The Gifts of the Spirit in Paul's Letters

From the Story to the Letters

In the book of Acts we watched the Holy Spirit poured out and the gospel carried across the world. When we turn to Paul's letters, the scene changes. Now we are no longer reading the story of what happened; we are being taught how the Spirit's gifts are meant to work in the ordinary life of a local church, week after week.

The change matters, because it is in the letters — above all in 1 Corinthians — that Paul actually instructs the church about spiritual gifts: what they are for, how they are to be used, and how they are not. And Paul's driving concern is not the one the Corinthians had. They were fascinated by which gifts a person possessed, and especially by the spectacular ones. Paul keeps turning the question around. His concern is never merely which gift you have, but whether the gift is used in love, in order, and for the building up of the body of Christ. That single concern shapes everything in this unit.

The Gift Lists — Overlapping, Not a Fixed Catalog

The New Testament gives us several lists of spiritual gifts: Romans 12:6–8; 1 Corinthians 12:8–10 and 12:28–30; Ephesians 4:11; and, from Peter, 1 Peter 4:10–11. Set them side by side and something becomes plain at once: they overlap, but no two of them are the same. Romans lists prophecy, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and mercy. First Corinthians lists wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and interpretation. Ephesians lists not abilities but people — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers — given to the church. Peter simply divides all gifts into two kinds: speaking and serving.

These differences are a gift to us, because they keep us from a mistake. Paul never sets out to write a complete inventory of the gifts, a closed list against which every ability must be checked. The lists are illustrative, not exhaustive. So it is a waste of energy to argue over whether some ability “counts” as a spiritual gift because it does not appear in one of these passages. What Scripture presses on us instead is simpler and more searching: every believer has received a gift, and every gift comes from the one Spirit to be used for others.

“As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”1 Peter 4:10 (NKJV)

There is freedom in this. A believer need not anxiously scan the lists to find and label his one official gift, as though grace came in fixed compartments. God’s grace is called manifold — many-colored — and it fits itself to the person and the need. The task is not to classify the gift but to use it.

One Body, Many Members

The longest treatment of the gifts, in 1 Corinthians 12, is built around a single picture: the church is a body. A body has many members, each different, each necessary, all joined in one life. The Spirit distributes the gifts as He chooses:

“But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”1 Corinthians 12:11 (NKJV)

From this picture Paul corrects two opposite errors, and both were alive in Corinth. The first is pride: the believer with a visible, admired gift who begins to think himself a superior Christian. Paul answers that the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you” (12:21) — no member may look down on another. The second error is the mirror image: the believer without a showy gift who concludes that he does not really matter, that the body could do without him. Paul answers that the parts which seem weaker are in fact indispensable (12:22). Every gift, Paul says, is given “for the profit of all” (12:7) — for the common good, never for private standing. That one phrase strikes at the very root of using a gift, whether tongues or any other, as a badge of rank.

There is real comfort in this picture, and real correction. The comfort is that no true believer is left out: if you belong to Christ, the Spirit has placed a gift in you and a place for you in the body, however hidden it may seem. The correction is that no gift was ever meant to be admired in isolation. A hand is glorious on an arm and useless in a jar. Gifts live and do their work only in the shared life of the church, joined to others and serving them.

Love: The More Excellent Way

It is no accident that Paul plants his great chapter on love in the very middle of his teaching on gifts. Having described the body in chapter 12, and before he regulates the gifts in chapter 14, he stops to say that without love none of it is worth anything.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.”1 Corinthians 13:1 (NKJV)

Tongues without love are only noise; prophecy, knowledge, and mountain-moving faith without love are nothing; even great sacrifice without love profits nothing (13:2–3). This is the heart of Paul's correction of the Corinthians: they prized the spectacular and neglected the essential. Love is not one more gift to be added to the list; it is the frame that must hold every gift, or the gift becomes worthless. A church may be rich in gifts and poor in the one thing that matters. Paul will not let that stand.

This is a warning the modern church needs as much as Corinth did. It is possible to build a gathering around gifts and power and excitement, and to measure a service by how much happened, while the love that alone makes any of it count grows cold. Paul refuses that trade.

“When That Which Is Perfect Has Come” — A Text Read Two Ways

In the same chapter Paul writes words that have been argued over ever since:

“Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease…For we know in part…But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.”1 Corinthians 13:8–10 (NKJV)

The whole question rests on four words: what is “that which is perfect”? Sincere, careful Christians have answered in two ways, and it is only fair to set both out at their strongest.

