(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in a study series concerning God’s Spiritual Gifts. This series was initiated to answer a reader’s question on the subject of describing and understanding the 9 “Spiritual Gifts” found and defined to us primarily in 1 Corinthians 12. But in order to understand this subject we discovered in the introduction that we all have the basic need to obtain the knowledge of the fundamentals of the subject first. If you have not already studied this first and second lessons, it is strongly recommended that you please go back to “Part 1” before continuing with today’s lesson. Those concepts will largely not be repeated in this lesson.

Also, in the previous lessons we went over a quick overview of just some of the major Spiritual Gifts that were given to us (humanity or the church) by God. Therefore, if you have not read “Part 2” it is highly recommended, at least go back there before you continue with today’s lesson on the subject of the very specific gift of what God called the “Spiritual Gift of Faith”.

You may notice that we may not teach every subject in the order that the Lord listed them in the Bible. Rather we will endeavor to be led by the Spirit to teach each subject as we believe we are led. Therefore, this is our reason for learning about the “Gift of Faith” today, rather than taking them in the order as listed in 1 Corinthians 12.

Since I assume everyone has now read the first two lessons, my belief is that you should recall that we have already found a list of 15 spiritual gifts given to humanity and the church by the Spirit. Hopefully, you also remember the Greatest Spiritual Gift of God was Jesus Christ, the Spiritual Word of God made flesh (John 1:1-14, John 3:16). And this gift offers the Gift of Salvation to all of humanity. We will find out soon that not many spiritual gifts are offered to unsaved people. Receiving Jesus is a prerequisite to receiving other gifts given by the Holy Spirit.

Next, we reviewed the list of 9 Spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. These gifts were named as the 1) Word of Wisdom, 2) Word of Knowledge, 3) Faith, 4) Healing, 5) Working of Miracles, 6) Prophecy, 7) Discerning of Spirits, 8) Divers Tongues, and 9) Interpretation of Tongues. We also should have learned that all of these 9 gifts given by the Holy Spirit, were intended to be used through His anointed people in their ministry works, to either get the unsaved saved; or to build-up and edify the church body.

We can see this evidence very clearly in Acts 2 when God poured out His Spirit on the 120 men and women in the upper room in Jerusalem. This occurred 50 days after the feast of first-fruits where Jesus was raised from the dead, after being slain as the Passover Lamb for all humanity. However, the gifts of the Spirit weren’t first given to the church anywhere that I have seen, until the time of another major feast of Israel called “Pentecost” when all of the Jewish people were supposed to be in Jerusalem. And there were many people there in Jerusalem on this day traveling from other surrounding nations. Many of these people spoke other languages and they heard those in the upper room that were first filled with the Holy Spirit speak directly in one of God’s 9 gifts called “divers tongues”. Each of these visiting people from these nearby nations heard the upper room people speaking in their native languages while glorifying God. As a result of this manifestation of just one of the great 9 gifts sent from God, He got the attention of over 3000 and because of this amazing sign, these believed God and got saved. Read about it in Acts 2. It was real, and it actually happened this way.

I will stop here and point out that many people that say they are Christians that live now in the current times of last days churches have “ceased” believing that the gifts of God are still in effect and are being used by God now. Some of labeled these types of Christians as “Cessationists”. They simply believe the gifts were poured out to the Apostles in the beginning of the church age because they needed it for the church to get established until the Bible was written and published. After the Bible was made available, these gifts were not needed, according to their beliefs. But this belief does not match the Word of God nor the personal experiences of many. There are still many people today who do believe in them and operate in these gifts as the Lord leads.

Then in 1 Corinthians 12:28 we further discovered where God listed 5 new spiritual gifts that were joined to 3 gifts in common with the previous 9. These were 1) Apostles, 2) Prophets, 3) Teachers, 4) Miracles, 5) Gifts of Healings 6) Helps 7) Governments and 8) Diversities of Tongues. As was stated there are 3 overlapping gifts in this new list of 8 Spiritual Gifts only raising our total spiritual gifts so far, to 15 = (1 + 9 + (8 – 3)). The fact that the two lists contain duplications, simply helps us join the two lists together and unite them to learn there are definitely more than 9 spiritual gifts.

Instead of exploring the Bible for additional spiritual gifts (and there are others) we are going to focus today on the single subject of the Spiritual Ministry “Gift of Faith”.

Understanding Supernatural FAITH as a Spiritual Ministry Gift
that is Different than Other Types of Faith

One very important thing that must be understood about the list of the 9 Spiritual Gifts found in 1 Corinthians 12, is about the subject of the “Gift of Faith”. God through Paul specifically lists “Faith” in this list as the third spiritual gift. But this is the exact same Greek word pistis (G4102) used in other Bible verses like Galatians 5:22 and Ephesians 2:8 that says, “The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy Peace, Long suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith”, and “By Grace are you saved through Faith”. Uh oh? Here we find two different types of faiths than the spiritual Gift of Faith and yet many preachers think they are all the same because of the same word being used.

This would be like us saying we all have the exact same identical “Blood” and ignoring the basic truth that there are several types of Blood. For example, in the human blood types there is 1) A Positive, 2) A Negative, 3) B Positive, 4) B Negative, 5) AB Positive, 6) AB Negative, 7) O Positive and 8) O Negative. Yet all of these are called “Blood”. Just as medical professionals cannot mix up blood types, so also preachers cannot or must not mix up Faith Types.

So there is a major conflict rising again about the subject of “Faith” types that must be rightly divided to resolve the mystery in the church that not all faith is the same. Remember, we can read Faith is the third gift in the list of 9 and it is surrounded by the gifts of 1) the Word of Knowledge and 2) the Word of Wisdom are listed before it, and then 4) the Gift of Healing and 5) the Gift of Miracles followed after it. What does that tell us and what questions should come to our minds? First question is that “How can this gift of “Faith” be the same type of Faith that is necessary to receive salvation as is clearly stated in Ephesians 2:8?

Also, how can the “Gift of Faith” be the same type of faith that is produced from a seed that grows roots and a vine with branches to produce a “fruit” called “Faith”? This too is a major problem and cannot be the same type of “faith” as the other two that were previously mentioned.

Do you see the problem? If God gives us the faith to be saved as a gift, why isn’t everyone saved? Or are they? It should be very obvious that everyone on earth is not saved because we can see too much evil, too many differing beliefs in who they worship as their god, and too many people who don’t even believe or claim that there is a God? Therefore, we know the “Gift” of faith is NOT for salvation to go to heaven when we die.

However, this word “Faith” is the exact same Greek word (G1402 pistis) that is found in over 200 verses.  God is definitely connecting all 243 verses containing the Greek word G1402 together like the subject of “Blood”. But does that mean because they are connected, they are all the same type of “Faith” used for the same purpose and applying to the same application?  No, it does not!      

What we are about to discover is that there are various types of faith and applying the “Gift of Faith” to be the same as all other types of faith like the “Salvation Faith” only causes spiritual conflict and confusion. Any time there is an apparent conflict that occurs in scripture, it does not reveal God made a mistake, it only reveals that we do not understand the subjects being discussed yet. Here is just a short list of the types of “Faith” that come from the Greek word G4102:

1. Carnal/Natural Human Faith (2 Thessalonians 3:2). Every human “lives” by Faith but this type of faith is based upon only the 5 senses type of learned faith, and a Christian’s faith is only based upon God’s Words (2 Corinthians 5:7).
2. Saving Faith (Ephesians 2:8) The Faith that comes from hearing the Word of God to be saved according to Romans 10:17.
3. Fruit of Faith (Galatians 5:22). Spiritual fruit of faithfulness to continue to serve God and remain faithful to His Spirit only as our husband, thus not committing adultery with devils (2 Corinthians 6:15).
4. Gift of Faith (1 Corinthians 12:9). This is our subject faith type and it is only given by God for ministering to others, it is not for personal use that I have seen in operation or read in the Bible.

Let’s first begin by stating the obvious that the spiritual “Gift of Faith” is different from the “Saving Faith” needed to be saved as well as the type of spiritual fruit Faith to remain faithful to God. And is certainly not related to the natural human faith we are all physically born with. Why is this?

We can understand this if we see how all 9 Spiritual Gifts in this list are only given to saved Christians for the Holy Spirit’s usage of ministering to others people as we should have learned in 1 Corinthians 12:7. In this verse God reveals that these 9 gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to “profit and benefit” the church body as a whole and these are not used to minister to the individual Christian for self-help. The one that is being used by God to help someone else is because God has sovereignly manifested as a Gift to be given to another person that God desires to bless for future service in His Kingdom.

