the definition here. He says a spiritual gift is an ability divinely bestowed and sustained to grasp and express the realities of the spiritual world and the knowledge of God and Christ for the edifying both of others and of oneself. So note those words that he says there, divinely bestowed and sustained.

Sustained is important because we can quench our gift and neglect them. But divinely bestowed. So spiritual gifts are something God does. They manifest his work. In fact, in 1st Corinthians 12, 7, they are called manifestations of the spirit. It's like Jesus is alive and alert and active right there in the church building, even if you can't see him physically. And the manifestation of that, among other things as well, is spiritual gifts.

Now, some of us I know struggle to believe this is real. I can get that. We might say, does God really do that? How do we know it's not just a natural talent and actually divinely given, like, you know, confusing a natural ability for oratory with a spiritual gift of teaching? We'll have this question at times. Here's a helpful task that has helped me. Find some Christians you know who've been walking with the Lord for some time and have been

fruitful in their life. Maybe they're in ministry. They've been serving the cause of the gospel in their life because that's when spiritual gifts show up. and they'll show up when you're sitting on the couch, Saturday morning, watching TV, eating potato chips. Spiritual gifts show up in the context of service. Just like any tool is going to help you when you're actually doing a job. But ask Christians who have been fruitful, how have you seen God give special abilities or gifting or graces that have advanced the gospel in your life or in the life of others and just listen to the answers? I did this last week with some friends at lunch, and it was just like, oh, yeah, I think sometimes

God gives spiritual gifts, and we don't even realize that that's what they are. I don't even know if Spurgeon had a particular category for his ability to do that on a few occasions. So may I just encourage us to say, Jesus is still pouring out his Holy Spirit today on his church giving gifts? They're not always dramatic. They're not always obvious, but they are real. And so here's the joyful and non-pressured question that this invites us to consider, if you have trusted in Jesus, are you using your spiritual gift to serve the body of Christ? Have you discovered, like Scotty Pippen, the joy of playing your unique role within the church? Here's some questions that might help us demystify this topic a little bit and take some steps forward. First, how many spiritual gifts are there?

Well, my answer to that is I don't know, and I don't know that we need to have a number. I'm going to put up on screen one way some have tried to summarize them into a group of around 21 drawn from four key texts. Though it's actually not clear from the New Testament that there's an exact number because you have some borderline cases, as I'll discuss. And this list and others like it form the basis of spiritual gifts tests, some of which you may have taken and those can be helpful. but I would want to encourage us to think even more broadly than just a list. And the reason is, I don't think these passages are necessarily giving us an exhaustive and technical list of all gifts. They seem more to be summarizing examples.

They have a lot of overlap. You know, in each passage, you can find exceptions like even in our text. There's no mention of deacons in verse 11, but we know that Paul believes in deacons. By the way, there's a relationship between gifting. an office, though those are not the same thing. But the lists don't seem to be exhaustive, and spiritual gifts seem to be a pretty broad category. It's interesting that in 1st Corinthians 7, Paul even thinks of his own celibacy in relation to charisma, meaning spiritual gifts. And the reason this matters is my pastoral burden here is that Christians sometimes limit

themselves to picking one term on a list in the New Testament. First of all, you might have multiple spiritual gifts. But also, there's so many different kinds of gifts the Holy Spirit can give. I don't think we need to limit them to just these terms in the New Testament. There's so many different roles that are needed. At a previous church I served at, they had a deacon of parking, which I loved, you know, his whole job is helping with the parking on Sunday morning when you're at a large church in the city that can be pretty important. But the point is that God gives all different kinds of gifts for all different kinds of needs. He's not limited. And so rather than feeling constrained, I have to pick my one out, I think we can simply ask the broader question of how has the

