Gifts of the Spirit & the Hidden Secret of the Early Church

St. Paul’s conception of the fellowship with Christ which is the basis of the Church, comes out most clearly in the way he speaks of the “gifts” of grace, the charismata, which manifest the abiding presence of our Lord in His Church and His continuing fellowship with His people.

He enumerates them over and over again. He points to “apostles,” the missionary heralds of the Gospel; to “prophets,” to whom the Spirit had given special powers for the edification of the brethren; to “teachers,” who are wise with the wisdom of God, and have those divine intuitions which the apostle calls “knowledge”; to “pastors,” who feed the flock in one community. He speaks of “helps” (ἀντιλήψεις) or powers to assist the sick, the tempted and the tried; of “insight” to give wise counsels; of gifts of rule (κυβερνήσεις); of gifts of healing, and in general of all kinds of service. They are all gifts of the Spirit, and are all so many different manifestations of the presence of Jesus and of the living fellowship which His people have with Him.

These various gifts are bestowed on different members of the Christian society for the edification of all, and they serve to show that it is one organism, where the whole exists for the parts, and each part for the whole and for all the other parts. They also show that the Christian society is not a merely natural organism; there is divine life and power within it, because it has the abiding presence of Christ; and the proof of His presence is the possession and use of these various “gifts,” all of which come from the one Spirit of Christ in fulfilment of the promise that He will never leave nor forsake His Church. Their presence is a testimony to the presence of the Master which each Christian community can supply. It is a Church of Christ if His presence is manifested by these fruits of the Spirit which come from the exercise of the “gifts” which the Spirit has bestowed upon it; for the Church as well as the individual Christian is to be known by its fruits.

“Christian society is not a merely natural organism; there is divine life and power within it, because it has the abiding presence of Christ.”

This sense of hidden fellowship with its Lord was the secret of the Church. It was a bond uniting its members and separating them from outsiders more completely than were the initiated into the pagan mysteries sundered from those who had not passed through the same introductory rites. While Jesus lived their fellowship with Him was the external thing which distinguished them from others. They were His disciples (μαθηταὶ) gathered round a centre, a Person whom they called Rabbi, Master, Teacher—names they were taught not to give to another. They shared a common teaching and drank in the same words of wisdom from the same lips; but even then they could not be called a “school,” for they were united by the bond of a common hope and a common future. They were to share in the coming kingdom of God in and through their relation to their Master. After His departure the other side of the fellowship became the prominent external thing—their relation to each other because of their relation to their common Lord. New names arose to express the change, names suggesting the relation in which they stood to each other. They were the “brethren,” the “saints,” and they had a fellowship (κοινωνία) with each other. This thought of fellowship was the ruling idea in all Christian organization. All Christians within one community were to live in fellowship with each other; different Christian communities were to have a common fellowship. Visible fellowship with each other, the outcome of the hidden fellowship with Jesus, was to be at once the leading characteristic of all Christians and the bond which united them to each other and separated them from the world lying outside.

– Thomas M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries