The Gifts of Power

By Sidharth Mohandas

In this article I will be dealing with the last three gifts of the Spirit, which can be collectively called the Gifts of Power.  I will quickly brush through these three gifts as they don’t need much of an explanation.

(a) The Gift of Faith

The “gift of faith” should not be confused with “saving faith” or with  “growing faith”. What is “saving faith”? When an individual hears the Gospel, faith is imparted to him as a gift (Greek for gift here is dorea; Romans 10:17, Ephesians 2:8-9). This  can be called the “saving faith”.  What is “growing faith”?  The seed of saving faith grows and matures as the person exercises it and continues to abide in God’s Word. This can be called the “growing faith”.

So, what is the “Gift of Faith”? It is a supernatural and spontaneous faith, which is not necessarily received as a result of training in the Word. It was by the manifestation of this gift that the Hebrew boys quenched the violence of fire (Daniel 3:25, Hebrews 11:34), that Daniel stopped the lions mouth (Daniel 6:19-22, Hebrews 11:33), that the Red Sea was parted, etc.  Further, the operation of this gift has nothing to do with one’s personal faith! For example, Elijah used this faith to call down fire on an altar that was drenched with twelve large jars of water (1 Kings 18:30-38).  However, moments later we find him under a Juniper tree, afraid and wanting to die (1 Kings 19:3-4). His personal faith failed here. So we can infer from this example that this “gift of faith” is given for a certain period of time in order to fulfill a certain task.

(b) The Gifts of Healings

Through this gift, healing is supernaturally imparted to a sick person. This gift is accompanied with the gift of faith, most of the time.

As you would have noticed, gift and healing are in their plural form. This implies that a person can have the gift to bring healing for a particular sickness, but may not have the gift to bring healing for some other type of sickness. That is, the healing for each sickness is considered as a different gift. For example, a  person may have the gift to heal cancer, but may not have the gift to heal AIDS.

(c) The Working of Miracles

Literally, this gift is putting into effect the power of God. The result is a happening or event that supercedes the natural order or physical realm. This gift was in operation when Jesus fed over 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes (Mark 6:30-44), when He stilled the raging storm (Matthew 8:23-27), when He walked on water (Mark 6:48-50), when He raised Lazarus  from the dead (John 11:41-44),etc. 

This is the last article in this series on the gifts of the Spirit. In the coming post, I will be dealing with the balance that we as Christians are required to maintain while we operate in the gifts of the Spirit.