“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10 ESV).
All medium- to large-size organizations use the various gifts and skills of their members. For example, the military uses people with a wide variety of skills. Tank commanders have different skills than Infantry men and women. Pilots have different skills than plane mechanics. Enlisted men have different skills than officers. Sailors have different skills than helicopter pilots, who have different skills than cooks and supply officers and drone operators. But the armed forces could not operate effectively without combining the skills of all its individual members.
The same holds true in a business or corporation. The skills required of a salesperson are different from those of an engineer, which are different from those of a truck driver or the CEO, but the corporation could not operate efficiently and effectively without combining the skills of all its individual members.
I have been teaching at Concordia Seminary for 20 years, and for eight of those years I was the director of the Master of Divinity and Resident Alternate Route programs. I also have taught courses in the Deaconess, Specific Ministry Pastor (SMP), Ethnic Immigrant Institute of Theology (EIIT), Specific Ministry Pastor to General Pastor Certification (GPC), Cross-cultural Ministry Center (CMC) and Graduate School programs. Some 2,000 students have gone through these various programs in that time, and all of them had varied gifts. While I cannot claim to have known every student in every program, I have gotten to know most of them rather well.
Some of these students have been gifted in preaching; some have been gifted at serving in other ways. Some have become more scholarly theologians, using their gifts in Greek and Hebrew, or their skills in history or doctrine, to teach and guide others in the faith. Others have skills in other languages and can translate and preach to people from other cultures. Some have special levels of emotional intelligence and social skills and can empathize and spiritually care for those who are suffering in specific ways. Some are skillful writers, some have artistic skills, others are natural leaders … I could go on and on about the diversity of gifts among our former and current students.
Too often we humans consider our gifts — our skills — from only our individual, human perspective. But the Apostle Peter, in this article’s theme verse, rightly declares that our gifts are not actually our own, formed by us, but they are gifts we have received from above us, from God Himself. As Martin Luther says in the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures. He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses and still takes care of them.”
God has chosen to give each of us unique bodies, unique reasoning and personalities, unique senses — and then He has chosen to take care of those bodies and gifts for His purposes. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
The purpose of a military force is to protect its citizens from attack, while a corporation aims to provide services or products and generate profit. The collective skills of the individuals in those organizations come together to protect and serve or to make and sell a widget.
What is the purpose of the gifts of those who serve in Christ’s church, both laity and professional church workers? The Apostle Peter explains that in the Scriptures surrounding I Peter 4:10. “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers … whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:7,11 ESV). Peter mentions only two specific gifts here in his letter. Paul expands and enumerates many other gifts in his letter to the Romans (Rom. 12:3-7) and his first letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. 12). Paul emphasizes that we are one body with many members.
The greatest gift that God has blessed each of us with is the faith we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God the Father came down from heaven. “Christ suffered in the flesh” (1 Peter 4:1 ESV) on His cross for us, and then conquered death through His resurrection, to grant us eternal life with Him when He returns (and Peter says “the end of all things is at hand” [1 Peter 4:7 ESV], so we live our lives now assuming that His return is near). The Holy Spirit used the gifts He gave to earlier generations of Christians, to our spiritual parents and grandparents, to bring us to our baptismal regeneration, and to hear from God’s Word, and to receive His body and blood in the Sacrament, to bless us all with the gift of faith and forgiveness and eternal life in Christ.
For many years, it has been my pleasure to reacquaint with former students now serving as pastors, deaconesses and missionaries. I often ask them “How is the match between your gifts and the needs of the congregation (or other organization) that you serve?” Most of them tell me wonderful stories of the positive matches between their gifts and the people whom God has called them to serve.
Secular organizations, like the military and corporations, expend considerable time and energy to place the right people with the right skills in the right positions. They have Human Resources (HR) departments to hire and deploy those with the gifts the organizations need to function.
It is comforting to know that ultimately, in the church, the Triune God is the One who has given us the “varied grace” of all our gifts. God is the One who, in His wisdom, places our graduates in their first calls, and then continues, through the congregations and other calling agencies of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, to place His servants in their various locations, so that we can be good stewards of the gifts that we have received from Him by His varied grace.
I am so thankful to know that God is the perfect CEO and flawless HR director who oversees the gifts that He has given to each of us. May we continue to prayerfully ask Him to bring new students with new gifts to Concordia Seminary, so that a new generation of pastors and deaconesses can go out into the church with the gifts they have received, to serve His church by grace, through those gifts. To Jesus Christ be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.