X - ‘GIFTS’ AND ‘GRACE’

Summary

Having thus examined the chief passages of Ephesians, which now for the first time in St Paul's extant Epistles clearly set forth the conception of a single universal Ecclesia, we must return to the passages of various dates in which he expounds his doctrine of χαρίσματα, and exemplifies it by various functions within the Ecclesia. The three passages are 1 Cor. xii. 4—11 and 28—31; Rom. xii. 6—8; Eph. iv. 7—12.

The meaning of the terms

Χάρισµα comes of course from χαρίζομαι; it means anything given of free bounty, not of debt, contract, or right. It is thus obviously used in Philo, and as obviously in Rom. v. 15, vi. 23 (the gift of God is eternal life); and less obviously but with I believe essentially the same force in the other passages of St Paul, as also in the only other New Testament place, 1 Pet. iv. 10. In these instances it is used to designate either what we call ‘natural advantages’ independent of any human process of acquisition, or advantages freshly received in the course of Providence; both alike being regarded as so many various free gifts from the Lord of men, and as designed by Him to be distinctive qualifications for rendering distinctive services to men or to communities of men. In this sense they are Divine gifts both to the individual men in whom so to speak they are located, and to the society for whose benefit they are ordained.