Verse 9
Faith is trust in God. Every Christian has some faith just as every Christian has some wisdom and knowledge. However some believers have more God-given ability to trust God than others just as some have more God-given wisdom or knowledge than others. All believers should seek to cultivate wisdom, knowledge, and faith, but some have a larger God-given capacity for one or another of them than other Christians do.
The "gifts of healings" (literally) by definition refer to abilities to cause healing to take place. Evidently there were various types of healings that those so gifted could produce, for example, physical, psychological, and spiritual healings. Counselors and medical doctors have a degree of ability to produce healing today. However most Christians believe God has not given the ability to restore people to health instantaneously today as He did in the early church. [Note: For a discussion of the temporary nature of some of the gifts, namely, that they were in use in the early church but not thereafter, see Thomas R. Edgar, "The Cessation of the Sign Gifts," Bibliotheca Sacra 145:580 (October-December 1988):371-86; and John F. Walvoord, "Contemporary Issues in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Part IV: Spiritual Gifts Today," Bibliotheca Sacra 130:520 (October-December 1973):315-28. This article was reprinted under the title "The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts" in Bibliotheca Sacra 143:570 (April-June 1986):109-21. See also Vern S. Poythress, "Modern Spiritual Gifts as Analogous to Apostolic Gifts: Affirming Extraordinary Works of the Spirit within Cessationist Theology," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39:1 (March 1996):71-101.]
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