The Abuse of Tongues at Corinth

Note that in 1 Corinthians 14:2 Paul was criticizing the Corinthians for using their "gift of tongues" to speak to God and not to men: "One who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands. but in his spirit he speaks mysteries." Paul's comment is not suggesting that tongues should be used as a "prayer language"; he was using irony, pointing out the futility of speaking in tongues without an interpreter, because only God would know if anything was said. Spiritual gifts were never intended to be used for God's benefit, or for the benefit of the gifted individual. Peter made that clear in 1 Peter 4:10: "As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one and other."

Paul further added in 1 Corinthians 14:4, "One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself but one who prophesies edifies the church." Again, Paul was not commending the use of tongues for self-edification, but condemning people who were using the gift in violation of its purpose and in disregard of the principle of love ("[Love] does not seek its own."--1 Corinthians 13:5). The word "edify" in 14:4 means "to build up." It might carry either a positive or negative connotation, depending on the context. The Corinthians were using tongues to build themselves up in a selfish sense. Their motives were not wholesome but egocentric. Their passion for tongues grew out of a desire to exercise the most spectacular, showy gifts in front of other believers. Paul's point was that no one profits from such an exhibition except the person speaking in tongues -- and the chief value he gets out of it is the building of his own ego. In 1 Corinthians 10:24 Paul had already made clear this principle: "Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbour."

Tongues posed another problem: used as they were in Corinth, they obscured rather than clarified the message they were intended to convey. In 1 Corinthians 14:16-17, Paul wrote, "If you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the 'Amen' at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying? For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified." In other words, the tongues-speakers in Corinth were being selfish, ignoring the rest of the people in the congregation, muddying the message the gift was designed to communicate, and doing it all just to gratify their own egos, to show off, and to demonstrate their spirituality to one another.

In light of all that, we might wonder about Paul's apparent command in 1 Corinthians 12:31: "But earnestly desire the greater gifts." The way that verse is usually translated presents some serious interpretive problems. Since Paul stresses God's sovereignty in distributing the gifts, and he writes to castigate the Corinthians for favouring the showy gifts, why would he command them to seek "the greater" gifts? Wouldn't that just encourage them to continue competing for status?

But in fact the verse is not actually a command at all. The English translation is misleading as to Paul's meaning. The verb form used here can be either indicative (a statement of fact) or imperative (a command). The indicative form makes better sense. The New International Version offers the indicative as an alternate reading: "But you are eagerly desiring the greater gifts." Albert Barnes takes the indicative view, pointing out that many of his fellow commentators in the mid-nineteenth century (Doddridge, Locke, and Macknight) did likewise. Barnes observes that the cyriac new testament renders the verse, "Because you are zealous of the best gifts, I will show to you a more excellent way."

In other words, Paul was actually saying, "But you are zealously coveting the showy gifts." That is a rebuke, which makes better sense of Paul's next words: "I show you a still more excellent way." He is not commanding them to seek certain gifts, but condemning them for seeking the showy ones. The "more excellent way" he speaks of is the way of love, he then goes on to describe in 1 Corinthians 13.

The Corinthians were selfishly seeking the most prominent, most ostentatious, most celebrated gifts. They coveted others admiration. They craved the applause of men. They desired to be seen as "spiritual." Evidently, people had even gone to the extreme of using counterfeit tongues. The abuse of tongues in Corinth was threatening that church.

Sadly, the very same problems are threatening the church today.

(from Charismatic Chaos by John F. MacArthur, Jr.)

Counterfeit Tongues

Clearly, true Biblical tongues are not gibberish, but languages. What passes for tongues in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, however, are not true languages. Modern tongues-speaking, often called glossolalia, is not the same thing as the Biblical gift of languages. William Samarin, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, wrote:

Over a period of five years I have taken part in meetings in Italy. Holland, Jamaica, Canada, and the United States. I have observed old-fashioned Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals; I have been in small meetings at private homes as well as in mammoth public meetings; I have seen different cultural settings as are found among the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the snake handlers of the Appalachians and Russian Molakans in Los Angeles...Glossolalia is indeed like language in some ways, but this is only because the speaker (unconsciously) wants it to be like language. Yet in spite of superficial similarities, glossolalia is fundamentally not language.

William Samarin is one of many men who have made studies of glossolalia. The studies all agree that what we are hearing today is not language; and if it is not language, then it is not the Biblical gift of tongues.

The mystery religions in and around Corinth in the first century made wide use of ecstatic speech and trancelike experiences. It seems some of the Corinthians had corrupted the gift of tongues by using the ecstatic counterfeit. What they were doing was very similar to modern-day glossolalia. Paul was trying to correct them by telling them that such practices circumvented the whole point of the gift of tongues. If they used tongues that way, they would do harm and not good for the cause of Christ.

(from Charismatic Chaos by John F. MacArthur, Jr.)

The Grand Poo-Bah says -- If tongues do not support the cause of Christ, the only logical conclusion is that tongues support the cause and purposes of Satan. If that is true and you claim to be a Christian, why would you have anything to do with speaking in tongues or what is known to be counterfeit tongues? It could logically be said that anyone speaking in tongues or attempting to speak in tongues is serving Satan.

The Biblical Gift of Tongues

Tongues are mentioned in three books of the Bible: Mark (16:17); Acts (2, 10, 19); and 1 Cor. (12-14). Acts is primarily historical narrative and the extra-ordinary miraculous events it recounts do not represent a normative pattern for the entire church age. The disputed text of Mark 16:17 simply mentions tongues as an apostolic sign. That leaves 1 Corinthians 12-14 the only passage of Scripture that talks about the role of tongues in the church. Note that Paul wrote those chapters to reprove the Corinthians for their misuse of the gift. Most of what he had to say restricted the use of tongues in the church.

In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul discussed spiritual gifts in general, how they are received and how God has ordered the gifts in the church. In the fourteenth chapter of that book, he demonstrated the inferiority of tongues to prophecy. There he also gave guidelines for the proper exercise of the gifts of tongues and interpretation. Right in the middle of those two chapters -- in 1 Corinthians 13 -- Paul discussed the proper motive for using the gifts -- namely, love. Usually dealt with apart from its context, 1 Corinthians 13 has been called a gift of love. It is undeniably a supreme literary achievement and it deals profoundly and beautifully with the subject of genuine love. But it is helpful to remember that it is first of all a crucial point in Paul's discussion of the adulteration of tongues.

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul affirms the preeminence of love. Verse 1 plainly states that miraculous languages without love are nothing. Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for using gifts of the spirit, selfishly and without love. They were more interested in inflating their own egos or in enjoying a euphoric experience than they were in serving one another with the self-sacrificing concern that characterizes agape love.

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels..." is how Paul begins the chapter. "Tongues" is from the Greek work glossa, which, like our word tongue, can refer either to the physical organ or to a language. Paul is clearly referring to a gift of languages. Note that Paul had personally spoken in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:18). He was not condemning the practice itself; he was saying that if the gift of tongues is used in any other way than God intended, it is only noise -- like the rhythm band in a kindergarten class.

(from Charismatic Chaos by John F. MacArthur, Jr.)