God’s Gifts of the Spirit
Treasures
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God has given us so many wonderful gifts. He gave us the gift of life and He made this beautiful world for us to live in and enjoy. He gave us the ability to experience love and to love others, and He gave us intelligence and the ability to reason as beings created in His image. The priceless gift of life and all the joys and challenges that accompany it, He freely gives to all. Most importantly, God has given us His gracious gifts of eternal salvation and the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And in turn He says to us, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).
The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be witnesses for Christ (Acts 1:8) and pours love into our hearts for others (Romans 5:5), and guides us in understanding and remembering God’s Word (John 14:26). Through the Holy Spirit, we each also receive spiritual gifts so that we can serve God and serve others, as the following passage from 1 Corinthians explains:
Now 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. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:4–11).
As we can see, the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to believers, which are distributed to each one as He determines. These include the gift of faith, a message of wisdom and knowledge, the gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the ability to discern between spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Let’s take a look at each of these gifts.
The gift of faith: The Bible says that “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Every born-again child of God is given a measure of faith, and every Christian’s faith grows over time as he or she reads, absorbs, and acts upon the Word of God. But to have a special gift of faith manifested in strong and unshakable confidence in God, His Word, and His promises is a gift of the Holy Spirit to edify and strengthen other Christians. Many otherwise ordinary people who have the gift of faith have been used of God to do extraordinary things to change their part of the world and to build up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:16).
In Hebrews 11, we read of examples of people with the gift of faith—people who had extraordinary faith that enabled them to do things that would not normally be possible. We read of the faith of Noah to spend 120 years constructing an ark when it had never rained before, and Moses leading the people of Israel across the Red Sea (Hebrews 11:7, 22–29). In more recent times, we have examples such as George Mueller (1805–1898), who had great faith for God to provide financially for the five orphans’ homes he founded in England, which cared for almost 10,000 orphans in his lifetime.
The gifts of a word of wisdom and knowledge: The apostle Paul refers to the gifts of “a word of wisdom” and “a word of knowledge” in 1 Corinthians 12:8. Wisdom and knowledge are often coupled together in Scripture. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10). And in Ephesians we read: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Ephesians 1:17).
Knowledge of God, His Word, and His ways is important for all believers. We grow in knowledge through studying and applying the Word of God and building our lives upon it (Matthew 7:24). “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:9–10).
All Christians need wisdom, and James tells us to ask for wisdom if we lack it: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). In Colossians, the Word of God is highlighted as the source of true wisdom: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16). Wisdom is rightly applying the knowledge of God.
The spiritual gifts of an utterance or a message of knowledge and wisdom extend beyond the knowledge and wisdom we are all called to grow in as Christians. It is also a speaking gift (as it is a spoken word or message) that involves understanding and proclaiming truth with a special insight that comes from God through His Spirit.
The gifts of healing: Great multitudes followed Jesus, and wherever He went, He healed the sick, and at His touch, the lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the blind could see, and lepers were healed, and people were delivered from evil spirits (Matthew 11:5; 12:15). “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction” (Matthew 9:35). His healings were a sign of His authority as the Messiah (John 7:31), which served to authenticate the gospel message and show that the kingdom of God had come (Luke 11:16–20).
Christians with the gift of healing are empowered by the Holy Spirit to heal a specific ailment supernaturally. However, having gifts of healing does not mean that the person can heal at will or that everyone they pray for will be healed. In Acts, we read that Paul miraculously healed many people in Ephesus (Acts 19:12). We also read of cases where he apparently wasn’t able to heal, such as Timothy from his stomach ailments (1 Timothy 5:23), or Epaphroditus from his life-threatening sickness (Philippians 2:26–27), or Trophimus, whom he “left ill at Miletus” (2 Timothy 4:20).
