Our response to this work of the Spirit should be clear: serve the church. Don’t worry about trying to figure out what your “spiritual gifts” are. Simply serve the church in any way you can. The Spirit has providentially gifted you to do so, so serve, and marvel at the ways the Spirit of God has uniquely gifted you to minister to others.

The primary work of the Holy Spirit today in a Christian’s life is his sanctifying believers to be “spiritual”—to be characterized by inner life and external behavior that conforms to the will of God.

However, another result attributed often to the Spirit in the New Testament is gifting. Some gifting was special empowerment for leadership of God’s people. This unique gifting given temporarily to key figures like prophets and apostles often resulted in revelation, special miracles, notable power, and even less extraordinary gifting like boldness and courage. Often this empowerment was described as being “filled [pimplēmi] with the Spirit,” where the Spirit is the content of the filling.

It was by means of this extraordinary Spirit filling that key individuals prophesied. And in the same way, by means of this unique Spirit filling  the disciples spoke in tongues (Acts 2:4), the disciples were given extraordinary boldness to speak the Word of God (Acts 4:31), and Paul was equipped for his apostolic work (Acts 9:17). This kind of filling and gifting is unique and ought not be something we should expect today.

But this is also true of the more ordinary Spirit filling (plērēs/plēroō), where this language is used to describe the Spirit’s work in every believer’s life to sanctify him through his Word and equip him for service. For example, by means of this ordinary Spirit filling, Jesus was given strength to resist temptation (Lk 4:1–2), the first deacons were equipped to serve (Acts 6:3), and Stephen was given courage in the face of death (Acts 7:55).

Furthermore, the New Testament uses several terms to describe gifts that are given by the Spirit of God to believers:

• pneumatikon—“spiritual gifts” (1 Cor 12:1)
• charisma—“grace gifts” (1 Cor 12:4; 1 Pt 4:10)
• diakonia—“service” (1 Cor 12:5; 1 Pt 4:10)
• energema—“activity” (1 Cor 12:6)
• doma—“gift” (Eph 4:8)
• merismos—“distributed gifts” (Heb 2:4)
• phanerosis—“manifestation” (1 Cor 12:7)

As can be seen in the representative Scripture references listed above, many of these terms are clearly used to describe the same thing. First Corinthians 12 in particular makes this clear, where the same concept is called “spiritual gifts” (12:1), “grace gifts” (12:4), “service” (12:5), “activities” (12:6), and “manifestation” (12:7). Similarly, 1 Peter 4:10 uses both “grace gifts” and “service” to describe the same thing.

First Corinthians 12 explains that these gifts are given “through the Spirit” (v. 8) or “by the one Spirit” (v. 9), and that they are “the manifestation of the Spirit” (v. 7). Since these passages explicitly ascribe the giving of these gifts to the Holy Spirit, other passages that discuss such gifts may also safely be attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit.

Clearly 1 Corinthians 12 is a key passage that helps us to understand the nature of these gifts. Several important points can be drawn out concerning gifts of the Spirit. First, Paul emphasizes their variety (vv 4, 5, 6). The Greek word translated “varieties” in each of those cases is the word from which we get our English word, “diversity.” And the word translated “apportions” in verse 11 is the verb form of the same word translated “varieties” earlier.

Second, Paul emphasizes that the Spirit gives such gifts to every believer: “to each” (v 7); “to one,” “to another” (v 8); “to another” (v 9), “to another,” “to another” (v 10); “to each one individually” (v 11). This is also clear through the rest of the chapter as he emphasizes the important function of every member of the body, each of whom has been gifted.

Third, both the use of the term diakonia (“service”) as a term for such gifting and the whole point of Paul’s discourse in this passage make clear the purpose of Spirit gifting: service within the body of Christ. He says directly in verse 7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Thus, we could define these gifts are Spirit-given abilities “given for service within the ministry and outreach of the local church,”¹ including miraculous gifts (e.g. prophecy, miracles, healing, and tongues) and non-miraculous gifts, which Stitzinger describes as abilities that “operate within the natural realm of order even though God’s hand of providence is involved”² (e.g. evangelism, teaching, mercy, administration, etc.).

How Does the Spirit Give These Gifts?

Now most cessationists claim that only so-called “miraculous” gifts have ceased, but other gifts of the Spirit continue, such as teaching, hospitality, evangelism, etc. I believe that is a perfectly acceptable position considering the purpose of the gifts. However, I will make a brief case here for why I believe all gifts supernaturally given by the Spirit have ceased in this age, though he continues to gift his people providential through natural means.

This is admittedly a minority position, even among cessationists. Most who hold to a cessationist view limit the cessation of gifts only to what they describe as “miraculous sign gifts”—prophecy, healing, tongues, etc. The argument, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that these gifts were provisional in nature, given temporarily to unique individuals like prophets and apostles at key transitional periods in the progress of God’s redemptive plan. Their purpose was to bring God’s people and purposes into order during times when new revelation was necessary and “epochally significant”³ events were happening in history.

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