Holy Spirit equipped me with abilities or skills that can build up the body of Christ? Second question, does every Christian have a spiritual gift? And that does seem to be implied by the word each here in our passage in Ephesians 4 verse 7, but also 1st Corinthians 12 and even 1st Peter 4, 10. And actually, 1 Corinthians 7, 7 that I just cited earlier. However, let me say that if you've trusted in Jesus and you're not sure what your spiritual gift is yet, that is okay. But if you've given your life to Christ, you have a role to play in his church. He's given you something. You have a role on the team. You know, in the body of Christ, it's not like you get the VIPs over on one side. You know, you go to conferences sometimes and it's like this. There's all the VIPs and then

there's everybody else. That's not how God sees his church. We are all one body and everybody matters. Question number three, how do we discover our spiritual gift? And my answer to this is, I don't know, but it's kind of fun to figure it out. And there's no real formula with this, but you just walk with the Lord and serve. Again, the most important step is, first of all, to become a member of a local church. Get baptized and commit yourself in covenant membership to a church if you're a Christian. in the context of service to the church and seeking to bless others and advance the gospel in your life, it's in that context you're most likely to discover your gift.

You will find it in the context of serving Christ. And as you do, here are some questions that can be helpful to consider. Number one, what do others affirm is edifying when I do it? This is the very clear purpose of spiritual gifts in the New Testament. Spiritual gifts are to edify. They are to bless. They are to build up others. So when someone comes to you and says, hey, when you do such and such, here's what that does.

That builds me up. That helps me. We should really pay attention to that. Number two, what brings me joy when I do it in the church? Spiritual gifts don't just edify other people. They will edify you as well. You see why I love this topic and want to encourage Christians to lean into this. The New Testament has a lot to say about it.

Using your spiritual gift will help you love Jesus more. And so when something you're doing is resonating with others, and it also resonates in your own heart and builds you up in your faith, that's something to really pay attention to. Third question is, what do I have a burden for in the church? I just add this one on. I'm kind of giving traditional categories there of internal calling and external calling. This is another layer that I find helpful, just because I've seen the Lord do this so many times. Someone goes to church and they're bugged by something and they're saying, I wish that was different. So often that is where the Lord may be nudging you to step forward and help.

again, as we lean into ministry, that's where we discover our spiritual gifts. Now, I also need to say, sometimes we have to serve the body of Christ in ways that we are not gifted because just something's got to get done. You know, in our own house work, it would never go over well if we said, well, I'm just not going to mow the yard or take out the trash or unload the dishwasher. Three things I do every morning, or not mow the yard every morning, but I do regularly. Because I'm not gifted at those things that wouldn't go over well. sometimes the gospel should also make us willing to serve in an area that's not our preference,

but here's the glory of this topic. And I want local churches to be full of people using their gifts because I think they flourish when this happens. When every member of the body of Christ is playing their role, the pressure is reduced on all of us. There's less bottlenecking of the ministry when all members of the body lean in and use their spiritual gift. It helps all of us when others are using their gifts.

So let's think about this at one level deeper because spiritual gifts can often go awry and become an occasion for division and envy and confusion and so forth. They're very dynamic. So I get why people are scared. But when spiritual gifts are functioning in a healthy way, Paul says they not only manifest the triumph of Christ, they secondly build up the unity and maturity of the church. Let's just develop this to finish with here. You've got these five terms here in, verse 11, all of which refer to teaching and leadership gifts within the church. Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. There it is. That's the purpose of spiritual gifts,

build up the body. Now, let's make this point, a very simple point, but it's important. The gifts of teaching and leadership in the church are not the only ones. They do not do all the ministry by themselves. And this passage is making the opposite point here. The phrase here in verse 12, in some older translations, had a comma after the word saints. So as though the idea were, God gave these various offices, whether it's four or five or whatever, for equipping the saints, comma, for the work of ministry, comma, for the building

up of the body. But the better way to translate it is to take that comma away. And you can see the difference this makes, to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Here's the point that I want to belabor here is that the leadership and teaching roles within the body of Christ are not there to accomplish all of the ministry by themselves. They are there to equip the entire body for the work of ministry. Ministry happens when everyone is involved, everyone using their gift, like Scottie Pippen playing his role on the team, all of us in the church got to play our role.

in his commentary on this passage, one of my favorite biblical commentators, John Stott, says here is incontrovertible evidence that the New Testament envisages ministry not as the prerogative of a clerical elite, but as the privileged calling of all the people of God. Now, this does not mean that there is no distinctive pastoral leadership. There definitely is. All it means is the pastoral leadership in the church and other offices and roles that God gives do not exhaust. the entire ministry. All of God's people have a role to play.