Healing is a foretaste of the life to come, where we will receive our perfect resurrection bodies and will no longer experience illness or death (1 Corinthians 15:51–57). We won’t be completely healed of all illnesses or diseases until then, but we can experience healing in this life in accordance with the Lord’s will (1 John 5:14). We read in the Bible, “The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” So “pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:15–16). God is sovereign when it comes to healing, and whether we experience healing or not, we are called to “give thanks in all things” and to commit all things to Him in prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17–18).
The gift of working miracles: A miracle can be defined as an event that involves God’s direct intervention, which transcends the ordinary laws of nature. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, He performed many miracles (such as the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14:15–21), which served to attest to His identity as the Son of God, and nearly always drew a crowd to whom He then imparted His teachings. The miracles weren’t the main event; it was the words He spoke. The miracles benefited a few, but His sermons benefited all that heard—and have gone on to benefit billions of people since.
The Holy Spirit also worked miracles through the apostles to spread His message. For example, in the book of Acts, we read that Peter healed a lame beggar at the temple gate, and the man was instantly healed and began “walking, leaping, and praising God.” As a result, a huge crowd gathered, and Peter preached the gospel of Jesus and His resurrection to them, and over 5,000 people became Christians that day (Acts 3:3–10; 4:4).
Jesus still performs miracles for and through His followers today through the gift of working miracles. One of the greatest miracles is our salvation. Jesus enters our lives and transforms us and makes us a new creation with an eternal destiny in His kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The gift of prophecy: In 1 Corinthians, Paul instructs the believers to “pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” He goes on to explain why prophecy is an important gift: “The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:1, 3). In the Old Testament, the prophets spoke the word of God to their generation, often speaking to the needs of the present, and sometimes predicting the future (the sign of the true prophet in Deuteronomy 18:21–22).
In the New Testament, through the gift of prophecy, the Spirit gives ordinary Christians the ability to utter inspired words, which convey the message of God. Christians with the gift of prophecy are able to receive messages from the Lord in which He gives love, encouragement, comfort, guidance, and counsel.
The gift of discernment: The gift of discerning of spirits is only mentioned once in the New Testament, though we read elsewhere about discernment. As is the case with other gifts of the Spirit, all Spirit-filled believers will have the gift of discernment to some extent, which will grow as the believer grows in faith. The book of Hebrews tells us that believers who have matured in their faith “have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:13–14).
The mature believer is empowered by the Holy Spirit to discern between good and evil, and between truth and deception through the study of the Word of God. In Acts 17:11, we read of the believers in Berea, who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” And in 1 John, the apostle warns the believers: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
We also read in the Bible where some believers have a gift of discerning spirits—which enables them to distinguish between truth and error and to “test the spirits” to determine if a teaching, a prophecy, or a spiritual force was of God or in opposition to God.
The gift of tongues and interpretation: The gift of tongues is the ability to speak one or more unlearned languages—what the apostle Paul refers to as “the tongues of men and of angels” (1 Corinthians 13:1).Sometimes these are earthly languages—tongues of men—as was the case on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles and others of Jesus’ closest followers were all filled with the Holy Spirit and preached to the crowds of foreigners in various languages which they had never learned (Acts 2:1–11).More often, these are heavenly languages, words of angels, which are unintelligible to the speaker or anyone else except through the gift of interpretation.
Tongues are mainly for personal encouragement, inspiration, and edification. Even when the person doesn’t understand the words being spoken, speaking in tongues can uplift and edify their spirit, and is also a way to pray and worship the Lord (1 Corinthians 14:4). The gift of interpretation of tongues is similar to the gift of prophecy, whereby the gift of tongues is interpreted and the message is made intelligible for the hearers.
The greatest of these
When speaking of the gifts of the Spirit available to believers, Paul continuously highlighted the importance of love. At the end of 1 Corinthians 12, after outlining the gifts of the Spirit and their proper practice for the building up of the body of believers, he says, “And yet I will show you the most excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31). Paul goes on to make the case that spiritual gifts without love are worthless. “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1–2).
Love is supreme, as “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). “Let all that you do be done with love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).
Published on Anchor September 2025. Read by Reuben Ruchevsky.
