The ancient Romans had an aphorism that went “Mens sana in corpore sanos.” It means, “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” The ancients were quite correct that the two go together. The mind directs the body. It may do it on a subconscious or even unconscious level, but without signals from the brain, the rest of the body doesn’t function normally. In a reciprocal fashion, if the body doesn’t provide oxygen to the brain through the normal flow of blood, the brain can die, and if the body is being stuffed with too much of the wrong thing (too many carbohydrates, too much alcohol, too many drugs, etc.), the brain won’t function normally.
So, I don’t believe it’s any accident that the Bible so often speaks of the church as the “body” of Christ and of Christ as the “head” of the body. The only problem with pushing the metaphor too far is that, in the case of the church, the body cannot destroy the brain by its disobedience—though it can certainly cause itself to asphyxiate or become disabled. You see, the Presence of God in the Holy Spirit provides the “oxygen” or “breath of life” for the church as the “body” and Christ doesn’t need us to get that “oxygen” because Christ participates in that “breath of life” through the miracle of the Trinity. So, we can’t stop the flow of Spirit/oxygen/breath to the head. We can just fill up the rest of the body with the carbon-dioxide of Sin. Our spiritual dietary habits and lack of spiritual exercise can make us sluggish and unresponsive to the head, but we don’t endanger the head—just ourselves.
That being said, though, we need to understand the church as a “body.” A Connecticut Baptist named A. Roger Williams (a modern pastor, not the one who founded Rhode Island) once preached, “It is true that if religion begins with the individual it begins (my emphasis), but if it ends (my emphasis) with the individual it ends (my emphasis).” [A. Roger Williams, “The Kingdom of God,” in (ed.) Henry J. Young, Preaching the Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 32.] In both Pastor Nick’s sermon from Romans 12, last week, and today’s text, we see that God’s purpose in the believer’s life is for ministry (v. 12) and building up the Body of Christ (v. 12) until we reach the ultimate understanding of and fellowship with Christ (v. 13). Now, it’s interesting to me that both in last week’s text and this week’s text, we see that the Body of Christ is bound together by the Holy Spirit as the Spirit imparts grace gifts. I believe that spiritual gifts, undeserved gifts, are a key to being the church God wants us to be and we’re going to focus on those. But before we dive in, let me sound a warning from the great 20th century theologian, Emil Brunner.
On this subject, he says, “The Spirit does not create ‘offices,’ but ‘ministries.’ Although we must not force the figure [of speech] of the Body of Christ and must not claim ‘organic structure’ for the congregation, the biological concept of ‘function’ is more apposite than the legal concept of ‘office.’” [Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation: Dogmatics Volume III (Trans.) David Cairns (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962 (original German, 1960), p. 43.]
Now, what he’s saying about “function” over “office” can best be illustrated by a terrific story I once heard in a taped message from a marvelous Baptist pastor named Ron Dunn. Dunn’s parable suggested that once upon a time there was a body where the eyes convinced all of the other parts of the body that the gift of SIGHT was the only important gift. They admitted that there were other gifts, but they ranked all of them below SIGHT and wanted all of those in leadership positions within the church to have SIGHT. What’s more, they couldn’t admit that SIGHT was only the right gift for those whom God had called to be eyes. They insisted that if all of the other body parts and organs were really, really spiritual enough and beseeched God enough, they could have the gift of SIGHT, too. They scheduled prayer meetings for the other organs and body parts to pray through for SIGHT. They scheduled training courses on “Learning to See.”
Now in that same body, there were some toes which had low self-esteem. They didn’t understand that God had given them the gift of BALANCE. They didn’t understand that even though they were often hidden and were never given any praise, God had called them to the vital ministry of BALANCE. They felt guilty that their gift couldn’t do more. They felt like they weren’t spiritual enough. So, they prayed and prayed, begging God to give them the gift of SIGHT. And since this is only a story where body parts act like people, I can say that God eventually gave in. Even though God knew the toes didn’t need this gift, God gave them the gift of SIGHT. And do you know what they saw? They saw the inside of a sock.
