1:11
Paul wanted to see them, indeed longed to see them, in order to impart some “spiritual gift”. Now in the Greek the word for gift is charisma, ie the word from which we get the term charismatic gifts, and it literally means a gift of grace. It is highly unlikely that we should think that Paul was intending to impart what we often think of as a “spiritual gift”, eg the gift of tongues, or prophesy etc. Rather we should take it in a much more general sense. He was desiring to spiritually strengthen the church. We sometimes tend to isolate the “spiritual gifts” from general church life, though I think this is less common now. All of life is meant to be infused with the power of Holy Spirit, and at times this will include what we normally think of as the spiritual gifts. Paul desires to make the Romans strong in their faith. We should all seek to be strong in faith. When we see the church weak we should seek to strengthen it.
1:12
Paul is not adopting some air of superiority. Instead his goal is that they encourage each other. It is their faith that will encourage each other. We do not encourage one another when all we do is demonstrate how good we are at something. This can easily make the other person just feel inferior and discouraged. It is our faith in Christ that counts, and anything worthwhile that we achieve is achieved by faith.
Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment