How Many Gifts Are There?
If we, the Body of Christ, the Church, function best with each member using the spiritual gifts that he or she has been given, it becomes important to be able to identify the part that each plays. We are a team. Good baseball teams, for example, understand perfectly the differing roles of a first baseman or a pitcher or a center fielder or a catcher or a third-base coach.
The biblical analogy for understanding spiritual gifts is the human body. The parts of our human body all have names. God possibly chose the human body as the physical example of the Church because each human being, regardless of educational level, can accurately identify body parts. Everyone knows the position and function of a toe or an eyebrow or a lung or a hip or a tooth or whatever. We need to be just as familiar with the Body parts of the Church, characterized by the spiritual gifts that God has distributed.
So, how many spiritual gifts are there, and what are they for?
OUTLINING THE THREE KEY LISTS
The great majority of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible are found in three key chapters: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4. Mark these three locations in your Bible for future reference, because they are primary. Several secondary chapters also provide other important details; these include mainly 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Corinthians 13—14, Ephesians 3 and 1 Peter 4.
I will begin putting our master list of gifts together by using the three primary chapters. The words in parentheses will be variant translations found in several different English versions of the Bible.
Romans 12:6-8 mentions the following spiritual gifts:
1. Prophecy (preaching, inspired utterance)
2. Service (ministry)
3. Teaching
4. Exhortation (stimulating faith, encouraging)
5. Giving (contributing, generosity, sharing)
6. Leadership (authority, ruling)
7. Mercy (sympathy, comfort to the sorrowing, showing kindness)
First Corinthians 12:8-10 and 28 adds
(without repeating those already listed from Romans):
8. Wisdom (wise advice, wise speech)
9. Knowledge (studying, speaking with knowledge)
10. Faith
11. Healing
12. Miracles (doing great deeds)
13. Discerning of spirits (discrimination in spiritual matters)
14. Tongues (speaking in languages never learned, ecstatic utterance)
16. Apostle
17. Helps
18. Administration (governments, getting others to work together)
Ephesians 4:11 adds
(again, without repeating any of the above):
19. Evangelist
20. Pastor (caring for God’s people)
COMPLETING THE MASTER LIST
The three primary chapters give us 20 separate gifts, but that is not all that there are.
One thing becomes immediately evident from looking at these three primary lists—none of the lists is complete in itself. Some gifts mentioned in Ephesians are mentioned in Romans, and some in Romans are mentioned in 1 Corinthians, and some in 1 Corinthians are mentioned in Ephesians. Apparently, none of them is intended to be a complete catalog of the gifts God gives. And we could surmise that if none of the three lists is complete in itself, probably the three lists together, or the 20 gifts, are not complete.
The Bible itself confirms that this is a correct assumption. At least five other gifts are mentioned in the New Testament as spiritual gifts:
21. Celibacy (continence) (1 Cor. 7:7)
22. Voluntary poverty (1 Cor. 13:3)
23. Martyrdom (1 Cor. 13:3)
25. Hospitality (1 Pet. 4:9)
DETERMINING WHETHER ALL GIFTS ARE MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE
These 25 spiritual gifts turn out to be all those mentioned in the Bible as gifts. But this biblical list, as I have said, is apparently not intended to be exhaustive. Now this raises an interesting question. Could it be that there are some legitimate spiritual gifts, given by God to certain believers, that are not mentioned specifically as gifts in the Bible? Naturally, there are two possible answers to this question, and each of the answers has its supporting points. So if you feel that it is best to leave the list with 25, I would not quarrel with you. But my own personal conclusion is that some other real gifts are actually in use.
I have come to this conclusion after years of careful observation. I tend to think that there are three spiritual gifts that are not referred to as gifts in Scripture. The ministries that the three are designed to accomplish, however, are definitely biblical. If this were not the case, I would not consider them at all. But don’t ask me for Bible verses that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are actually spiritual gifts per se.
I was gratified when I read the works of several other scholars who agree that there may be legitimate spiritual gifts in the Church that are not mentioned as gifts in the Bible. A number of them bring up three gifts, which they suggest be added but which I have chosen not to add, namely, craftsmanship, preaching and writing. I must admit that I do not have really strong arguments against adding these, so I leave the question open.
For years, my material on spiritual gifts has included two other gifts, based on my empirical observation of Church life and ministry. These are the spiritual gifts of intercession and deliverance. That would bring my total up from 25 to 27.
However, as readers of some of my other books know, I have more recently transitioned from traditional Christianity to the New Apostolic Reformation. One of the big differences that was obvious from the outset is that worship in apostolic churches is radically different from worship in traditional churches. I have now observed something that was not on my radar screen when I did my previous books on spiritual gifts: There must be a spiritual gift of leading worship. This is more than possessing certain musical skills. It is more than functioning as a pastor or minister of music. It is a God-given ability to usher others into the very presence of God in an extraordinary way. So leading worship is now number 28 on my list of spiritual gifts.
While we’re on the subject of leading worship, it is interesting to observe that the contemporary worship style, which originally emerged from the apostolic churches, has rapidly gained popularity in denominational churches across the board. This means that the gift of leading worship promises to be more and more in demand throughout the Body of Christ in the days to come, and it is now included in the Wagner-Modified Houts Questionnaire.
Here, then, is the conclusion of my list of 28 spiritual gifts:
26. Intercession
27. Deliverance (exorcism, casting out demons)
28. Leading worship (music)
DISTINGUISHING GIFTS FROM OFFICES
Some may observe the fact that the list of spiritual gifts in Ephesians 4 is slightly different from the other two because it refers to individuals who have offices rather than the underlying gifts as such. This is correct. Paul says, “And [Christ] Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). I find it helpful to see these as the foundational, or governmental, offices of the Church. The focus is thereby placed on gifted people who have been recognized in such official positions. Usually, such people have been ordained, or commissioned, with a public laying on of hands.
The first thing to notice is that each one of these offices is fundamentally determined by the spiritual gift that God has given to the individual. The gift of prophecy, not the office, is mentioned in both Romans 12:6 and 1 Corinthians 12:10. The gift of teaching is mentioned both in Romans 12:7 and 1 Corinthians 12:28. The gift of apostle is found in 1 Corinthians 12:28. There are no direct references to the gift of pastor or the gift of evangelist, but it would not be stretching the point to assume that a person can’t have the office of pastor without the gift of pastor or the office of evangelist without the gift of evangelist.
This means that you can have a gift without an office, but you cannot have an office without a gift. You can have the gift of prophecy without being recognized as a prophet. You can have the gift of apostle without being awarded the office. I say “awarded” because the office is earned. Gifts, as we have seen, are given only by the grace of God. But offices are not given by grace; they are merited through works. In other words, God may have given me the gift of apostle, but if I do not display the fruit of this gift through my ministry in the Body, I will never move into the office.
The office is the official recognition on the part of the Body of Christ that a person has a certain spiritual gift, or a gift-mix, and that such a person is authorized to use that gift in public ministry. We are most accustomed to doing that with the gift of pastor and recognizing it through what we call ordination. Ordination does not give a person the gift of pastor—it assumes that God has already done that. Rather, ordination is an affirmation that responsible people have observed that the candidate has the gift and that it should be recognized and affirmed and supported by the rest of the Body.
RECOGNIZING THAT EVERY GIFT IS IN THE MINORITY
Since obviously not everyone is a pastor or a prophet or an apostle, this raises an important general principle relating to spiritual gifts: More members of the Body of Christ do not share any particular spiritual gift than those who do share it. Let’s consider the gift of celibacy for a moment in order to establish this principle.
The reason that we have included celibacy on the list of spiritual gifts is that 1 Corinthians 7 labels it as such. In that chapter, Paul is establishing the fact that those who are single, as he was, can use more of their time and energy in directly serving the Lord than can married people. He realizes, however, that God created human beings with glands and hormones and passions, so the normal thing is for men and women to grow up, marry each other and have families. It is better for such people “to marry than to burn with passion” (v. 9), he says. Nevertheless, there are some, like Paul, to whom God has given the gift of celibacy. He attributes this to “each one [having] his own gift from God” (v. 7).
What, then, is the principle? It is obvious that most human beings, Christian or non-Christian, are destined by God to marry and have families. That means that those who have the gift of celibacy and who serve the Lord by remaining unmarried are clearly in the minority. But think about it. The same thing would be true of the other 27 gifts on the list. Every spiritual gift is in the minority.