Like the toes, you may not be satisfied with or even recognize the ministry that God has given you, but if you had the same gift as somebody else, you might not like the result. God knows what is best for us and has graciously given us spiritual gifts according to our ministry—what we do, not our title. This is key. As Brunner said later in his book on the church, “It is precisely upon this variety of gifts and this difference of measure that the Ekklesia rests as a fellowship of mutual enrichment and mutual service (I Cor. 12; Eph. 4:12-16).” [Brunner, Volume III, p. 292.] Where does the theologian get this? He gets it from our text.
Please read from your translation as I share from my own effort.
7) But to each one of us has already been given grace according to the metric of Christ’s [no strings attached] gift,
8) So, it says: “When He ascended to the [lofty] height, He took captives at spearpoint and gave gifts to human beings.”
9) But what is this “He ascended” if it is not also He had descended down into the earth?
10) He, the One who descended is also the One who ascended surpassing all the heavens, in order that He would fill up all things [that is, make it possible for everything to reach its full potential]
11) And He gave some to be apostles, but some to be prophets, but some to be evangelists, but some to be shepherds and teachers
12) For the purpose of training the holy ones for the mission (lit. work or deed) of service in the home construction of the Body of Christ,
13) [a process that will continue] until we arrive in the unity of faith and the experiential knowledge of the Son of God, as a realized human [lit. final or mature man], in the metric of the stature [lit. full bloom, prime] of the fullness [full potential] of Christ,
14) in order that we are no longer underage, tossed about by waves and blown around by every breeze of teaching by means of the deceit of humankind by means of cunning for the purpose of defrauding everyone,
15) INSTEAD, speaking the Truth in love we are to grow up in all respects [like] He who is the head, Christ.
16) out of whom the entire body is joined and knit together through every supporting ligament according as each part is itself working to cause the growth of the body in the home construction of itself in love.
And let’s pray for God’s blessing before we go any further. Holy Father, how ungrateful we must seem to you when we receive the gift of grace, Your Holy Presence, in our lives and try to hide it in the basement of our lives as though it was some unwanted white elephant we planned to “rewrap” and “re-gift” to someone at a later time. Thank You, Lord, for the gift of Your salvation, paid in blood and suffering so that we might be able to grow in love. Help us to accept and use this precious gift wisely in the name of the Giver, our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Last week, Pastor Nick reminded us of people who looked at the gifts (note the plural) of grace and tried to force them into a Christian Zodiac. I know who he was referring to. A fellow by the name of Bill Gothard had a wonderful seminar on what he called the motivational gifts where he took the gifts listed in Romans 12 and demonstrated them as personality types. Now, his teaching is very useful, but there were a lot of people who took those observations and tried to force every personality into a box and suggest that only teachers could teach and only mercy-givers can do pastoral care. Frankly, I think each of us has a motivational gift and that we minister from that strength. Those who primarily display the gift of administration can still do a good job of teaching because they like to organize and organization is a vital part of presenting something so people can understand it. A person who primarily displays the gift of mercy-showing can still provide exhortation because their very empathy causes them to want to encourage another. A teacher can still provide pastoral care, we just have a tendency to try to teach the cause and potential effects of an action before we “prescribe” the direction we believe God wants the counselee to go.
I became even more comfortable with this approach when a charismatic pastor that I respected shared the same basic material with character studies from the Bible. Then, I came along and made sure everyone knew where we were getting that information from the Bible. Let me just flash through these for a moment and, if you’re interested, I’ll share this material in detail with you at another time. Remember though, the object of this demonstration is not for you to be able to classify everybody as having one particular gift in order to force one type of people into a particular ministry. Rather, knowing what the motivational gifts tend to do will help us to accept each other’s diversity and understand each other’s approaches to ministry in a more positive way. God made us different for a reason and God gifted us with different gifts to meet different needs in different ways.
[These lists are presented as separate lists at the end of this message.]
Now, these aren’t the ONLY gifts that God has given us through the Holy Spirit. I Corinthians 12 lists a bunch more, but follows up by telling us that LOVE is more important that any of those individual gifts. And here, we’re told about a gift of grace (singular) and informed that it will help us to build up the church in LOVE. Do you see a pattern, here? Whatever we have to use in God’s service comes directly from God.
It’s a lot like a former colleague experienced at Ziff-Davis Publishing. He was working for ZD in public relations when he was called into Bill Ziff, Jr.’s office. Ziff told him that he wanted to reorganize the company and get a leaner, meaner PR group. To do so, he offered to fund my colleague with the start-up costs of starting his own PR agency and hiring his own staff. Ziff promised to provide the major part of the fellow’s billings, but he wanted everything out of house.
