He gave gifts to all men

But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore He says: "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men - Ephesians 4v7-8

First I will admit that I am looking forward in the text just a bit to get the context here. Paul has just been addressing the issue of unity in the Body. He stresses that we are all indeed one body with one God who is above all.

But now he goes on to say that though we are all one body we are not all the exact same. By His grace He has gifted us with different gifts and abilities to serve Him. He goes into this in much more detail in 1 Corinthians, but suffice it to say that we are not all the same. Our gifts are all based on grace; we might indeed call them grace gifts.

The key here is the phrase “to each one of us.” I think this is to remind us that even though we are one body we each have a role to play. All of our gifts are from God by His grace. None of our gifts is any less important than the other. Does that mean that we never share in others gifts? I can’t even imagine that.

Since Paul uses the body to illustrate gifts, let me try to do the same. If my eye sees something that I think needs attention I may first tune in my ear to try and find out more. If that doesn’t work I may call in my feet to move me a little closer, with my eyes and ears still working. It may get to the point when I may have to depend on my hands to step in intervene. All parts of my body, equally gifted for their tasks, working together to accomplish a task. If my ear said, “Oh, that’s the eye’s problem, I am not going to get involved,” nothing would get done.

One body, every part gifted to work together for one task. What a beautiful picture of the church.