You know, Stott uses these two images of a bus versus a body. In a bus, you have the driver and the passengers. But in a body, you have everyone playing their part like the Chicago Bulls when each player plays their role. And the body of Christ is more like the body than the bus. And I want us to feel how happy and healthy this is. And as I preach this next part of this sermon,

imagine with me your own local church, if you go to a church or just a church at large, how beautiful it would be if we look more like this. What I've underlined here in verse 13 is the two fundamental purposes or end results of spiritual gifts, unity and maturity. Spiritual gifts bring us together as one, that's unity. That's why it's a tragedy when this topic is divisive.

And spiritual gifts build us up into Christ. They make the church look more like Jesus. That's the phrase, the statutes. of the fullness of Christ there. Now, sometimes we can define things and get clarity by comparing them to their opposite. Here the phrase mature manhood, which is extending the body metaphor for the church, contrasts with the reference to children in the next verse. Paul is saying that churches can remain immature and childish, but one way they grow up into maturity to look more like Christ is through the use of spiritual gifts, everybody playing their part. The other contrast,

is between the unity in the faith in verse 13, and then in verse 14, being tossed to and fro by the waves of false teaching. Paul is saying here that churches can remain gullible and unstable. But when every member of the body is playing their role, when we're using our spiritual gifts, this is one of those things that builds us up into unity and roots us in the truth. and ultimately unity maturity what that means is we grow out to look more like jesus that's the phrase the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ when people come to church they should feel who jesus is the church should feel like jesus holiness but also love esther and i love the redwood trees in northern california the largest living things on earth some of them are over 2,500 years old

This is near where we met. We still miss California and love it out there. Redwood trees are amazing. Usually, the bigger a tree is, the deeper the roots go. Because you need to support more weight at the top. You don't want to be top-heavy and fall over from the wind. But redwood trees don't have deep roots. They're pretty shallow.

They're only six to 12 feet into the ground. So you think, how can they be so huge with shallow roots? And the answer is they intertwine with the roots of other redwood trees. and the connected network of trees enables them to stay upright during storms and floods. This is an image of stability from unity. They stand together, and therefore they stand in strength, rooted. And so it is with the body of Christ. Paul is saying that we grow into gospel unity and maturity when we all play our part,

and we're all interconnected. So what does this mean for us to wrap up with, some application points? Let's highlight four possible dangers we want to steer clear from. The first is the most obvious, and that's neglecting our own gift. Paul warns about this in 1st Timothy 414. He says, to Timothy, don't neglect your gift. And Ephesians 4 would invite us to a simple question. I'd love to just invite everyone who watches this video if you're a follower of Jesus.

First of all, if you're not a follower of Jesus, it's not wrong to be interested in spiritual gifts. That's great if you're interested in that. And the first step, though, is just to receive what Jesus did for you on the course. cross and yield your life to him and accept his forgiveness and come and become a child of God and consecrate yourself to him and get baptized. That's the first step. But then when we use our gifts, how do we do that? What does that look like? I would love to just invite anyone watching this video to say, you know, am I using my gift in the church? And the joy of stepping into that. Sometimes joining a small group can be helpful for that. Sometimes a mentor, mentee relationship can be

helpful for that. If you're a younger person, it's often the case that older people in the church want to mentor you. They just are waiting to be asked. Sometimes it means on a Sunday morning volunteering your time. You know, if you're really not sure what to do, I guarantee you, your pastor and elders have needs and you can help them. And, you know, even if you're not sure what to do, maybe it's like, well, I can't work in child care for this, that, or the other reason. I'm not musically talented. I can't, you know, help with the music. just show up 10 minutes early and sit in the front row. That alone will encourage your pastor, you know, and just have an open heart to try to meet needs,

and God will show you your gift as you go. Maybe your gift is giving, faithful, generous giving. That's a spiritual gift, according to Romans 12, 8. Maybe your gift is intercessary prayer. And you just need to ask people, how can I pray for you and then pray for them on the spot? And God will use that. Whatever it is, let's use our gifts. Here's a second danger, envying someone else's gift.

