12:7
Again the focus of is on the the reason spiritual gifts are given. First, they are a “manifestation of the Spirit”. The gifts are given by God, they are a tangible realisation of the presence of God in the world. When Jesus went back to the Father, He went so that the Holy Spirit could be sent to us. The Holy Spirit is God, and is God’s presence on earth and in us, and one of the ways He demonstrates this is through spiritual gifts. By the way, I can find no Scriptural basis for saying God has stopped manifesting Himself in this way. Secondly, the gifts are given for the “common good”. We need to keep both these things in mind if we are to have a right approach to spiritual gifts. They come from God and are a manifestation of His presence on earth, and they are given for the common good. There is a parallel here with the two greatest commandments, love God and love others.
12:8
Now we get a list of nine of the spiritual gifts. We do not need to treat this as an exclusive list, ie they are not necessarily the only spiritual gifts. Some are obviously “supernatural”, others may appear “normal”. The Spirit may give special wisdom in a situation, ie knowing what to do, the practical application of truth. “a message of knowledge by means of the Spirit”. This message could be for an individual or about a situation. We do, of course, need to beware of “Christian fortune telling”, which is what sometimes happens. So how do we discern (and discernment is one of the gifts!) between what is a spiritual gift, and what is fake? One helpful thing to do is to look at the life of Jesus, for we see many of these demonstrated in His own life here on earth. Many times He was questioned by the Pharisees or teachers of the Law and He would respond with amazing wisdom, wisdom that exposed the truth of the situation and of people’s hearts. Then at others He has knowledge of a person’s situation (eg the Samaritan woman in John 4).
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