The Holy Spirit #5: What are the Gifts of the Holy Spirit? (Part 2)
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at 1 Corinthians 12:14–26 and shows that the Holy Spirit's gifts aren't only meant to be given but received, bringing accountability, perspective, and support through others. For anyone who'd rather go it alone, it's an invitation to stay close to community and open to what God does through people.
Summary and Application
Picture showing up to a Christmas gathering empty-handed and being showered with gifts. We'd call that person a kid. Now picture someone who shows up and says, "I only want to give. Don't give me anything." We'd call that person Scrooge. Either way, something about the spirit of the occasion has been missed.
Continuing the series on the Holy Spirit, Kurt picked up where last week left off. We usually talk about spiritual gifts as something we bring: "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good" (1 Corinthians 12:7). That's true. But gifts are also meant to be received, and the gifts of the Spirit are received through people, in community. For many of us, receiving is the harder part.
In 1 Corinthians 12:14–26, Paul's picture of the church as a body points to three things we can only receive through the gifts of others.
Accountability: Without It, We're Dangerous to Ourselves
"Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason stop being part of the body" (1 Corinthians 12:14–15).
The body analogy makes a simple claim: we need each other. Kurt suggested that one reason people prefer to experience church at a distance (good music, a good message, then on their way) is that they don't actually want accountability. Few of us love the word.
But when we're known, the way we live is on display to people who care about us. Without that, we can drift into a life where we decide everything for ourselves and never let anyone shape how we think. Kurt has watched people's beliefs and lifestyles slowly go askew, often because they weren't in community talking about things that mattered. It's like a log pulled out of the fire and set off on its own. In time, it just burns out.
Perspective: Without It, We Become Shallow
"If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?" (1 Corinthians 12:17).
God placed the parts of the body "just as he wanted them to be" (12:18), and they're different on purpose. Left to ourselves, we tend to seek out only the voices that already agree with us, whether that's a sports podcast or a church. Keep narrowing it down, and eventually it's you and three people. That's how groupthink and echo chambers form.
A healthy church agrees on the essentials but doesn't agree on everything, and that's a gift. Sometimes the perspective comes from people further down the road, like the couple who told Kurt, as a young father, that with older kids it worked better to keep asking questions than to keep giving answers.
Most of all, we need others to keep pointing us back to the gospel. Without that perspective, self-righteousness creeps in. Kurt pointed to Alcoholics Anonymous, where members introduce themselves in the present tense, "I'm an alcoholic," rather than "I used to be." The church is healthiest when we remember we're all still in need of Jesus, not people who've figured it out.
Support: Without It, We're Isolated
"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!' On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" (1 Corinthians 12:21–22).
Stub your toe and your whole body notices. "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it" (12:26). We need others to carry us when we can't carry ourselves, to supplement what we lack, and to protect us in hard seasons. Kurt compared it to watering a lawn in a dry fall: it's not flashy, but you can see exactly where the water reached.
The tragedy is that when people need support most, they often run away from the body instead of toward it, afraid of looking weak or of others seeing the mess.
Proximity and Receptivity: How We Receive
So what does it take to receive these gifts? Two things.
Proximity. When a flight is delayed, the airline wants you near the gate, because you don't know when it will board. We don't know when the Holy Spirit will use someone's word, a song, or a scripture to say exactly what we needed. If we're not close, we'll miss it.
Receptivity. Paul's repeated "if" in verses 15–16 ("if the foot should say…") describes people who opt out. Receiving requires openness. And sometimes the gifts aren't dramatic. You probably can't remember what you ate last October 10th, but skip enough meals and you'll be malnourished. Spiritual community works the same way: the cumulative effect changes the trajectory of your life.
God designed us to live in community so that the gifts of others bless us and our gifts bless others. The invitation is simple: "God, I'll put myself in proximity and live with receptivity to what you want to do through the lives of others."
For Reflection
Where in your life is it easier to give than to receive, and what do you think makes receiving feel risky?
What's one place you could put yourself "near the gate" this month, so that God has room to work through the people around you?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "What are the Gifts of the Holy Spirit? (Part 2)" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (1 Corinthians 12:14–26, October 10–11, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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No referenced material.
