Spiritual Gifts, Part 7

Spiritual Gifts, Part 7:

To understand Spiritual gifts, it is important to understand that Jesus himself received Spiritual gifts—and did His ministry by entering into them.

In fact, apart from receiving various spiritual gifts, Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, did not do a single act of power.

Let me underscore this with you.

Before he had an empowerment with the Holy Spirit, we know almost nothing of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We do know that

His mother and father both had visitations from angels.
He was born of a virgin,
He and his family had to flee the country, as King Herod wanted him dead.
The holy family returned to Israel when Joseph was guided by a series of dreams
When he was 12, Jesus got separated from his family, and wound up in the temple in Jerusalem, interacting with the faith leaders there. He told his mother that God was his Father.

Yet from the time Jesus was 12, right on through until he began his public ministry at the age of 30, we know almost nothing of his life, his actions, his ministry, or his purpose to even be on earth. For the first thirty years of his life, he accomplished no mighty acts of power. There was not a word of his unearthly teaching, there were no call stories, no astonishing divine appointments, no healings, no demons being cast out, no nature miracles, no corrective confrontations with faith leaders, and no discipleship process for a band of followers to train them into his ministry.

All of these and much more happened right after he received the power of the Spirit.

That “speaks” to something. It was not the fact that He was God, appearing in human flesh, that was the source of his ministry.

Rather, Jesus ministry began after:

The Holy Spirit descended upon Him at his baptism,
He embraced and received that Spirit,
The Spirit remained upon Him, and
He was led by the Same Spirit.

For Jesus (who had been born of the Spirit like none other in Human history) to carry out His mission, he had to “receive the Holy Spirit.”

If Jesus needed an endowment of “power from on high” we most certainly need that too. In fact, 1 John tells us that those who make a claim to knowing the Lord are required to live out their faith in a similar manner. Here is how the apostle John said it:

“This is how we know we are in him; Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did…”

I John 2:5b-6 NIV

Let’s make the point absolutely crystal clear: Jesus himself said that he could do NOTHING unless the Father showed him.

So if we are to live as He lived, to walk as He walked, it follows that we also need an encounter in which we “receive the Spirit” after we are born of the Spirit, and that we are to be led by the Spirit, so that the Father can show us what He would have us be, do and become.

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