Notice that this passage, by itself, does not tell us whether the gifts are exercised in the church today — only what will one day bring them to an end. That larger question, whether prophecy and tongues continue now or ceased with the apostolic age, we take up fully in a later unit. Here it is enough, and honest, to say that this key verse can be read either way, and that godly, Bible-loving scholars have landed on both sides.

Tongues and Prophecy in the Assembly

In chapter 14 Paul turns from principle to practice: how are the gifts to be used when the church comes together? His rule is guided by one word — edification, the building up of others. Because of that, he plainly prefers prophecy to uninterpreted tongues in the gathering:

“He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.”1 Corinthians 14:4 (NKJV)

Paul gives a vivid reason for his rule. Imagine an unbeliever wandering into a meeting where everyone is speaking in tongues at once, with no one to interpret; he will conclude the church has lost its mind (14:23). But if the word of God is spoken plainly and he is convicted, he will fall on his face and confess that God is truly among them (14:24–25). The gathered church, Paul insists, exists to be understood, so that others may meet God and be built up.

Tongues spoken aloud in the assembly must be interpreted, or the speaker should keep silent (14:27–28); everything is to be done “decently and in order” (14:40), for God “is not the author of confusion” (14:33). Yet notice carefully where Paul lands. He does not forbid the gift; he governs it. In fact he closes the whole discussion with a command that runs the other way:

“Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak with tongues.”1 Corinthians 14:39 (NKJV)

So Paul both ranks and regulates: prophecy is more useful than uninterpreted tongues for the church, and all things must be orderly — and still the gift of tongues is not to be forbidden. The gift is real and good; it is to be held under love, order, and the building up of others.

The “Unknown Tongue” — A Word About the Word

A point of honesty helps here, and it touches our two Bibles directly. Throughout 1 Corinthians 14 the older King James Version reads “an unknown tongue.” But the word unknown is not in the Greek at all; it was supplied by the KJV translators, and in their honesty they printed it in italics to show that they had added it. The New King James Version drops it, reading simply that a person “speaks in a tongue.” The Spanish Reina-Valera tradition, for its part, supplies a word of its own, reading “lengua extraña” — a strange or foreign tongue. So a reader in English and a reader in Spanish are looking at slightly different words at the very same verses, and it is good to know that plainly.

What this means is that the case for understanding the Corinthian gift as an unknown, private prayer language cannot rest on the word “unknown,” because that word was added by translators. It rests instead on Paul's own description of the gift:

“For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.”1 Corinthians 14:2 (NKJV)

The speaker addresses God, not men; no one understands him; he edifies himself (14:4); “my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful” (14:14). On that description — not on a supplied word — many understand the Corinthian gift to be a Spirit-given prayer language directed to God, something other than the known human languages heard at Pentecost. We may hold this as the likely reading while remaining honest about how the translations differ.

Christ at the Center

Paul tells us the purpose for which the gifts were given, and it settles everything else:

“…for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”Ephesians 4:12 (NKJV)

Not for display, not for status, not to sort Christians into higher and lower ranks — but to equip the saints and build up the body until we all reach the fullness of Christ. Every gift, whatever it is, is a tool in the Master's hand for that one end. So we prize the Giver above the gift, we hold every gift under love, and we keep the Lord Jesus at the center, which is the very place the Spirit means to put Him.

Looking Ahead

Having seen how Paul teaches the gifts, we will turn to how the church has actually sought, recovered, and sometimes fought over them — the story of a movement that placed these gifts at the very center of its life, and the questions that story raises for us.

Discussion Questions

• How does seeing the gift lists as illustrative rather than exhaustive change the way we think about our own gifts and one another's?
• Paul puts the love chapter in the middle of his teaching on gifts. What does that placement say to a church that prizes the spectacular?
• Read 1 Corinthians 13:8–12 slowly. Which reading of “that which is perfect” seems strongest to you, and can you state the other reading fairly?
• Why is it important to be honest that the word “unknown” was supplied by translators, and how does grounding the reading in Paul's description keep us on firmer ground?

Ministry Application

Name one gift you believe God has given you, and write two sentences on how you could use it this month “for the profit of all” — to build up the body rather than yourself. Then name one quieter member of your church whose gift is easy to overlook, and one way you could honor it.