1 Corinthians 12:1-11

“There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:4)

Paul begins his three-chapter answer to the Corinthian enthusiasm for ecstatic speech with a criterion rather than an inventory. Before any gift is named he establishes a test, and the test is a confession: no one says “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit (v. 3), a sentence that was costly to say aloud in a Roman colony. The reminder in v. 2 that they were once drawn to mute idols sets the contrast, since the mark of the true Spirit is intelligible speech about Christ. Verses 4 to 6 then run a triple parallel, gifts and Spirit, ministries and Lord, workings and God, one of the New Testament’s incidental trinitarian patterns, and the repeated word is “same.” The list in vv. 8-10 is not ranked; Paul supplies a ranking only at 12:28 and a criterion at chapter 13, and in both places the gift the Corinthians prized comes last. As the historic epistle for Trinity 10, it answers Jeremiah with a body rather than a building (12:12-27).

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