85. Come behind in no gift
1 Corinthians 1:7 So that ye come behind in no gift;
It can be confidently assumed that every member of the body of Christ has a gift, at least one gift. The gifts are the blessings that the Holy Spirit uses through us to bring a blessing to other people. No one can say that he doesn’t have any gifts, for God gives a promise. No one can say that he is useless in the kingdom of God on earth. God the HS can use each and every person, and in usually multiple ways, to build up and extend the kingdom. Some of the gifts may come through God’s creation of each individual and they become activated when he comes to faith in Christ and thus becomes a member of the Body. Many spiritual gifts are granted when the believer is called by the Gospel to faith in Christ. The HS stirs up the use of these gifts, as He needs them to minister and serve the Body.
It is a blessing to oneself to be used by God to be a blessing to others. Exercising the spiritual gifts is a win-win situation, while the one who blesses and the one who is blessed both feel better. This is God’s intention for our life. Everyone in the Body is blessed by everyone else in the Body. This mutual edification and nourishment is how the Christian lives joyfully in a hostile world. In this way life in the fellowship of believers is meant to be a blessed experience. It is also true that God can use the created gifts of unbelievers to give a blessing to us, and vice versa. All people, believers and unbelievers alike, can be kind, for instance, from time to time. Thus we can live civilly in a cruel world.
The promise of this verse more directly is applied to the plural “ye” so that it includes the entire Body of Christ. The church community in a certain location as a whole “comes behind in no gift.” God sees to it that every fellowship of believers has enough of the gifts of the Spirit so every person can be built up, encouraged, strengthened, and blessed. Somehow, every Christian group will have and will use all the gifts of God that are needed for the health and wellbeing of that group. God does not normally drop blessings out of the sky; He uses people. The result is that no believer will be left without someone to help him spiritually. The Holy Spirit will see to that.