My colleague took the money and started his agency. Ziff was true to his word and, not only did the PR man have all of the ZD business he expected and more, but the rest of the agency had grown faster than expected. Within a couple of years, Ziff called the PR man back into his office. At this point, Ziff expressed concern that he wasn’t getting enough of the agency’s attention. When my colleague started to protest, Ziff stopped him and said that he knew the fellow had built up his agency and that Ziff wanted to compensate him for the business he was going to lose when Ziff acquired his agency completely and brought him back in-house. When Ziff cited a number for buying back the business, my colleague said, “I don’t understand. You funded the entire business in the first place and have been the biggest client the whole time and now, you want to pay for it again?” The PR man shared this with me several years after it had happened and he still had a sense of amazement. How much more generous could someone be than to buy the necessities for a person’s business and then, buy them back?
Yet, that is essentially what God did. Jesus’ death paid the blood debt for our sin and His ascension paved the way for our participation in His triumph. Now, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of grace, we are essentially being given the tools with no strings attached to find fulfillment together in the Church where we get the blessing. In fact, the word used twice in this passage for building up the body of Christ could really be translated with something that Yoon and Peggy (who repair homes and resell them) could relate to. God’s Holy Spirit provides the tools, materials, and labor for us to be able to do “home construction” on the body of Christ, but then we get the privilege of living in the “home,” the body of Christ where we have been privileged to do the work.
Now, the easiest part of this passage to understand and the least controversial is verse 7. We didn’t earn God’s Presence through the Holy Spirit in our lives and we didn’t earn the undeserved, freely-given gift of salvation. The “how” we received the gift in verses 8-10 is a lot harder to understand. To start off with, Ephesians quotes Psalm 68 with a couple of changes. Instead of saying that “You ascended to a lofty height” as the original Hebrew reads, Ephesians uses the third person “He.” Of course, the “You” in the Hebrew refers to God and the “He” in Ephesians refers to Jesus. And, of course, we know that “You” and “He” are, at least in this special case, the same since Father and Son are both God.
The problem comes when we run into the wording about taking captivity (or captives) at spearpoint. The Hebrew states that Kings brought tribute to “You.” So, what does this mean? I ask this question because I have even preached this with a questionable interpretation in the past. Some people have tied these verses, as I do, to the ascension of Christ and the descending into the deep parts of the earth, as I don’t, to the unbiblical descent into hell. The traditional interpretation has been that Jesus went to hell, preached to all of the Old Testament characters who hadn’t heard the gospel, and carried the former captives with Him when He ascended to heaven. But when we look at the text in the light of its Old Testament predecessor, it really depicts God as conqueror on behalf of Israel and the gifts that God provided were the booty God had confiscated from Israel’s enemies and distributed to Israel.
Now, there was a rabbinic interpretation prior to the writing of Ephesians that interpreted the one who ascended as Moses. The ascension had to do with Moses’ ascension to Mt. Sinai and the gifts represented the gift of the Mosaic Covenant. The writer of Ephesians must have been aware of this rabbinic interpretation, so he went back to the idea of God ascending in victory and redefined the victory in terms of what Jesus did for us. So, this passage so identified with the Old Covenant became identified with the New Covenant. Ephesians reminds us that the source of our gifts, our ministries, our relationship to God and each other is God’s victory.
I had always understood this verse as referring, as in the traditional interpretation, to this meaning the liberating of the captives. But as I translated this verse this week, I immediately realized that it was our Lord TAKING captives as opposed to FREEING captives. This caused quite a shift in my thinking. It must mean that when Jesus ascended, He took captive all that was keeping us from being free: fear of death, fear of failure, bonds of time, political powers, economic restriction, or anything else. What a role-reversal! The One who had been taken captive by the religious authorities and turned over to the political authorities has taken away (ultimately) the power of either one to interfere with the Body of Christ.
Oh, they can persecute us, oppress us, and even destroy this life with which we’re familiar, but the final victory is won and their power is restricted. All of our enemies are in God’s custody. So, one of the obvious vital signs of a believer and of a church as the Body of Christ should be that we are using that freedom to grow toward our full potential in Christ and build up each other. Those are the vital signs.
