1 Corinthians 12:7-21

7God helps each of us with a gift from his Spirit. He does that so that we can help others.

8The Spirit helps some people to speak wise messages. Other people can speak messages that help people to know what is true. It is the same Spirit that helps them to do that.

9The same Spirit causes other people to trust God strongly. He gives to other people gifts to make sick people well.

10The same Spirit gives other people power to do miracles. Other people can speak messages from God. Some people can recognize whether spirits are good or bad. Some people can speak in different kinds of languages. And other people can explain what those languages mean.

11There is only one Holy Spirit. The same Spirit helps people to do all these different things. He decides which gifts he will give to each person.

12Each person has only one body, but that body has many parts. All those different parts make only one body. It is like that with Christ too.

13When they baptized us, we all became parts of one body. It was the one Spirit who brought us together. It made no difference whether we were Jews or Gentiles. It made no difference whether we were slaves or free people. God poured his one Spirit into all of us.

14A person's body does not have only one part. It has many parts.

15If the foot could speak, it might say, ‘I am not a hand, so I do not belong to this body.’ But what it says makes no difference. It is still a part of the body.

16If the ear could speak, it might say, ‘I am not an eye, so I do not belong to this body.’ But what it says makes no difference. It still belongs to the body.

17If the whole body was an eye, the body would not hear anything. If the whole body was an ear, it would not recognize different smells.

18But God has decided where each different part of our body should be.

19If our body was all the same part, it would not be a proper body.

20But as it is, a body has many parts. It is still only one whole body.

21For that reason, the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you.’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I do not need you.’