However, again, Paul is clearly emphasizing an understanding of the tongues, although it's not totally clear here who Paul means when he says "he". 1 Corinthians 12 tells us that some people have the gift of interpreting tongues, while this verse seems to suggest the tongues speaker himself can do that. There is no reason to think that a person can't have both the gift of tongues and that of interpretation, so, if that is what the verse means, this isn't necessarily very strange. The most important thing to see here is that, again, Paul encourages the understanding of the tongues.
Verses 14 - 17 then say, "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified."
These verses bring something new into the subject. Rather than mentiong speaking in tongues, Paul says, "pray in a tongue." Prayer, of course, is just another word for speaking to God, so it is reasonable to assume that his use of the words "speak" and "pray", in reference to God, are being used synonomously.
Paul here speaks not only about the spirit and mind praying, but also the spirit and mind singing. Paul suggest there is a difference between the spirit and the mind, and it might now help to have a look at the definition of these words.
Vine's Expository Dictionary Of Biblical Words draws out a number of defintions from the Bible's use of the word "spirit", but one notable and clear one is, "the sentient element in man, that by which he perceives, reflects, feels, desires." Matthew 26:41 is given as an example; "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak", while Mark 2:8 states that, "Jesus knew in his spirit". This all suggests that our spirit is something inside us that is a mixture of thought and emotion.
The word "mind" is much easier to define, Vine stating, "Speaking generally, the seat of reflective consciousness, comprising the faculties of perception and understanding, and those of feeling, judging and determining." For example, Colossians 2:18b says, "...Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions."
It therefore seems that the spirit and the mind are very similar, and yet Paul seems to draw some kind of line between the two. This could possibly be another stage where he is particularly trying to emphasize a point, but that seems unlikely, since he does seem to suggest there is a clear difference between praying in a tongue with the spirit, and praying in a tongue with the mind.
Jack Hayford believes that praying with the spirit is referring to the tongues of self edification, while praying with mind is "normal" praying, and they are to be differentiated.
But if we come to the conclusion that the spirit leans heavily on emotion as well as thoughts, while the mind is generally just analytical, then it could be that Paul is referring to the Corinthians when they get involved in their worship of God, whether it be through tongues or singing, in an emotional sense, without actually thinking about what they are doing; there is no knowledge or little concious thought. Paul is promoting doing these things with the spirit, the emotions, but also with the mind. To think about what is being done.
If we assume that "praising God with your spirit" is an emotional thing with none, or little, thought, then how can we look at the next line? "If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say 'Amen' to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified."
This is a very hard to understand couple of verses. Who is the one who "finds himself among those who do not understand"? Could that be referring to someone who needs a tongues interpreter to help them understand what the tongues speaker is saying? If this is so, again we see that Paul is encouraging tongues to be used for the edification of the church. Remember how we spoke earlier on how giving thanks/praising God isn't necessarily always the right thing to do, depending on the circumstances. Paul again seems to be promoting tongues as something that should be done only with the understanding of the tongues speaker and all around him.
The next verse has been quoted by today's believers in tongues as support for the importance of the gift, but yet again, the important word of "but" gets left out.
Some of the very popular Alpha Manuals have a section on Baptism of the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues. One of the reasons they give for encouraging the use of the gift is, "Paul loved it!" And as an example, they refer to 1 Corinthians 14:18. That verse says, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." However, they don't follow that with verse 19, which says, "But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue."
There is no doubt that verse 18 clearly has Paul not condemning his tongues. He is grateful for his gift, and gives the impression that it is a good thing. However, the following verse says just as clearly that he does not give it a very high rating of importance. The comparison between five and ten thousand is absolutely enormous. Even if we assume that Paul was just using an example of the difference in importance between tongues and learning, rather than being literal in comparison, he says here that he believes instruction to be two thousand times as important as speaking in tongues. Again, this sounds like Paul is playing down tongues, not promoting it on a grand scale.
It's also interesting to note here that, in differentiating between tongues and instruction, he seems to be suggesting that tongues aren't used for instruction. This could support the belief that tongues are primarily for praise to God. But then again, we saw earlier that it's possible that tongues were also for prophecy.
The next mention of tongues comes in verse 21, and are the words we looked at earlier from Isaiah. Verse 20 and 21: "Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. In the Law it is written: 'Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me,' says the Lord."
Now, the first thing to be understood is whether this mention of tongues is actually referring to the gift of tongues, or just general, understood languages and speech. Considering Paul seems to have been constantly speaking about the gift of tongues in this passage, one would imagine that he is continuing to do so here, but we can't be sure if that's the case. The quote does sound more like it might be just referring to general speech. Which ever it might be, it doesn't really lend much weight either way to our argument. The verse before it has Paul clearly saying that the Corinthians were being very immature about some of their church practices, and again encourages the use of the mind. It's not easy to understand what the quote from Isaiah is really referring to here. If it is the gift of tongues, could it be that God uses the gift to speak to others? If so, then people aren't listening to God and what He is saying.