But let’s move to the matter of health. Just as a healthy body requires good diet and exercise that affects all the parts of the body, so does the healthy church body need the functions found in the list of verse 11. Now, I know as soon as we start into this that some of you are going to be bothered by my listing “apostles” as part of our checklist for a healthy church as the “Body of Christ.” After all, in the early church, “apostles” were defined as those who had physically seen Jesus and were sent into the world on behalf of the gospel. According to this strict definition, Paul would have been the last “apostle.”
Of course, today some other denominations and at least one cult calls their leaders, “apostles.” Some of you might have seen this idea in Robert Duvall’s very powerful movie called “The Apostle.” But I’ve been bothered by the fact that Ephesians indicates that the body needs “apostles.” So, I’d like to take the risk of suggesting that while the original “apostles” were indeed those who were sent after “seeing” Jesus, the church still needs emissaries that can be sent. And if the idea is being sent, maybe we should understand this as a healthy church needing to send out missionaries. After all, that would be true to the root idea of the word “apostle,” even if it doesn’t fit the original interpretation perfectly.
I also realize that a lot of people see the idea of “prophets” and immediately start thinking about fortune-tellers, seers of the future. That isn’t what prophecy means in the Bible. Prophecy in the Bible means straight-talking, telling it like it is, a moral no-spin zone. Why do we need them in the church? By speaking plainly about God’s expectations with regard to living right, prophets challenge us all to live right and point us away from that which would tear down the church.
Other members of the “body” are specialists in sharing the good news. They have an incredible facility for explaining Christ’s sacrifice and the possibility of becoming free from guilt and judgment so that anyone can understand it. They don’t always share in exactly the same way. They certainly have a tremendous ability to hear what people are going through, but they have a very positive way of presenting the truth. These are the evangelists—not necessarily the professional ministers with large associations who hold big crusades.
The last function is a compound subject. The last function is shepherding and teaching. Shepherding has to do with guiding and providing care for those who have needs. Teaching has to do with helping everyone gain enough knowledge to start applying it as wisdom.
And why do we have these organic functions in the “Body of Christ?” To train each other as though we were on active military duty! And what is our mission? Our mission is the work of service. We aren’t being trained so that we’ll be able to lord it over the rest of the body, we’re being trained so we can serve each other. And when we are actively involved in training each other and serving each other, we make our bodies stronger like a contractor remodeling or building a home to be incredibly comfortable and efficient.
And what will that “home,” that better “body,” look like? We will have unity in faith. We’ll find enough agreement in our belief, our understanding of God’s Presence and Purpose that we’ll invest our lives in learning to experience God’s Presence and Purpose. The word used for knowledge in verse 13 is the word for experiential knowledge as opposed to knowledge of facts. Before I took Driver Training in high school, I had some book knowledge about driving. I’d read books and watched films about driving, but when I went out on the road for the first time, it was an entirely different process. And it meant a lot more. As a healthy body of Christ, we’re moving from book knowledge about God into the “Believer Training” phase of our relationship.
And the purpose of this “Believer Training” is so that we can start becoming the people we’re supposed to be. Want to know if you’re healthy? Then, you’re becoming more like the example of the perfect, complete, final human that Jesus showed us how to be. Are you becoming more like Jesus?
But if we’re going to talk about health, we also have to talk about what’s unhealthy. What’s unhealthy in the church? Verse 14 tells us not to act like underage children. This figure of speech has two perspectives. First of all, it means not to act like spoiled children who don’t understand very much and are insistent upon having their way all of the time. Church isn’t all about having your own way. Remember, it’s about service. Second, in the ancient world, one didn’t pay a lot of attention to children who hadn’t attained the age of inheritance. But remember, Ephesians has already told us that our inheritance became possible for us (filled to all fullness) when Christ took captivity captive. We don’t have any excuse not to grow because we inherited when Jesus was victorious!
We’re also not supposed to be tossed about by waves, the changing fads, ideas, and customs of time. You realize that the lighter weight the boat is, the more it is going to be at the mercy of a storm. We need to protect ourselves by being anchored to God’s person. We need to protect ourselves by allowing God to give us some weight, some gravity, in terms of meaning and purpose for our lives.
