NOTES for Co1 12:1-11

Returning again to the description of the life of the Kingdom, Paul says that the Kingdom is wholly permeated by the breath, the Spirit, of God (vv. 4-6). And Jesus is the Messiah promised by God, through whom this Kingdom was revealed to the world, so that anyone who knows what the Kingdom is will never renounce Jesus and will not be mistaken about His ministry (v. 3). As for life in the Kingdom, it is nothing other than the result of the action of that breath of God by which the Kingdom is permeated, from the Throne to the last speck of dust. In the Kingdom there is no place where this breath is not felt, but when it touches a person it can affect him in different ways. A person changes quite really under the influence of such a touch, but the changes are each time as unique and unrepeatable as each person is unique and as God's design for each of us is unrepeatable.

From here comes the difference in gifts and callings about which the apostle writes (vv. 8-11). What they have in common is that not one of these gifts and not one of these callings can be carried out by human strength alone without God's help. In essence, the matter is not so much the possibilities and abilities of the person himself as divine-human co-creation, when God turns a person into a perfect instrument that He can use to solve tasks of which a person who does not know God's help could not even think. And only God knows how He manages to solve this task without turning the person into a blind tool and while allowing him to remain a person in all fullness. A person living in the Kingdom.