This is very hard to understand, but the obvious thing to glean from these two verses is that the Corinthians needed to be more mature in their church practice and, one would think, their use of tongues, since that is what Paul has been talking about in this passage.
We well cover the next four verses, 22 to 25, as one: "Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really amont you!'"
First of all, Paul says very clearly that tongues are a sign for unbelievers, not for believers. This supports the argument that one of the reasons for tongues is proof of the Holy Spirit in a person's life, although it's interesting that that seems to be only proof for non-believers. It is also very strange that Paul says that prophecy is for believers, not unbelievers. If we remember that prophecy is primarly teaching, then one would imagine that unbelievers should benefit greatly from it, and yet Paul says here that it is not for them.
Again, this is very hard to understand. He could have been speaking about a type of prophecy that is miraculous, and is clearly some kind of sign, rather than general teaching. We can't be sure. But on the subject of tongues, Paul very clearly states here that tongues are a sign for unbelievers.
The next verse has Paul clearly critisizing everyone speaking in tongues at once, presumably out loud, to the point where it might be conceived as lunacy to those who enter the church. The verse after that again has Paul using the word "but", and focusing on the positive. If someone new comes in and hears positive teaching on sin and Salvation, assuming that is what prophecy is on this occasion, then he will benefit.
Now, these verses sound contradictory. First of all, Paul says that prophecy is not a sign for unbelievers, but then he goes onto say that unbelievers can benefit from prophecy and be saved.
What he could mean here is that prophecy as a sign is for believers, but prophecy as a teaching tool is for unbelievers (and, one would think, believers too, as there's nothing here go suggest otherwise). Certainly, Paul is again raising up the importance of teaching, and playing down the importance of speaking in tongues. In fact, he is clearly condemning the use of non-undestood tongues spoken out loud by everyone.
Just to look at another thing that might seems a bit puzzling; Paul seems to promote everyone prophesying at once, and yet the vision of everyone in church at once speaking the word of God conjures up confusion more than understanding. We might imagine that Paul wasn't literally meaning everyone teaching. Maybe he was again using strong emphasis in his desires to uplift the importance of teaching over tongues.
The next three verses of chapter 14 again mention tongues. "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two - or at the most three - should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God."
First of all, Paul states that tongues, along with instruction, etc, must be done for the strengthening of the church. He promotes tongues here, although only as a way of church edification. He says that only two or three people should bring forward their tongues message at one time, and they should speak one at a time, with someone to interpret what is being said. This says very clearly that tongues is for church edification, is not meant for everyone to speak all at once (indeed, it does not seem to be meant for very many people at the one service), and is always meant to be understood. Paul says that "someone MUST interpret".
If there is no interpreter, then the person should not speak out, but keep things to himself. Now, here again we have a verse that many people today use to promote tongues as a means of self-edification. They say that Paul is encouraging people to pray to God in tongues, but again we can see that the whole weight of these verses is leaning towards speaking in tongues for the church, with interpretation. Paul doesn't seem to be encouraging using tongues to edify oneself.
If that is the case, however, one would think that Paul would then have said, "If there is no interpreter, don't pray to God at all with your tongues." Yet he does not say this. He doesn't seem to suggest that praying to God quietly with tongues is wrong.
Paul could be compromising here. Saying, while it's not what he really wants them to do, it's not particuarly a sin. Maybe, "if you must do it, do it this way." Alternatively, there might be a benefit in continuing to do it quietly, to take in what God is saying, for the benefit of the church when an interpreter is there.
Whatever might be the case, if we again look at the whole tone of Paul's writing here, we can see that he is encouraging the use of tongues for church edification, not self edification.
The next few verses speak primarily about prophecy, so we will not take a close look at them. We will however, stop and have a look at verse 32. In the middle of Paul speaking about prophecy and how to use it, he says, "The spirit of prophets is subject to the control of prophets." If we remember what we learnt on the word "spirit", one would think Paul is saying here that the prophets are to be in control of their spirits/their emotions. One would imagine control to be with their minds. Therefore, Paul would be promoting thinking about all that is done in the church, rather than letting the mind go and just let the emotions rule. And, although he is just referring to the prophets here, one would imagine this would be what he would want from everyone.
The next couple of verses are very harsh on women in the church, saying they should not speak. One writer on the subject of tongues suggested that this was put in this chapter because women were the biggest abusers of tongues, and Paul mentioning not speaking in church was actually referring to tongues. Whether this is the case or not, we can't be sure, but it would indeed be very speculative to come to that conclusion, so we won't touch on the issue of women speaking in the church here.
The final mention of tongues, and indeed the final mention in the whole Bible, comes in the penultimate verse of the chapter, "Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tonguges." And verse 40 concludes, "But everything must be done in a fitting and orderly way."