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Let's pray together. God, as we're gathered here this weekend around Pittsburgh in the different locations of Orchard Hill Online, we ask that you would speak to each of us, whatever our week has brought our way. God, I ask that my words reflect your word in content, in tone, and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So I want you to imagine with me that you are headed to a Christmas gathering. When you go to the Christmas gathering, you don't bring any gifts. You just show up, and you're showered with gifts. Now, what would we call you if that happened? A kid, right? Kids show up without gifts. And some of you are like, "Well, I'm just a big kid, so I still show up without a lot of gifts."
And yet when you get older, if you go to a Christmas gathering and you say, "I only want to give gifts. I don't want anyone to give me anything," what would we call you? Scrooge. Right? At that point, we'd say you are somebody who is not in the spirit of all that this is. And here's why I bring this up.
We've been talking about the Holy Spirit the last several weeks. We've tried to understand who the Holy Spirit is, what the Holy Spirit does, the work of the Spirit. And we talked about the gifts of the Spirit last week. So often when people talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they'll say that God has given you a gift, and you should use your gift for the good of humanity, for the common good, which is the phrase we talked about. And yet when you think about gifts, gifts are something that are given, yes, given in a sense to God, but they're also something that you receive.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are given through people and received ultimately in an experience in community. Without a chance to be in community, the gifts of the Spirit will just be something that's out there. So today we're going to spend some time talking about how to receive gifts, not just how to bring our gifts, so that we can be the kind of people who bring something and receive something.
My guess is that for many of us, it's harder to receive than it is to give. We find ourselves more comfortable in a role where we say, "I bring something," rather than "I receive something." In 1 Corinthians 12:7 we see this: "Now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." Again, we talked about this at length last weekend: each person who is a follower of Jesus has been given a spiritual gift, has been made in God's image to have something that benefits the church, the community, and the world, that you use in the church, as the church, in order to bring about human flourishing. And yet a lot of times we try to use our gifts alone.
There's an old account that if you have an ox and you want to move something, a single ox can move about 1,500 pounds. An ox that's yoked to another ox can move about 3,000 pounds. And if those two oxen are related, if they're a pair, they can move about 8,000 pounds. The idea is that together, you have the capacity to be part of something much greater than you do alone. But what I want to focus on today in 1 Corinthians 12 is not so much what you can be a part of, but what you can receive by being part of community. These are some of the benefits, or the gifts, of being part of Christian community.
I recognize that some of us who are gathered would say, "I'm not sure that I want to be part of the church." My hope is that as we talk about this today, you would hear it and maybe say, "What I'd really like is to be part of community in the way that you describe, even if I haven't experienced it."
Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to say there are three benefits in this little section of 1 Corinthians 12 that you can receive only, ultimately, through the spiritual gifts of others. The first is accountability. We see this in verses 14 and 15. We didn't have this section read, but it says, "Even so, the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, 'Because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body,' it would not for that reason stop being part of the body."
Do you notice the analogy here goes to the body again, the hand, the foot? It's saying you need each other. A lot of times, the reason people don't like the idea of church, or at least want to experience church by coming in and receiving things at a grand corporate level ("I'm coming in, give me good music, give me a good message, and let me go about my way"), is that they don't actually want accountability. Maybe we'll say, "Well, I'll have a little here, a little there." But accountability is something that, generally, we don't love the word, if we're honest with ourselves, unless we've gotten to a place where we say, "I really need accountability."
One of the things we've said around Orchard Hill for years is that the way we engage in community is by showing up, growing up, and stepping up. Showing up means coming on the weekends as regularly as we possibly can. Growing up means being part of a group. Stepping up means using something that God has given us to participate in the mission of what God is doing. But here's what accountability really does: when we're known, and people know us, the way we go about living our Christian life, the way we go about living our life, period, is on display to the people around us. Without accountability, we're actually dangerous to ourselves. What I mean is that without accountability, we can live a life in which we just decide everything for ourselves, and we're never part of a conversation with other people who shape the way we think.
I can tell you stories of people who started out down a path of faith, and then at some point their way of thinking, their doctrine, went askew, and they said, "I'm not sure I believe this anymore." A lot of times it's because they weren't in community talking about these things in ways that really mattered. And it certainly happens in terms of lifestyle. What happens if you're not part of community? It's like a log that's taken out of a fire and put on its own: in time, without the fire, you just burn out.