Along with not being tossed by waves, we’re warned about being blown about by every little gust of wind. At least the waves reflect a storm, powerful trends and forces that can toss us about if we’re not well-anchored to God, but the second part uses a word for a little gust of wind. It isn’t a tornado of logic or a whirlwind of science that can toss us about if we aren’t grounded in the church.
And what are these little gusts of wind? They are deceitful teachings. But how do we know when they are deceitful? The text goes on to tell us. If they’re designed to enrich the teachers and defraud the others, they are deceitful. Where the body of the church is supposed to be making each other better, the competing doctrines are designed to take advantage of others. When L. Ron Hubbard started Scientology, he said he was starting a religion to get rich. He did, but he didn’t start a CHURCH, no matter what they call that organization based in Hollyweird.
So, we come full circle. Our purpose is to keep sharing God’s Truth with each other in order that we can be a fully-functioning, totally-integrated, well-knit, responsive organism with Christ as our Head, our Brain. Anything less is a broken body. What kind of body will we be? Will we be healthy or diseased? If we want to be healthy, we need to lift each other up.
Motivational Gifts (Bill Gothard’s basic descriptions with / George Johnson’s choice of Biblical Characters to model the gift with my scripture references to beef up the few provided by Johnson)
Prophecy
1. Needs to express thoughts and ideas verbally, especially with regard to right and wrong / Peter spoke more often than any other disciple in the Gospels and became the spokesman for the early church (Acts 2:4; 3:12).
2. Tends to make quick judgments on what is observed and to speak up quickly / Peter spoke FIRST more than any other disciple (Matthew 14:28; 15:25; 16:26; 17:4, 19:27; 26:33; John 6:68; 13:6).
3. Has an amazing ability to sense when someone or something is not what it appears to be (and reacts harshly to dishonesty and hypocrisy)/ Peter’s condemnation of the deception of Ananias and Sapphira resulted in their death (Acts 5:3-10).
4. Desires to reject those who offend so that justice will be done and others will be warned / Peter was reluctant to forgive his offender and asked how long he had to put up with him (Matthew 18:2).
5. Is generally open about personal faults and failures, being honest with oneself as well as with others / Peter fell at Jesus’ knees and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." (Luke 5:8).
6. Tends to be impulsive in actions and to be wholeheartedly involved in whatever one chooses to do / Peter was eager to walk on water (Matthew 14:28). He forbade Jesus to wash his feet and then, wanted Him to wash his hands and head, as well (John 13:6-15).
7. Tends to be painfully direct when correcting others / Peter rebuked Jesus Himself for a course of action which Peter did not think was right for Him to take (Mark 8:31-33).
8. Desires to give open evidences of loyalty and total commitment / Peter assured Jesus that he would never deny Him, and he defended Jesus by cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Matthew 26:33; John 18:10)
9. Willing to suffer for doing what is right / Peter rejoiced in being counted worthy to suffer shame for Jesus when he was beaten for obeying God rather than man (Acts 5:29-42).
10. Is very persuasive in defining what is perceived as wrong (doesn’t mince words) / God brought conviction to thousands as Peter pointed out, "…ye have taken (Jesus), and by wicked hands have crucified and slain (Him)…" (Acts 2:14-47).
Service
1. Is able to see practical needs and wants to meet them / Paul confirmed Timothy’s capacity for meeting needs (Philippians 2:20).
2. Enjoys serving when it frees others to do other important ministries (not just to keep busy)/ Timothy served Paul so Paul could carry on the ministry (Philippians 2:22, I Corinthians 16:10, Acts 18:5).
3. Tends to disregard personal health and comfort in serving others / Timothy served in spite of his physical ailments and weaknesses (I Timothy 5:23).
4. Has difficulty in saying "No," resulting in a tendency to become overbooked, discouraged, and sidetracked / Timothy was warned twice by Paul not to get sidetracked (I Timothy 4:9, 21).
5. Especially enjoys providing for physical needs and comforts, as well as having an ability to remember likes and dislikes / Timothy was instructed to bring Paul his cloak, books, and parchment (II Timothy 4:13).
6. Needs appreciation to confirm that services are both appreciated and valued satisfactory / Paul gave Timothy more instruction and praise than any other helper (I Timothy 4:6, 16, II Timothy 1:2-9, 3:10, 14).
