The Apostle Paul tells us in first Corinthians 3 and 6 that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who resides in us when we become believers and children of God. When we accept Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit comes into us to be our guide, teacher, and comforter. He also provides for us a means by which we can relate to God as well as to others. The Bible speaks of fruit of the Spirit and gifts of the Spirit. Let us differentiate between the two.
First, we must say that it is not correct to speak of fruits (such as plural) of the Spirit. That is to say our experience with the Holy Spirit has a fruition or an outcome or a result of our experience with him. In the same way a grapefruit is a singular fruit, its individual sections can represent various fruit in our lives. It is the working of the Holy Spirit that shows himself as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. (Galatians 5: 22) As an example, if we are to have peace in our lives, we must have a close relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Now, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the outgrowth of that relationship toward others. Those gifts are elaborated in first Corinthians 12. It is the same Holy Spirit that gives us a variety of gifts in which some people demonstrate one and others another gift. They are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, various types of languages, and the interpretation of those languages. We might say that these gifts are the outgrowth of a person’s life for how he functions with the rest of the world as God’s representative.
Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. Knowledge is the accumulation of understanding. Faith is the reliance on God. Healing can be through prayer or medical intervention. The working of miracles might be that which God uses any of us to accomplish something unique. The word prophecy translated in English misses the mark for us because it actually can be foretelling of the future or forth telling of a message that God is speaking through an individual. When a godly preacher delivers his message, it is the forth telling of God’s word. Discerning spirits is differentiating between the right and wrong of circumstances and people. The languages mentioned as gifts are translated tongues in the King James version. Our best authority on this is what happened in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit came upon believers enabling them to speak in an earthly foreign language that they had never known so that the gospel could be spread.
For us to have an experience of fruit from the Holy Spirit, it must be the consequence of how he relates to believers who are submitted to the Lord. For us to demonstrate gifts of the Holy Spirit, we must be in a position in which we allow God to use us as particular assets edifying (building up) the body of Christ. Whether a gift seems more profound, or less public is of little consequence because it is our duty, eagerness to serve. When God gives us a spiritual gift, it is provided by him and not what we can solicit from him as a particular desire from her own wishes. To receive a birthday gift from someone, that someone must be the one who selects the gift and provides it to the receiver. This is the same way it works with God.
It is God who places the value on what fruit we have or what gifts we display from the Holy Spirit. In both cases it is our submission to him and our willingness to be used in whatever way he selects. Since we each are distinct members of the body of Christ, our importance lays not in what we think but how God wants to use us.
Christian Writer 