1 Corinthians 12:1-11

The Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to Christians

1 My Christian friends, I want you to understand clearly about spiritual gifts. 2 You know how you lived before you believed in God. You let idols lead you in many wrong ways. And those idols cannot even speak! 3 This is what I want you to understand now: God's Spirit will never lead anyone to say, ‘God has cursed Jesus.’ And only God's Spirit will lead someone to say, ‘Jesus is Lord.’

4 There are different kinds of spiritual gifts. But it is the same Spirit who gives them to us. 5 We serve the Lord in different ways, but all of us serve the same Lord. 6 We do different kinds of work to serve God. But it is the same God who helps us all to work in different ways.

7 God helps each of us with a gift from his Spirit. He does that so that we can help other people.

8 The Spirit helps some people to speak wise messages. Other people can speak messages that help people to know what is true. It is the same Spirit that helps them to do that. 9 The same Spirit causes other people to trust God completely. He gives other people gifts to make sick people well. 10 The same Spirit gives some people power to do miracles. Other people can speak messages from God himself. Some people can recognize whether spirits are good or bad. Some people can speak in different kinds of languages. And other people can explain what those languages mean. 11 There is only one Holy Spirit. The same Spirit helps people to do all these different things. He decides which gifts he will give to each person.