What does 1 Corinthians 12:8 mean?

Paul has been describing to the Christians in Corinth what spiritual gifts are. In short, they are manifestations of the Holy Spirit. That is, they are abilities that go beyond normal human capacity in some specific way, even if the display of God's power is not always obvious. Paul has shown that they are given to every Christian by God to be used for the common good of the church.

Now Paul begins to describe some of these specific gifts. This first list contains nine gifts, and it is not exhaustive. Other passages in the New Testament list additional spiritual gifts (Romans 12:6–8; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Peter 4:10–11).

Some groups of Christians believe this specific set of gifts, sometimes called the sign gifts or confirmation gifts, to have been given to Christians in the early church to demonstrate the power of God and confirm that the gospel was true. These groups typically believe God stopped giving these gifts after the church was established and the New Testament was published. The same group may or may not believe these gifts are given today sporadically and under special circumstances. Other groups of believers, such as Pentecostals and Charismatics believe these gifts are still distributed by the Holy Spirit regularly and throughout the church around the world.

Paul starts the list with two gifts of "utterance" or kinds of messages. He says again that both are given by the same Spirit, though they are slightly different. The first is the "utterance" or "word" or "message" of wisdom, depending on the translation. The second is the utterance of knowledge.

The word of wisdom involves the supernatural ability to offer insight into truth from God in a way that helps others. The word of knowledge might be understood as the ability to proclaim God's revelation to those who need to hear it or to offer understanding of how it applies to specific areas of life.