Christians by it, he unites himself with them.  He speaks of ‘the grace given to me,’ and in verse 6 of ’the grace given to us.’  He was made an Apostle by the same giving God who has bestowed varying gifts on each of them.  He knows what is the grace which he possesses as he would have them know; and in these counsels he is assuming no superiority, but is simply using the special gift bestowed on him for the good of all.  With this delicate turn of what might else have sounded harshly authoritative, putting prominently forward the divine gift and letting the man Paul to whom it was given fall into the background, he counsels as the first of the social duties which Christian men owe to one another, a sober and just estimate of themselves.  This sober estimate is here regarded as being important chiefly as an aid to right service.  It is immediately followed by counsels to the patient and faithful exercise of differing gifts.  For thus we may know what our gifts are; and the acquisition of such knowledge is the aim of our text.

I. What determines our gifts.

Paul here gives a precise standard, or ‘measure’ as he calls it, according to which we are to estimate ourselves.  ‘Faith’ is the measure of our gifts, and is itself a gift from God.  The strength of a Christian man’s faith determines his whole Christian character.  Faith is trust, the attitude of receptivity.  There are in it a consciousness of need, a yearning desire and a confidence of expectation.  It is the open empty hand held up with the assurance that it will be filled; it is the empty pitcher let down into the well with the assurance that it will be drawn up filled.  It is the precise opposite of the self-dependent isolation which shuts us out from God.  The law of the Christian life is ever, ’according to your faith be it unto you’; ‘believe that ye receive and ye have them.’  So then the more faith a man exercises the more of God and Christ he has.  It is the measure of our capacity, hence there may be indefinite increase in the gifts which God bestows on faithful souls.  Each of us will have as much as he desires and is capable of containing.  The walls of the heart are elastic, and desire expands them.

The grace given by faith works in the line of its possessor’s natural faculties; but these are supernaturally reinforced and strengthened while, at the same time, they are curbed and controlled, by the divine gift, and the natural gifts thus dealt with become what Paul calls charisms.  The whole nature of a Christian should be ennobled, elevated, made more delicate and intense, when the ’Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus’ abides in and inspires it.  Just as a sunless landscape is smitten into sudden beauty by a burst of sunshine which heightens the colouring of the flowers on the river’s bank, and is flashed back from every silvery ripple on the stream, so the faith which brings the life of Christ into the life of the Christian