Maybe another way to think about this is exercise class. Have any of you ever said, "I'm going to get in shape," and tried to do it alone? A lot of people find that if they actually sign up for a class, go to a gym, have some kind of accountability, it's way easier than if they simply say, "I'm just going to do this alone." So one of the things that being on the receiving end of people's spiritual gifts does (and again, you may need to listen to last week to totally understand that reference) is give us a place where we say, "I'm part of something bigger." The hand and foot analogy here is saying you can't just say, "I don't need you," or "You're irrelevant."
Then there's a second thing here, and I'm going to call it perspective. In verse 17 it says, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?" So again, the analogy is that together, people are a body, an ecosystem. He's saying, if the whole body were an eye, you wouldn't hear. If the whole body were ears, you wouldn't see. You need one another.
The reason I call this perspective is that without other people around us, our perspective becomes just our perspective. Now, I understand that, especially in today's world, with the increase in podcasts and niche things you can listen to, many of us simply want unanimity. In other words, we want everyone to think like we think, to affirm what we already believe rather than have anybody challenge our way of thinking. And what happens when you get there, and I've talked about this before, especially in terms of churches, is that you increasingly look for more and more people who see everything the way you see it. So you keep going to smaller and smaller churches until it's you and three people.
Have you seen this happen? For some people, it's, "Well, I need to have everybody agree with me," and sooner or later that just isn't realistic. So you have three people. And if you don't have the perspective of other people, you actually become shallow. Verse 17 is part of this section, but verses 18 and 19 say, "But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?" And then verse 20: "As it is, there are many parts, but one body."
So what is he saying? He's saying, I want you to understand that I've given all these different parts because they see and understand things differently. If you end up with just a group of people who think only like you think, what you'll have in time is what I'd call groupthink, where you dare not say anything different from what anybody else says, because you all have to say the same thing. Another term that's been used in recent days is an echo chamber, where you're just reinforced in your own ideas. But a healthy church is actually a church where people don't agree on everything. Yes, there are essentials on which it's important to have agreement, but this means there will be times when you don't see the world the same way as everybody else in your small group. And that's a good thing, because now you're getting other perspectives, where people are helping you think and see the world a little differently than you might on your own.
In fact, I think sometimes the multiplication of all the online content today, as much as I consume it and like it, is a little bit of a damage to broader thinking. Why do I say that? Because do you know what we all do? We all look for things that we agree with. Not often something that's different. Look at the things you listen to. Let me use the Steelers world as an example. If I listen to a podcast about the Steelers, I don't want a podcast from somebody who has a radically different view than mine about what the Steelers should do to fix the problems they appear to have right now. What I want is somebody with a strong opinion where I'm like, "Yeah, that's good," instead of somebody who has a nuanced idea and a bunch of ideas about how it can be.
What I'm saying is that when it comes to matters of faith and life and how we live, so often we say, "I just want people who see it like I see it." What we actually need from the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 is people who aren't just like us. That's the only way we won't end up being somewhat shallow, because without perspective, we'll end up being shallow.
The perspective we probably need as much as anything, over and over again, is to be reminded of the truth of the message of Jesus Christ. We don't somehow believe something once and then say, "Now I move on to the deeper, better things and grow up into something else." Instead, we actually need to continue to come back to the message of our neediness and our sinfulness before a holy God. And that is something we need help to continue to get to. Because do you know what lives inside all of us without perspective? Self-righteousness, which means, "I think I do it right. I think other people do it wrong. I think I have it down." What we need is the gospel message over and over and over again, to keep bringing us to a point where we say, "I need Jesus Christ."
One of the beautiful things about Alcoholics Anonymous is the way the meetings start. You've probably heard this whether you've ever been to a meeting or not. One of the ways the meeting starts is with, "Hi, I'm so-and-so, and I'm an addict." And they insist on this all the time. The reason they insist on it is that they never want people who come to the meetings to start saying, "I used to be." They want them to say, "I still struggle," so we're all on the same page. The point of the meeting is to say, "I need perspective from other people who aren't just like me, so that I can navigate what's in front of me." And as soon as people in church world start thinking that we're not basically spiritual addicts but that we're spiritual savants, people who have figured it out, we've moved from the message of the gospel to a religion that says, "Come be like me," rather than "Come find Jesus Christ."
