Re-orienting the "gifts": Part V

I Peter 4
Peter’s mention of the gifts is the only such mention outside of the Pauline corpus. Peter does however use the term in much the same capacity as Paul. Before making specific mention of any gifts Peter exhorts the believers to maintain the specific attitudes of sound judgment and love for one another, both dispositions seen in the other gift passages. Further, Peter, like Paul posits that the end of exercising the gifts is to serve others and glorify God.

Peter mentions only generally “speaking” and “serving” as gifts that may be possessed. Because of the lack of a list and combined with the exhortation to use the gifts to serve the community we can see that Peter’s emphasis was not on any specific gifting or extraordinary spiritual capacity the people might have had but was instead on the objective of the gifts; that being mutual service to the Christian community and glorification of God. And because the focus seems to be on the purpose of the gifts it is logical again to understand particular functions within this community as being what Peter had in view.