Because spiritual gifts can be so powerful, it's really easy to fall into this. And envy is the worst. I've preached a sermon on envy. It's just a thief of joy. When we're tempted to this, I think it helps us to remember the words in verse 7, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. And I'll put this back up. You can see that word measure.

So think about this. This is amazing. Jesus gives different kinds of grace, and he measures them out. Now, that does not mean he gives different saving grace. All Christians have the same grace of salvation, but Jesus gives different graces of gifting. I don't have Charles Spurgeon's gifts. No way, you know, you probably don't either. But Jesus has measured out what he's given.

And so if you find ourselves struggling with envy, we need to remember that word measure and come before Christ and say, Lord, I submit to what you have measured out. And then just allow him to fill your heart with his love as well. Here's the third danger, valuing gifts over character. Oh, so much harm is done in the church because of this. Although spiritual gifts serve the maturity of the body of Christ, spiritual gifts and spiritual maturity are not the same thing. And so it helps us to remember that these gifts God gives are entirely of his grace.

That's why they're literally called grace gifts, carismata. And so we should never boast in them. and in the way we use them, we should use them as tools of service. Here's what can help us. When God's given us a gift, we should use it. Literally think of yourself washing someone's feet. Use your gift to serve someone just as Jesus has served us in the gospel. Think of Christ going to the cross for us, and then do that in your heart toward others with your gift.

And that can help us have godly character in the use of our gifts. Here's a fourth danger, last one, valuing some gifts over others. this is very easy to do because some gifts are more visibly spectacular and flashy and impressive in the eyes of the world. But the gifts that are less, so to speak, spectacular are still precious to the heart of Christ and so vital to the life of the church. Think of the gift of mercy or the gift of discernment or the gift of administration. These things are so vital to the body of Christ. And, you know, again, when we have missing, when we're not all playing our part, like Scotty Pippin on the team, you know, there's really missing pieces and we feel the absence of that. And some of our local churches, we are very lopsided.

And maybe the Holy Spirit will send people to you, but we all need to use our gifts to help build up the body to the stature of Christ. Oh boy, what to say to finish with. I guess just the simple prayer is, Lord, strengthen your church by pouring out spiritual gifts and help us all to find us all to find out. our role of joyfully serving in the body of Christ. Here's a final image. Summing it up, we said there's two purposes for spiritual gifts. They manifest the glory of Christ and the triumph of Christ, and they build up the church unto maturity and unity.

It's as though they come downward from Christ's triumph, and then they spread outward for the church's growth and maturity. Let's conclude by remembering that all of that flows to us freely from the gospel. So earlier I mentioned the tour to France and how the winner is the prize and then shares it with his teammates. But there's a way that this illustration breaks down. And that is, those teammates helped him win, but we did not help Jesus win. We were not riding beside him when he descended down into the grave.

We didn't assist him in bearing our sin. If we would have been there, we probably would have been just like the disciples. Total knuckleheads screwing up, you know. It's kind of comforting to know if we feel like we're not great Christians. that's kind of par for the course. We didn't help Jesus do this. And we didn't help him with his resurrection and ascension to heaven, certainly. And so this makes it all the more astonishing, how kind and good he is,

that having won the victory all by himself, he then turns around and shares the spoils with us. So if you're a Christian, you literally get all the favor of God as if you are fully righteous. He gives you the favor of God. He gives it as a free gift. He gives you His Holy Spirit, he gives you a place in his family, he gives you everlasting life. And on top of all of that, he now gives you gifts that you can use to strengthen and bless other people. It's astonishing how good our Savior is.

And so now we want to live off of his generosity and serve others with our spiritual gifts in the same way that he served us. All right, thanks for watching everybody. God bless. See you in the next video.