And it isn't just that. We need people who have gone before us, sometimes, to give us perspective. I've told this story before, but I have four boys. They're older now, but when they were little, I remember talking to a couple who were part of the church family, who were ahead of me by a number of years. Their kids were grown and doing well. I remember asking, "What did you do that worked?" I'll never forget the woman. She and her husband turned, and she said, "One of the things I realized was that when my kids hit a certain age, it wasn't really effective to tell them what they should do anymore." And some of you are like, "What?" But that was her insight. I thought, "That's not bad." And I asked, "So what did you do?" She said, "I just asked questions over and over and over again until they got to a conclusion."
I remember hearing her say that, and it was one of those moments in my journey as a parent where I said, "That makes sense to me," because I was coming into an era where I could no longer just say, "Hey, this is what I think you should do." The kids' minds were becoming active enough that they were able to say, "I've got my own ideas." So I started to say, "I need to ask questions." That is exactly the kind of insight we need from people who aren't just like us. Maybe they're ahead of us. Maybe they see the world differently. Because without the perspective of other people of faith, you and I will end up being shallow.
Then there's one last benefit of being on the receiving end of gifts, and that is support. This is in verses 21 and 22, and then in verse 26. Verse 21 says, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you.' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you.'" Have you ever had something not work on your body, and then the whole body feels compromised? Like you stub your toe, and all of a sudden it's hard to walk. That's what he's talking about here. He's saying that when something doesn't work, you can't just say, "You don't matter." In other words, everything is needed. On the contrary, verse 22 says, "Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable."
Verse 26 says it this way: "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." What is he doing? He's simply saying that you need other people to support you, other parts of the body, to carry you when you can't carry yourself through something, to supplement you when you don't feel like you have enough to bring, to protect you at different times of your life. Without support, we'll end up feeling isolated in our own journey. Now, I would guess that some of us who are gathered might feel isolated even if we've been around church, this church or a different church, for a long time, because we're walking through something and we might say, "I don't feel like people are coming all around me." But the idea is that we all need gifts from other people.
Sometimes it's encouragement, sometimes exhortation, sometimes teaching, gifts where we didn't even know we needed it, but we needed a moment to hear something, and it sparks us forward. Sometimes we need the gifts that come from worship music, where all of a sudden we're singing a song and it brings clarity. But if we're not around and receiving gifts, we don't hear those words. Maybe it's a little like this: we're in the fall season here, and a lot of times this time of year lawns get very dry, and when they get dry, they stop growing. But if you are still watering your lawn, you can see where it's watered and where it's not. Support is like water. It's not great fanfare, but it gives a layer of support that helps something to thrive.
But you know what is true for many of us, just because of the era and the place in which we live: we feel like, "I need to do it on my own. I don't need anybody else. Whatever I'm going to do, I need to do on my own." But this passage seems to say that you need the whole of the body to help you navigate your life. Maybe a way to think about this is that sometimes you need the large group gathering, 50 plus people, worshiping, receiving, teaching. Sometimes you need groups in the mid-size range, where you know a lot of people. And sometimes you need the smaller group, where people know what you're walking through.
But what happens sometimes is that people will know this intellectually, but they'll resist the care, either when they need it most or in the moment. When I say when you need it most, what I mean is that sometimes something will happen, and instead of running into the body, people will run away from the body. They'll say, "I don't want people to know about this. I don't want to seem weak. I don't want anybody to know the mess that I made." But that misses the whole point of this analogy. It's why I talked a moment ago about AA: when there's a sense of saying, "We are spiritual addicts, we're all in need," that's when we're able to receive the gifts of others.
And here's what this means. If I were to ask, "What's the big 'so what'?" If you are going to receive the gift of accountability, the gift of support, what is offered in people, it's going to require at least two things. First, it's going to require proximity. Do you notice how the analogy is about the body? It's not that you cut something off and put it over here and it kind of gives to you. We need proximity. Part of that is because we never know exactly when God is going to work in the most substantial ways in our lives.
Have you ever been at an airport and the plane was delayed? If you fly Delta, you have for sure. And they tell you, "Hang around the gate," because you don't know when the plane is going to go, and they keep pushing the time. Have any of you been in this scenario? After a while you say, "I don't want to hang around the gate anymore. It's crowded, there's nowhere to sit. I want to go down to a restaurant." Then you go there and it's crowded. And sooner or later you just think, "I don't even want to stay at the airport. I just want to go somewhere else. I'll get a notification when it's time." But they never give you that, because they want you to stay right here. What they want is proximity, because they maybe don't know, or maybe they do and don't tell you, when the plane is going to go. So what do you need? You need to be close so that you don't miss it.
