Gifts from the Spirit

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  (Ephesians 4:11-13)

When the Holy Spirit came, He brought gifts for the followers of Jesus to use for the Kingdom. There are several different types of gifts from the Spirit.

First, there were sign gifts. Sign gifts were given to validate the Gospel, before the printed Word of God was made available. Those sign gifts provided the ability to do several important things. The sign gifts included: Healing, miracles, tongues, interpretation of tongues, and distinguishing between spirits. You don't find people today who really have the gift of healing. If so, they would be walking through hospitals right now, getting rid of the Coronavirus. With the gift of healing, they could lay their hands on people and tumors would immediately go away.

Through the Apostle Paul, Jesus described many of these sign gifts. They were in effect primarily to validate the Gospel during New Testament times. Today, we have the Word of God to validate the Gospel.

There are also ministry gifts that come from the Holy Spirit. Ministry gifts include: Apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and pastor teachers. To help equip the church to do ministry and move God's children into maturity, we have the ministry gifts. Those gifts are not given to build platforms for themselves; instead, they focus on teaching God’s children the truth.
 
Do you understand how critical ministry gifts are? We should focus on ministry gifts today in our local churches. The ministry gifts (those characteristics of Jesus) are very valuable because they give us the opportunity to spread the Gospel so that more people might come to know Christ.