Knox Bible

1

And now about spiritual gifts; I would not willingly leave you in doubt about these.

2

While you were still heathen, as you can remember well enough, you let yourselves be led away wherever men would lead you, to worship false gods that gave no utterance.

3

That is why I am telling you of this. Just as no one can be speaking through God’s Spirit if he calls Jesus accursed, so it is only through the Holy Spirit that anyone can say, Jesus is the Lord;

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and yet there are different kinds of gifts, though it is the same Spirit who gives them,

5

just as there are different kinds of service, though it is the same Lord we serve,

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and different manifestations of power, though it is the same God who manifests his power everywhere in all of us.

7

The revelation of the Spirit is imparted to each, to make the best advantage of it.

8

One learns to speak with wisdom, by the power of the Spirit, another to speak with knowledge, with the same Spirit for his rule;

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one, through the same Spirit, is given faith; another, through the same Spirit, powers of healing;

10

one can perform miracles, one can prophesy, another can test the spirit of the prophets; one can speak in different tongues, another can interpret the tongues;

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but all this is the work of one and the same Spirit, who distributes his gifts as he will to each severally.

12

A man’s body is all one, though it has a number of different organs; and all this multitude of organs goes to make up one body; so it is with Christ.

13

We too, all of us, have been baptized into a single body by the power of a single Spirit, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free men alike; we have all been given drink at a single source, the one Spirit.✻

14

The body, after all, consists not of one organ but of many;

15

if the foot should say, I am not the hand, and therefore I do not belong to the body, does it belong to the body any the less for that?

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If the ear should say, I am not the eye, and therefore I do not belong to the body, does it belong to the body any the less for that?

17

Where would the power of hearing be, if the body were all eye? Or the power of smell, if the body were all ear?

18

As it is, God has given each one of them its own position in the body, as he would.

19

If the whole were one single organ, what would become of the body?

20

Instead of that, we have a multitude of organs, and one body.

21

The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, or the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

22

On the contrary, it is those parts of our body which seem most contemptible that are necessary to it;

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what seems base in our bodies, we surround with special honour, treating with special seemliness that which is unseemly in us,

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whereas that which is seemly in us has no need of it. Thus God has established a harmony in the body, giving special honour to that which needed it most.

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There was to be no want of unity in the body; all the different parts of it were to make each other’s welfare their common care.

26

If one part is suffering, all the rest suffer with it; if one part is treated with honour, all the rest find pleasure in it.

27

And you are Christ’s body, organs of it depending upon each other.✻

28

God has given us different positions in the church; apostles first, then prophets, and thirdly teachers; then come miraculous powers, then gifts of healing, works of mercy, the management of affairs, speaking with different tongues, and interpreting prophecy.

29

Are all of us apostles, all prophets, all teachers?

30

Have all miraculous powers, or gifts of healing? Can all speak with tongues, can all interpret?

31

Prize the best gifts of heaven. Meanwhile, I can shew you a way which is better than any other.✻