A Spirit-Filled Body with Spiritual Gifts
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What does Paul mean when he calls the church a “Spirit‑filled body”?
Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. We're in a series on the Spirit of God. In the opening of the Scroll of Acts, God's Spirit descends on the followers of Jesus with fire. And they speak in foreign languages. And thousands of Jewish exiles who are in Jerusalem for Pentecost hear them and begin to follow Jesus. This is the start of something big.
Something new has happened. The spirit that animated Jesus is now filling his followers to continue the work of Jesus in the world.
The scattered tribes of Israel have been united, and God's temple has been restored in their midst. It's not a building though, it's a community. The Apostle Paul will talk about this as being the temple. Today, we're gonna look at another metaphor that Paul uses, describing the community not just as a temple, but as a body.
In Paul's mind, talking about the Messiah's people as the new temple filled with spirit, or a new body filled with the spirit, two ways of talking about the same thing.
But why does Paul use the metaphor of a body? Is this random? Or perhaps Paul's being a thoughtful Bible nerd?
Where do you get the idea of a body being filled up with a spirit so it can do the stuff that God called it to do? This is like page two of Genesis. There's a whole moment that pauses the story to meditate on a body being filled up with breath. Remember.
However, in Hebrew and in Greek, breath is spirit. And after God breathes spirit into the human, he gives the human a task to work and keep the garden. In other words, God fills the human with spirit for a purpose.
You have a calling. Take the breath that's given to you and use it for a purpose. What we're seeing here is the seedbed of the whole topic of spiritual gifts. Today
we look at First Corinthians twelve, where Paul's discussing the gifts of the Spirit. He calls them simply spirituals, and he lists over a dozen of them, emphasizing the diversity of ways that the Spirit empowers people to fulfill humanity's calling.
And he says, there's so many different kinds of work, but it's all from the breath of God. So again, it's like a new Adam being commissioned, getting the breath to cultivate and keep the garden.
When we talk about spiritual gifts, what we're really talking about is how a group of people can be empowered by God's Spirit to continue
the mission of Jesus. The ways that the Spirit works are all a manifestation of the one body of the Messiah. And what is the way of Jesus? How
can you know you are united with the Spirit of God?
All those gifts and workings are gonna have one main purpose.
Love. Today, Tim Mackey and I explore how the Spirit of God fills the body of the church with gifts to serve one another and the world. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hi John. So we are working through the Bible, talking about the Spirit of God.
Yes, we do. Yes we do. About the breath of the Almighty.
Ooh. The wind of the clothed by power from the skies. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Many names and images given to this mysterious invisible presence of the most real thing in the universe. Otherwise known as the Holy Spirit. Yes. Yep. We have been exploring the role of the spirit and the language and imagery used to describe the spirit throughout the storyline of the Hebrew Bible. And now we're a few conversations in To surveying the same, the role and portraits of the spirit throughout the New Testament. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. And in the Hebrew Bible Everyone is sustained by God's ruach, his spirit, breath, wind, power, energy, life. And we get stories of characters being endowed with more spirit and the opportunity to be like supercharged. And it goes kind of one of two ways. Like either that person then gets more in line with God and beautiful things happen. Or that person could actually use that in a way that leads to more trouble. Yeah. So more spirit doesn't mean necessarily More goodness.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. But then there's this hope that Moses had that then the later prophets have, which is that all of God's people will be filled with the spirit. And When we get to the New Testament, we just start seeing immediately all these characters being filled with the Spirit.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Paul mean when he calls the church a “Spirit‑filled body”?
0:05–7:42
2
How does the metaphor of a temple relate to the idea of the church as a body?
7:42–14:37
3
What are the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and how do they differ?
14:37–20:59
4
Why does Paul connect the gifts to the unity of the body of Christ?
20:59–28:28
5
How does the concept of “one spirit, one body, one love” shape the purpose of the gifts?
28:28–34:48
6
What practical steps does Paul give for living out these gifts in everyday life?
34:48–40:26
7
How does love serve as the overarching goal for all spiritual gifts?
40:26–49:02
8
What are the key takeaways for listeners about serving one another as a Spirit‑filled body?
49:02–53:59