There were only a few people left there around the altar late that Wednesday night. I had recently returned from a missions trip, and had gone to church to see everyone and be refreshed. I almost ran up the aisle at the end of the service when my pastor opened up the altar for prayer. I felt like I had so much in my heart from all the experiences of the missions trip, that I was bursting with faith and joy. I almost didn’t realize that the pastor had made his way finally to me, and began to pray in the Spirit. Some place in my mind, I was thinking that words weren’t enough to express how I was feeling, when suddenly I started speaking in tongues! When Paul talks about “praising God with my spirit”, he wasn’t kidding. Oh, if the whole issue of tongues could be as happy and as simple as my first experience.
Unfortunately, tongues has become a disputed topic in the church, even proving to be the stuff of church splits and divisions. Let’s face it, tongues are weird. By weird, I mean “not normal”, “not easily explained”, and “an unusual experience” (have you noticed that I tend to use parenthesis all the time in my posts??? It is like that annoying person who always does quotation marks with their fingers while they are talking…) For our western scientific minds, tongues seem like a relic of ancient times akin to putting paint on your face and dancing around. For Asian and African minds, tongues seem like just another part of the supernatural experience in Christianity. In the next few posts, we will look at what the Bible has to say about tongues, mainly in the teaching of 1 Corinthians and the stories of Acts.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul has to deal with a fascination and over-emphasis on tongues in the Corinthian church. They have lost the true reason for tongues, and seem to have fallen back into pagan mindsets about it. The Corinthians are open and desire the spiritual gifts, which is a good thing, and Paul commends them early in the book- 1:4-7 (one of the few things he does commend them in!). However, in chapters 12 – 14, Paul has to address how out of control and selfish their worship services have become. After dealing with the gifts of the Spirit in chapter 12, love in chapter 13, Paul can finally zero in on tongues in chapter 14. Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t do much definition of tongues in chapter 12. He merely says in verse 10, that some are given “various kinds of tongues”. Not only does Paul not define tongues, he mentions there are “various kinds” and doesn’t say what those kinds are. Thanks a lot Paul!
What Paul does say of significance is what gifts like tongues are for. In verse 7, he says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” That means that tongues are given (at least these kinds) for the common good, which means for everyone else, not just ourselves. Many often have the view that tongues are just a blessing for ourselves, and never consider how they can be used to bless others like the gifts in the list (like healing, prophecy, etc..). The second thing Paul says is in verse 11, “All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” We don’t earn tongues like a scout merit badge, we don’t get them as a bonus when we hit 10 years as a Christian, it is the Spirit who gives them out individually as HE wills.
Instead of giving us more detail on tongues, Paul then launches into a huge comparison of the church to a body. His point couldn’t be more clear; God is desiring unity in the body, and each individual has beautiful gifts that make the whole body work. No one’s spiritual gifts are “better” than someone else’s, tongues or no tongues. If the point weren’t clear enough, he talks about love for a whole chapter. Especially relevant for our study is 13:1, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Wow! He doesn’t say what the “tongues of angels” are, but he slams the self-centered attitude of the Corinthians with how they are using tongues. Without love, this gift might as well be the clanging of a cymbal. Not very helpful. Try comforting someone in pain by banging a cymbal in their ear.
In the next post, we will look at the contrast between tongues and prophecy made in chapter 14, as well as see that Isaiah the prophet predicted the gift of tongues. For those of you who almost didn’t read this post because tongues are for snake handling TV evangelists, I hope you will be challenged to be honest with the Scriptures instead of swayed by what you may have seen in your life. For those of you who were so excited about this post that you praised God by praying in tongues, thank you, and don’t be shy to ask God for prophetic words or visions for me while you are at it. Just kidding…sort of.
The Bible Nerd 