This would be confirmed by going back to the analogy of the human body. Every part of our bodies is, in fact, a minority. We have only 2 hips, 1 nose, 2 ears, 36 teeth, 2 kidneys, 10 toes, 1 esophagus and so forth. More parts of your body are not a certain member than are, no argument. But this also would apply to the Body of Christ. That is why Paul would ask the rhetorical questions, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?” (1 Cor. 12:17). Many others will undoubtedly have the same spiritual gift that you have, but the majority will not. And we all need each other to make the whole Body work.
I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that something less than 50 percent of the Body should ordinarily be expected to have any particular gift. Furthermore, my hunch is that most of the percentages will come out far less than 50 percent. I have done some research on the gift of evangelist, for example, and found that the figure is probably around 5 percent. The gift of missionary appears to be less than 1 percent and the gift of intercession somewhere around 5 percent. Just like we don’t need three eyes, we don’t need more of gifts like these in order to accomplish God’s purposes. God both assigns the gifts and determines the ratio of the gifts in the Body.
PAIRING UP: HYPHENATED GIFTS
Some make a point that in Ephesians 4:11 the gifts most often listed as “pastors” and “teachers” should not be separate, but they should be combined as “pastor-teachers.” They argue that the Greek construction could lead to the conclusion that pastor-teacher is really one gift, not two different gifts. This is one way of interpreting the verse, but it’s not the only way.
In my opinion, there is a better explanation. I think that many of the gifts on the list very frequently pair up with each other and that it is most helpful to regard them as “hyphenated gifts” when an individual has both. For example, it is obvious that not every teacher is also a pastor and not every pastor is also a teacher. But a large number of people are pastor-teachers because they have been given both gifts.
There are several other common pairings of gifts. For example, there are intercession-prophecy, knowledge-teaching, deliverance-discerning of spirits, apostle-leadership and healing-miracles, just to name a few.
HONORING ALL VARIATIONS AND DEGREES OF GIFTS
Within almost every one of the 28 spiritual gifts will be found a wide range of variations and degrees. The cue for this might be seen in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, where the Bible speaks of gifts (charismaton), ministries (diakonion) and activities (energematon). Ray Stedman defines “ministry” as “the sphere in which a gift is performed” and an “activity” (or working) as “the degree of power by which a gift is manifested or ministered on a specific occasion.”1
A person who has the gift of evangelist, for example, might be a personal evangelist or a public evangelist—different ministries using the same gift. One who has the ministry of public evangelism might be an international celebrity who fills stadiums with 50,000 people and sees 3,000 conversions in a week. That would be the activity. Another public evangelist might be assigned to an activity mostly in churches that hold 500 people and might see 30 conversions in a week. In the final analysis, both may be found to be equally faithful in the exercise of their gift.
Variations and degrees, as the gifts themselves, are distributed at the discretion of God. Just as the master in the parable of the talents gave to one five talents, to another two and to yet another one (see Matt. 25:15), so God in His wisdom gives to each of us “a measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3). This is why, when gifts are in operation properly, Christians who have different degrees of the same gift have no cause for jealousy or envy. My left hand is not envious of my right hand because it may not be able to develop skills equal to my right hand. Rather, the two hands work together harmoniously for the benefit of my whole body. Similarly, God has given me a gift for writing, but in a relatively moderate degree. I am realistic enough to know that scores of others—Martin Marty or George Otis, Jr., or Jerry Jenkins or John Stott, just to name a few who come to mind—have such a high degree of the gift that I am not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath.
CLASSIFYING THE GIFTS
The gifts can be classified in many different ways. Bill Gothard, for example, divides them into “motivations,” “ministries” and “manifestations.”2 Some Reformed theologians have separated “ordinary gifts” from “extraordinary gifts.” I have seen gifts divided into “enabling gifts,” “servicing gifts” and “tongues/interpretation.” There could be others.
Some of the people who use these classifications have had excellent success in teaching Christians to discover, develop and use their spiritual gifts. I applaud whatever classification they use as long as it works. Obviously, none of these humanly designed classifications is divinely inspired.
In my own teaching, as I have said before, I prefer the open-ended approach. I do not find it particularly helpful to classify the gifts. The reason I have taken this route is not necessarily because I think it is any more biblical than the others but simply because I have found it to be the most helpful approach for my own particular teaching style. It works well for me, and it may work for you as well.
Making It Personal
Notes
1. Ray C. Stedman, Body Life (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1972), pp. 40-41.
2. Bill Gothard, source unknown.