For example, I believe Peter was used by the Holy Spirit with potentially a combination of gifts. These were, possibly the “Gift of Faith” and/or the gift of the “Working of Miracles”. We can find this account of the ministry of the Holy Spirit through Peter in Acts chapter 3. Here Peter is at the temple gate called Beautiful and he sees a lame man who is begging and he has been in this condition since birth. These types of situations certainly cause the mercy of God to be extended to certain people. Remember God knows the hearts of every person and God sees their potential future and will help them to fulfill the plan He has for their lives out of compassion and mercy. But we must know this will not usually be offered again. This is normally a one-time gift, because God expects all Christians to grow their own faith to receive for any future needs.

Peter told this man to look on us and said to him “silver and gold have I none, but such as I HAVE, I give to you”. Apparently, Peter acknowledges that it is not him alone that is about to heal the man. To “have something” implies that this “something” has been previously given to him and it is logical to think it came from the Holy Spirit because he was just Baptized with the Spirit in the previous Chapter.

Then Peter claimed this man was healed by “Faith” in the name of Jesus in Acts 3:16. In this verse Peter tells the Jewish people that this lame man had been healed by the name of Jesus and “faith” in His name. But it is the last part of this verse that helps us to believe this was the direct operation of God’s gift of Faith.

In the last part of Acts 3:16 Peter says, “Yea, the faith that is by Him (Jesus) has “given” this perfect soundness in the presence of you all”. Do you see how this could be describing “a gift” that is being “given” by Jesus through Peter to a lame man in the presence of a lot of other Jewish people to help them all believe in Jesus? This is how the Holy Spirit operates many times as He desires because He knows the best choices in every situation.

He can give one gift by supernatural choice to bless one lame man, and this causes many others to believe in Jesus through Peter’s gift of Faith or the working of miracles.  If you notice in this story a lot of people believed in Jesus after seeing this miracle (Acts 4:4). Almost everyone with the exception of the majority of the Jewish religious temple leaders believed in Jesus and the church grew by thousands because of one gift of a miracle.

By God gifting a lame man to walk who was lame from birth, is an undeniable supernatural miracle and anyone who had come into the temple had seen this man for years and years begging. This means this man’s gift of healing through a disciple of God caused the church to grow significantly because many people could hear the Gospel about Jesus Christ to receive “Saving Faith”.

So, in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 after the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost, there were signs and wonders being operated through the church and as a result many thousands of people in Jerusalem were saved. There are certainly other examples in the Bible but we only touched upon 2 barely, to get you acquainted with this subject of the gift of “Faith” being completely different than the Fruit of Faith, the Saving Faith and the normal carnal faith unsaved people constantly live by.

Remember God says in Romans 1:17 “The just shall live by Faith”. If we had to wait for God to manifest a gift of Faith to live everyday we would all be in serious trouble. This is just further confirmation that the faith we live by daily is not the same as the “Gift of Faith” that God gives to minister to help others. I hope this gave you a good foundation for doing further study on this subject on your own. Or if you have specific questions, you are free to leave them in a comment.

Conclusion

So, we have seen how the Gift of Faith is not the same as other types of “Faith”. The Gift of Faith is given to God’s servants as He sovereignly chooses. Man operates in this gift by “Faith” because only God knows what will happen and how it will happen.  This is a clear cooperative arrangement between covenant partners for the betterment and growth of the church. Never forget that the Bible describes God has “longsuffering”, this means He has supernatural patience waiting in kind and compassionate love for His people to agree with Him and work with Him.

Not everyone operates in the gifts of the spirit especially in a church service. Most likely it will be the “Pastor” or an “Evangelist” that operates in many of the spiritual gifts as the “Lord Wills”. But it does not help the one that is being used in cooperation with God’s will. The servants (you and I) are never above their Master (Jesus Christ). Jesus is the “Head” of the church and He is the one guiding us and we are supposed to be His followers listening for and expecting His voice to guide us.

The Word of God in 1 Corinthians 14:1 says for us to “Follow after Love, and desire Spiritual gifts”, but then God says to us “rather to prophesy”. We can clearly see a mixture of spiritual fruits and gifts of the Spirit. But it should be obvious the Love of God and our spiritual fruit is not in the list of the 9 spiritual gifts. This further confirms the faith in fruits is not the faith in gifts!

Hope and pray this was a blessing to you. Whether you agree or disagree I love you and want “Peace’ to rule our hearts and minds. Let’s all do what we just read in 1 Corinthians 14:1 and “Follow after LOVE”. If you have ever had God use you in the gift of Faith, it would be a pleasure to hear your experience to encourage others.

Thank you for taking the time to read and study this Bible lesson. Please be a Berean Bible student and go and study every subject taught for your own self edification. Prove all things by the scripture whether they be so or not. God bless you and until next time, know Jesus is coming Soon!

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