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Within the overall working of the Holy Spirit, it is important to see that the New Testament distinguishes between the gift and the gifts of the Spirit. All believers, without exception, share in the gift of the Spirit by virtue of their union with Christ the life-giving Spirit, and their incorporation into his Spirit-baptized body, the church (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:13). The gift (singular) of the Spirit is present in the church on the principle of "universal donation".

On the other hand, the gifts (plural) of the Spirit are variously distributed in the church; no one gift, in this sense, is intended for every believer. The gifts are given on the principle of "differential distribution." This seems reasonably clear, for example, from the point of the rhetorical questions posed at the close of 1 Corinthians 12 (vss. 29 and 30): all are not apostles, all are not prophets...all do not speak in tongues. And this is so, ultimately, by divine design: the one body with diverse parts-not because of lack of faith or failure to seek a particular gift.

The significance of this distinction for the question asked above is this: the gift (singular) of the Spirit, in which all believers share, is an essential aspect of the salvation revealed in Christ and is as such an eschatological gift. It is as noted earlier, the firstfruits-experience of resurrection, the actual down payment on the church's final inheritance.

In contrast, the gifts (plural) of the Spirit, variously distributed in the church, are provisional and subeschatological, workings of the Spirit projected on to the plane of the present order of things and inseparable from "the form of this world [that] is passing away" (1 Cor. 7:31). This seems clearly to be one of Paul's points in 1 Corinthians 13:3ff.: prophecy and tongues among other gifts have a provisional, limited function and so are temporary, designed to pass away (vss. 8 and 9), while those works of the Spirit, like faith, hope and love, endure (vs. 13).