Paul's final words on the subject, first of all, promotes prophesy, encouraging the Corinthians to be "eager to prophesy". Again, he seems to be more favourable to prophesy than tongues, but he clearly does say that the Corinthians were not to forbid speaking in tongues. Maybe he said this because some of the church members might have been threatening to go to the other extreme, wanting to do away with tongues altogether, rather than trying to use the gift the right way. Paul certainly says here that tongues are fine, and are a necessary part of the church of Corinth.
And the final verse again promotes order, as the early verses about orderly worship did. This again suggests Paul did not want the church to be seen as out of their minds with their tongues speaking or, one imagines, anything else.
That is everything mentioned on speaking in tounges in the Bible. There are a couple more verses later on that do not mention speaking in tongues, but many people believe them to refer to the gift. We will look at those later. But let's see what we have learnt from this study. Some things are extremely hard to understand, and we can't be sure what they really mean, but other parts are very clear.
1) The gift of speaking in tongues was a miraculous gift, first recorded when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples on the Day Of Pentecost. It enabled them to speak other, Earthly languages in a way that could not be explained.
2) Tongues were sometimes recorded when people were filled with the Holy Spirit, but not always. It is also clear from 1 Cortinthians that tongues could go for longer than just the initial filling.
3) Tongues were a gift that God gave to some people, not all. He gave as He chose. There is also nothing to suggest that the receivers had to do anything to access the gift of tongues.
4) Tongues were for the building up of the church, and were not promoted as good for self edification.
5) Prophecy was more important than tongues, unless the tongues were interpreted, which suggests that maybe the tongues could have been prophecy, at least some of the time.
6) Tongues seemed to be for praise, as well as for instruction, and had to be understood by others around.
7) Tongues were a sign for unbelievers.
8) Tongues were not to be said all at once, nor out loud with no interpretation.
9) Intelligent thought had to be used with the gift of tongues, not just emotion.
10) Tongues, like with all things in the church, were to be done decently and in order.
11) The tongues in Acts did not seem to need interpreters, but the ones in 1 Corinthians did.
12) Tongues were good and were not to be discouraged.
13) There is no clear "used by date" concerning the gift of tongues.
There are a number of questions throughout this study that have been left unanswered. There are some things that are just very hard to understand. This study is not meant to help us to try and understand everything on the subject of tongues, but to learn what we can, and keep an open mind on other, difficult questions.
There are two other verses in The Bible which many people believe is referring to speaking in tongues, so we will have a look at them now.
The first, notably, actually comes before all the instruction we have just studied. It is from Romans 8:26 and 27: "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans tht words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."
Many of today's tongues advocates believe that is referring to praying in tongues, but is this the case?
First of all, again, it would be very helpful to read these verses in context. This passage is speaking about the eventual redemption of us all. A couple of times, Paul uses the word "groan". "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as songs, the redemption of our bodies."
The word "groan" here seems to be reffering to a kind of pain, or desire. A longing to be free of our mortal bodies. Therefore, it seems strange to assume that the "groans" found in verse 26 suddenly mean tongues. And this is what tongues advocates must think, for the verse says, "but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." Where is speaking in tongues in the Bible ever described as a groan, and when does it sound like such a thing when done today? It is very clear that the "groans" mentioned in verse 26 are similar to what is mentioned earlier; it seems to be a way of describing pain and longing.
Verses 26 and 27 are speaking of times when we have run out of words to say to God. Maybe we are struggling with a problem to an extent where we don't know which way to turn next. We have prayed and prayed, nothing has happened, and we don't know what else to pray for. Although it is reasonable to believe that the Holy Spirit would have been helping us with our prayers up until that stage, this is where He really can take over. The times He "intercedes with us" means He helps us to have a clearer understanding of what we need to say. He brings words to us that we weren't able to think of before; normal, understandable words. He helps us pray. Remember, we have learnt that Paul encourages thought and reasoning in all we do, so it is unreasonable to assume that God wants us to close our eyes, switch off our minds and just let the Holy Spirit take over. If we switch off our minds, who knows what we might let in? A section of Romans 12: 2 says,"... but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
The other passage that many of today's tongues advocates believe is referring to speaking in tongues, comes right near the end of The Bible, in Jude verse 20, "But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit."
Many people believe that this means to pray in tongues. In doing so, this suggests that "praying in the Holy Spirit" can only refer to praying in tongues. If that is so, is there never a time when we pray in accordance with the Holy Spirit in our usual prayer time? This verse is very clearly encouraging all believers to simply pray in accordance with the Holy Spirit. Pray with the guidance and strength of God. There is no way anyone can come to a fair conclusion that this is referring to praying in tongues. Ironcially, considering this misunderstanding of verse 20, the book of Jude largely concentrates on false teaching.
This concludes our study on every mention of tongues in The Bible, and also on verses that don't mention tongues, but which many people believe refers to them. If anyone else knows of any verses they believe refers to tongues, please do contact me, outlining your reasons, if you believe it to be so. If you don't believe, but have "just been told", I would be very interested to hear what you have been told.
We will now move to Part 4 of this study, where we will look a bit more at what people think about tongues today, as well as what else we can learn from The Bible concerning the subject.
