NOTES for Co1 12:4-6
Much has been said and written about church ministries. Much has also been written about grace, about the gifts of the Spirit, about callings to ministries, and other things of this kind. But often grace is discussed separately, the gifts of the Spirit separately, and ministries separately. Paul, as we can see, connects all this into one whole. And no wonder, since the matter is indeed one and the same reality: the breath of God, with which the Kingdom is permeated and which enters the heart of every inhabitant of this Kingdom.
One often hears and reads that grace or the Holy Spirit forms the basis of the Christian's spiritual life, that every member of the Church has them, while ministry is already something special, given only to the chosen. Sometimes people go still further and say that even grace belongs not to all Christians, that to be a bearer and, so to speak, a "distributor" of grace is a special ministry, and so on. But if Christianity is still not some new "religion of the Kingdom," but life in the Kingdom, as Jesus Himself founded it, then it becomes obvious that graceless and spiritless Christians cannot exist by definition. A "graceless Christian" is an oxymoron, and so is a "spiritless Christian." For the breath of God, if we speak of life in the Kingdom, permeates the whole person; it is in fact the environment of the Kingdom. Just as air cannot fail to enter a person living on earth, and a person cannot live without this air entering him, so the breath of God cannot fail to enter the heart of an inhabitant of the Kingdom, and he cannot live without this breath. Such life, properly speaking, is the only thing that could be called Christianity in the proper sense of the word.
But life presupposes not only breathing, but also other activity, and the life of the Kingdom is no exception. Of course, there are periods or special cases when a person is capable only of breathing, and even that may be considered an achievement. But in that case one has to speak of a very grave condition, perhaps even one near death. Normally, however, a person, besides breathing, is usually engaged in some activity important for God and for the Kingdom. This, properly speaking, is what should be called "Christian ministry," and the moment when God tells a person living in the Kingdom exactly what, as an inhabitant of the Kingdom, he should do, should be called a "Christian calling." It is no wonder that for the apostle all these things are interconnected: they are all different sides of one life. The life of the Kingdom.