4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
You might hear of a climax of a song, a beautiful note, as a soprano soars to a beautiful, pure, clear, high soprano note and it is glorious. You love listening to it. But if you heard nothing but that note hour after hour and day after day, it would drive you mad. It would be torture. That which was beautiful would become hideous because we need variety. That is the root meaning of the word
monotony; it literally means one tone.That is true also in the spiritual life in the new creation. It is also a world of infinite thrilling variety. The devil has pulled a massive confidence trick on people. The fact is that there is a dreary sameness about sin and its servants. That is not what the devil would want us to believe. He would want us to believe that sin is varied, vibrant, colourful, and interesting, but that the Christian life is monotonous and boring, and that life away from God is real life. That is actually completely false. Hell will be a place of agony, but also of unutterable tedium. Unrelieved boredom, not enlivened by any variety. When you read of the lives of the godless, there is a horrible predictability and sameness about them all. When you look at the sins of the first century AD and the twenty‑first century, you see that they are exactly the same. What people say, what people do, how people seem to find satisfaction—it is always the same. It is the people of God who are characterised by a glorious diversity.
And this is true also of our subject: the gifts of the Spirit. God the Spirit can only be truly manifested by variety. There is variety in him, so the gifts that he gives will be in variety. God cannot be glorified in monotony, in uniformity, in sameness. He is glorified by the astonishing diversity of his people and his gifts. In fact, Peter tells us that in 1 Peter 4:10. He is writing about the use of spiritual gifts, and he says that we are to use them,
as good stewards of God’s varied grace(emphasis added; ESV translation). The Greek word ofvariedmeans many‑coloured;variegated.God’s many‑coloured grace.The text, 1 Corinthians 12:4–6, has three phrases:
Edward DonnellyNow there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.1
10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: