Essay On Spiritual Gifts

A biblical doctrine that I feel is important is spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are defined as any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church. Spiritual gifts can refer to more natural things, like teaching, administration, or creativity. This is obviously more prevalent than the other way spiritual gifts have appeared, in a miraculous since. These kind of miracle gifts would include things like prophecy and healing. Even with these two different distinctions, there is a sizable list of the specific gifts mentioned in the Bible. Some of them include: apostles, evangelists, prophets, tongues, interpretation of tongues, healing, faith, administrators, pastors, helpers, and showing mercy. These are some

Well, Paul talks about this kind of thing in Romans. Specifically, in Romans 12:6 he says to use the gift of prophecy “in proportion to our faith.” This means that not everyone is going to have the same amount of skill in that certain gift. Instead of getting caught up with who is the best or most skilled with a certain gift, we should be using what the Holy Spirit is doing in us to help spread the gospel. We should not be discouraged when we find someone who is better than we are at a certain spiritual gift. We should be ecstatic that someone else could possibly be more effective at reaching out to others. We should be happy that more unbelievers could possibly be reached by someone

Not necessarily for the natural ones, but more for the miraculous gifts. Some churches believe that these kind of gifts have ceased, and other think that they are still able to be used today. A common passage of scripture that is used is 1 Corinthians 13:8 which says “Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” This passage clearly states that gifts such as tongues and prophecy, will pass away. However, there are other interpretations to this verse. Some believe that verse 12 of chapter eight tells a different story. People who believe that miraculous gifts have not ceased say that verse 12 talks about the return of Christ. “But then face to face,” is a saying often used for seeing God in person. It is an event that has not happened yet, therefore there is no way that miraculous gifts could have ceased. Grudem states in his book that he clearly believes that miraculous gifts are still around and will continue to stay with believers and followers of Christ until the second coming. Now this leads to several different questions that have to do with the churches roles with these gifts, and what it means for scripture if prophecy is still around. When it comes to the area of the churches role, I feel like there are clear signs for both situations. If gifts are still around in believers today, then we should be using those gifts