His Body - His Spirit

Consideration of all this immediately raises a problem which we will do best to face at this point, namely is it possible to have and be used in a gift of the Spirit and not be a member of the Body of Christ? If this can be so, what then was the spirit which animated the apostles at that time if it was not the Holy Spirit, which animates the Body of Christ? Taken in order, an answer to each question may be set out as follows:

(1) firstly a plain 'yes'; the abilities and functions now known as the gifts of the Spirit are really the natural powers of Jesus Christ; they are the means by which He accomplished His works. While here on earth He authorised some of His disciples to go out with and preach the gospel they then knew, and also do some of His works. For this He equipped them to a limited extent with some of His abilities, and delegated to them the power and authority which was His by reason of His Sonship and Anointing:

(2) the real power which animates the Body of Christ is without doubt the Spirit of Christ.

The Body, beside being His own, must just as truly be indwelt by His own Spirit, for only by his own spirit can any person be alive -- that is have being and move and think and speak and work in his own body. During the whole of the Lord's earthly ministry, and even following His resurrection, the apostles were not of His Spirit, but were of the spirit of the Old Covenant. All miracles wrought by prophets and saints of the Old Covenant were achieved by the Holy Spirit coming upon them. At that time the Holy Spirit did not dwell within men in the same way and for the same purposes as He did from Pentecost onwards. Until Pentecost the apostles, in common with their forebears, did not know the Spirit's indwelling (John 14:15 and 16) but only Christ's special enabling for service.

It is not therefore greatly difficult for us to understand that the Spirit into which we are made to drink while being baptised in the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, whose same body it is into which we are baptised. Therefore the gifts of the Spirit which members of the body receive may only be thought of as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and as being bestowed distinct from the Spirit of Christ, because it is by means of the baptism in the Holy Spirit that we receive ability to possess and function in them. They are each one bestowed by Christ from His fullness upon His members, and are named in a definitive manner as equipage unto specific ends. His abundance is thereby fully distributed among the members of His Body as their immediate heritage in order to enable each to function as He in specially defined ways, each of which is indicated by the name of the gift.