7. Has a strong desire to be with others because it provides more serving opportunities / Timothy is almost always working with others (Acts 16:2, 17:14-15, 19:22, 20:4, I Thessalonians 1:1+).
8. Enjoys short-range projects, but has a tendency to become frustrated with long-range responsibilities / On two occasions, Paul had to urge Timothy to stick with the task (I Timothy 4:16, II Timothy 2:3).
9. Has a tendency to feel inadequate and unqualified for spiritual leadership because of his/her "down-to-earth" ministry / Paul had to reassure Timothy that he was qualified by ordination and training (I Timothy 4:14, II Timothy 3:10-14, II Timothy 1:5).
Teaching
1. Needs to validate truth and certify statements made by others / Luke’s intent in writing was to help all be CERTAIN about truth (Luke 1:4).
2. Tends to validate new truth by testing against established systems of truth / Luke correlates Christ’s words to Old Testament prophecies and his own writing to other accounts (Luke 1:1-3).
3. Gives teaching credentials before teaching and wants them from others before listening / Luke emphasizes his qualifications at the start of his gospel (Luke 1:2-3).
4. Desires to present truth in a systematic sequence / Luke tried to present the gospel in a chronological approach (Luke 1:1-3).
5. Loves researching and giving as many facts on a subject as possible / Luke’s gospel is the longest and includes material left out of the others. He emphasizes the completeness of his work (Acts 1:1).
6. Emphasizes the importance of accuracy in reporting/sharing / Luke gives precise descriptions of events, conversations, and physical conditions [as with a "great fever" in Luke 4:38].
7. Is often alert to factual details not noticed or mentioned by others / Luke’s gospel has more names, offices, cities, dates, etc. than any of the other gospels.
8. Tends to remain silent until information has been hear, observed, and discussed / As opposed to other gospel writers, Luke doesn’t interject his personal comments.
9. Needs to exercise diligence and endurance in research and preparation / Luke demonstrated his faithful determination by remaining with Paul in prison until the end (II Timothy 4:10-11).
Exhortation
1. Motivated to urge people to their full spiritual maturity in Christ / Paul wanted to help everyone attain maturity in Christ (Romans 12:1-2; I Corinthians 1:4-8; Colossians 1:28-29, etc.).
2. Able to discern where a person is in spiritual growth and to speak to that level / Paul saw the Corinthians as spiritual infants (I Corinthians 3:1), the Cretans as spoiled children (Titus 1:12), and the Philippians as growing (Philippians 3:13-14).
3. Desires to give precise, practical steps of action in urging people to grow spiritually / Paul gives legal advice (I Corinthians 6:1-10), marital advice (I Corinthians 7:1-16), and business advice (Colossians 3:22-4:1).
4. Desires to explain truth with logical reasoning to make it more likely to be accepted / Paul uses the rhetorical question masterfully (Romans 6:1, 7:24, 8:33-35, Galatians 3:9) and syllogisms (I Corinthians 15:12-19) to convey truth.
5. Has capacity to visualize spiritual achievement for people and use this to motivate them for action / Paul used his life as an example for fellow workers (Philippians 3:17, II Timothy 4:7-8, I Corinthians 11:1).
6. Desires face-to-face discussion to ensure a positive hearing and response / Paul constantly longed to see other believers and have conferences (I Thessalonians 2:17, 3:10, II Timothy 1:4, etc.).
7. Can identify with people of different types and backgrounds in order to gain a wider hearing / Paul adapted for his audience (I Corinthians 9:19-23, Acts 17:16ff, Galatians 2:1-2, etc.).
8. Motivated to bring harmony between diverse groups of believers / Paul emphasized reconciliation between opposing groups (I Corinthians 3:3-4, Philippians 2:2, II Corinthians 9:12-14).
9. Recognizes in personal problems the heavenly sandpaper that enables further spiritual growth / Paul recognized that his infirmities and weakness released power in his life (II Corinthians 1:5, 4:17, 12:9).
Giving
1. Discerns wise investments to have more money to give / Matthew’s gospel says more about money than any other (Matthew 6:20-21, 24, 31-33, 10:8-10, 14:13-21, 15:32-39, 16:26, etc.).
2. Desires to give quietly without public notice / Matthew is the only gospel writer who emphasizes the need to give secretly (Matthew 6:2-4).
3. Motivated to give to the Lord, not influenced by human giving campaigns / Matthew notes that when we give to the needs of other believers, we give to Christ (Matthew 25:35-46).
4. Desires to give gifts of high quality and value / Matthew records in greater detail the costly gifts given to Jesus (Matthew 2:11, 26:6-13, 27:57-60).
5. Has capability for testing faithfulness and wisdom by how funds are handled / Matthew reveals the foolishness and rebellion of those who misuse their resources (Matthew 21:33-34, 25:14-30).
6. Tends to practice personal frugality and be content with basics / Matthew had wealth and wealthy friends, but he chose to leave all to follow Jesus (Luke 5:27-32).
7. Is alert to what other people do with their money / Matthew is the only Gospel writer to explain what the religious leaders did with the 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 27:3-8; 28:11-15).
8. Has capacity for seeing financial needs overlooked by others / Matthew records Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees for not supporting their aged parents (Matthew 15:3-7) and details the fairness of paying ALL the laborers (Matthew 20:1-16)
9. Desires to use giving as a way of motivating others to give / Matthew was a tax collector. His job was to motivate people to give (Luke 5:29).
Administration
1. Able to visualize the final result of a major project / Nehemiah visualized the goal of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem as a first step to recovery (Nehemiah 1:2-3, 2:5).
2. Capable of breaking down major goals into smaller, achievable tasks / Nehemiah accomplished the huge task of rebuilding by having many smaller groups working on smaller sections (Nehemiah 3:1-31).
3. Assesses the resources needed to reach a goal / Nehemiah created a logical requisition of resources from the king (Nehemiah 2:6-8, 10:32-39, 12:44, and 13:3).
4. Tends to remove himself/herself from distracting details in order to focus on the ultimate goal / Nehemiah didn’t get involved in the actual building, but removed the obstacles that would hinder the workers, such as financial pressures (Nehemiah 5:1-13).
5. Has willingness to endure negative reaction from others in order to reach the goal / Nehemiah had opposition from within and without in his rebuilding project (Nehemiah 4:18, 6:5-14, 13:4-9).
6. Needs loyalty and confidence from those directed and served or loses confidence / Nehemiah recruited a large assembly to stand against the opposition and required oaths of cooperation from them (Nehemiah 5:1-13).
7. Knows what should and shouldn’t be delegated to others / Nehemiah delegated the work on the walls, but personally dealt with the opposition (Nehemiah 4:13).
8. Able to inspire and encourage workers by cheerfulness / Nehemiah had a cheerful spirit and was skillful in challenging and encouraging his workers (Nehemiah 4:14).
9. Has joy and fulfillment in seeing everything come together / Nehemiah expressed his joy in the completed task by appointing singers and scheduling a revival (Nehemiah 7:1-2, 8:1-18, 12:27-43).
Mercy
1. Able to see genuine love and vulnerability in relationships / John uses the word love more than it is used in any other book of the Bible.
2. Needs deep friendships with mutual commitment / John established a very close relationship with Jesus and with Peter, referring to himself as the disciple Jesus loved (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, etc.).
3. Tends to react harshly when intimate friends are rejected / John and James wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans who rejected Jesus (Luke 9:54).
4. Has greater concern over mental joy or distress than the physical counterpart / John wrote to give readers: joy, fellowship, hope, confidence, and cast out fear (I John 1:3-4, 3:2, 17, 4:18).
5. Tends to attract people who are having emotional stress / Even many of the disciples confided in John (John 13:23-26).
6. Needs to measure acceptance by physical, emotional closeness / John sought out the closest physical place to Christ (John 3:23).
7. Desires to remove the causes of hurts even when that might reduce the chance to grow from them / John wanted to stop believers from hating and hurting each other (I John 3:11-15).
8. Tends to avoid decisions and firmness unless eliminating greater hurts / John was initially a "follower," but after a crisis, he became very bold and decisive (Acts 4:13, 19-20).
9. Tends to be attracted to those with the spiritual gift of prophecy (as a team) / John spent more time with Peter than any other disciple (Luke 22:8, Acts 3:1-11, 4:13-19, 8:14).