Here's what I mean by proximity. You can be part of a church community. You can go to dozens of small groups, you can go to worship services, you can go to Bible studies, and say, "I didn't get anything." Sometimes I go to church and I'm like, "Okay, I get it." That happens. But here's what you don't know: when the Holy Spirit (this is what our series has been about) is going to use the gift of somebody in your life to say something, to direct something, to prompt something that you didn't know you needed. All of a sudden, it will direct your life in a way that is unmistakable. But if you're not hanging around the gate, so to speak, if you're not in proximity, you will miss that moment when it comes.
I've talked about this before. I do a fair number of worship services in a year, because I usually do most of the services on the weekend. Even if I'm not teaching, a lot of times I'm at one of our campuses, hanging out and participating in the church services there. But here's what never ceases to amaze me: how many times in the course of a weekend or a month I'll have a moment somewhere in one of the worship services, where I'll be singing a song, or hearing a song, or hearing a scripture, and I'll think, "Oh, my goodness, that is exactly what God needed for me." Or I'll be sitting in a group with people and someone will say something that they didn't even know related to where I was, and I needed to hear what was said. So what I'm saying is that without proximity, we will not receive the gifts that God intends for us to have from other people: accountability, perspective, and support.
The second thing we need is receptivity. I see this word, if, show up over and over in this passage. Verse 15 says, "Now if the foot should say, 'Because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body,' it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body.'" Do you hear it? In other words, if you say, "I don't need this, I'm going to do it myself," then you will not receive the gifts that God intends for you to have through community.
Now, here's my guess: some of you are listening right now and saying, "Well, I've done church for a long time, whether it be Orchard Hill or a different church, and I don't know how many of those moments you just described I've had." But sometimes the gifts we receive are not as noticeable as we understand them to be. For example, what did you eat last October 10th? Did you need that meal? If that was your birthday, you might remember it, but chances are you do not remember what you ate last October 10th. Was it important for your health? Kind of. You could go without eating for a day. I can go without eating for a day. I don't like it, but you can do that, right? But what happens if you don't eat repeatedly? Sooner or later, you become malnourished.
The point is that you don't always understand the gift of every individual meal, but the cumulative effect is substantial in your life. Spiritual community is like having a meal. Some meals are going to be better than others. Some you're going to say, "That was amazing." And sometimes you're simply going to say, "That was just another meal." But the cumulative effect of eating regularly changes the trajectory of your life.
Here's what I hope you take away: the Holy Spirit works through the collective gifts of his people. That's what we talked about last week. You have a gift to bring, but you also are meant to receive gifts, the gifts of ministry from the people of God. And maybe you haven't experienced a lot of God because you haven't had proximity or receptivity to what God wants to do in and through the people around you. Sometimes in order to experience it, you just have to keep moving forward. Maybe sometimes there's a time for something new, where there's a new sense of God's Spirit working in you. But whatever it is, the point I want you to get is that God has intended you to live in community in such a way that the gifts of others bring benefits to your life and that your gifts bring benefits to others. Without that, you will be spiritually isolated. You'll live in your own echo chamber of whatever it is you choose to do. And because of that, you will be somebody who isn't secure ultimately in the way that you're going, because being isolated makes you vulnerable.
So the question today is simply this: will you say, "God, I'll put myself in proximity and live with receptivity to what you want to do through the lives of others in and through my local church"?
God, today we ask that you would help each of us not to be the people who show up to Christmas and refuse gifts, but to be people who come and receive and give. And in that, we become the people that you call us to be, that you have created us to be. I pray even in this moment that if there have been hard parts of our journey where we felt isolated, you would soften us in a way that we would be willing to take a step again and put ourselves in a place where people can be part of our lives. And God, we pray this today in Jesus' name. Amen.
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AI-Generated Disclaimer: This transcript was generated and edited with the help of artificial intelligence. Filler words and grammar were cleaned up, but the content may still contain errors or differ slightly from the message as it was spoken. It is not an official publication; please refer to the original audio or video for the speaker's exact words.
