Speaking in Tongues

09
Sep
2026

Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues

Now I want you all to speak in tongues (I Cor 14:5)

. . . one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret (I Cor 14:13)

I suppose I have saved the most difficult of the gifts for last – speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues.  I choose to take them together because Paul says that within the church body they need to be practiced together.  In a church service, they are different steps in the same process.  One brings a message from God; the other enables the people to understand it. 

Now if we are to talk about tongues, we need to begin by defining what tongues are, and I am well aware that Christians debate this definition.  Some speak of tongues as a kind of private prayer language between God and them (I Cor 14:2, 28).  Others argue that tongues consist of real languages that the speaker does not speak (Acts 2:1-11).  This disagreement rests on an appeal to different Scriptures.  The fact that Acts and I Corinthians use the same term – tongues – to refer to phenomena that seem to differ has caused much confusion.  Sometimes people think that the same term must always refer to the same thing, but this is not so, and I do not believe that tongues in Acts and I Corinthians actually are the same thing.1

Of course, they are the same in the sense that they both involve a speaker speaking words in a tongue he does not know.  But key differences also exist.  Is the language the speaker speaks understandable to others (Acts 2) or do you need an interpreter (I Cor 14)?  Is tongues a sign of the baptism of the Spirit (Acts)?  Or are all believers baptized in one Spirit and into one body (I Cor 12:13)?  Can you speak in a tongue for the sole purpose of edifying yourself (I Cor 14:4)?  When you speak in a tongue, are you speaking to God or to men?

I make a distinction between tongues as an initial sign of the baptism of the Spirit (Acts) and tongues as an ongoing spiritual gift (I Cor). Since this blog focuses on the spiritual gift of tongues, I will focus my discussion on I Corinthians.

In Paul’s discussion, I believe tongues can be a private, spiritual communion with God:  “one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God” (14:2).  To Paul this is a good thing.  He does not disparage tongues at all.

However, the main purpose of a spiritual gift is not just for you.  To Paul, the whole point of spiritual gifts is to build up the body of Christ (I Cor 12:7; 14:5).  But apparently the Corinthians were speaking in tongues in the public gathering, and no one knew what they were saying.  In that sense, their practice was not building up the church.

Thus, Paul’s problem with the Corinthians was not that they spoke in tongues – he wished all would speak in tongues (v. 5) – but with how they practiced tongues in the public worship. 

To Paul, prophecy as a spiritual gift is superior to tongues within the context of the public gathering (unless someone interprets the tongue) because prophecy actually gives the people a message they can understand.  Thus, to Paul, when the church gathers, if someone speaks in a tongue, someone must interpret.  The gift must actually be used to build others up.

Therefore, I am going to focus on tongues and interpretation used together for the purpose of building up the church.  When used in this way, these gifts bring to the church a message from God.  This message is generally spontaneous.  It could be encouragement; it could be rebuke; it could be guidance; it could be teaching, but whatever it is, it is informal and brief. 

When someone speaks out loud with a tongue, someone then needs to hear from God and tell the congregation what the tongue meant.  The person who interprets can be the same person who gave the tongue or he can be someone else.  Both the one who speaks in tongues and the one who interprets must listen carefully to the Spirit.  

Importance of Tongues and Interpretation

Tongues and interpretation are a sign of God’s presence that accompany a message from God.

Strengths

  • prayer
  • sensitivity to the Spirit
  • worship
  • intimacy with God

Weaknesses

  • pride
  • a de-emphasis on doctrine
  • valuing an experience above Scripture
  • a focus on the sign instead of on God
  • emotionalism

Examples of People with these Gifts

Paul, many in charismatic churches today

Good Roles for People with these Gifts

prayer ministry, worship ministry

  1. For more discussion, see here: https://www.austinif.org/an-interpretive-help-for-understanding-the-charismatic-gifts/ ↩︎
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12
May
2026

An Interpretive Help for Understanding the Charismatic Gifts

In my last blog I talked about the legitimacy of the charismatic gifts as well as some false doctrines surrounding those gifts.  Here I want to focus on the Biblical interpretation that brings about many of those false doctrines. 

Generally speaking,  when people believe a false doctrine about charismatic gifts, they do so on the basis of how they view the relationship between the Acts narratives and Paul’s explanations in I Corinthians.  In my experience, people who say that tongues are required for salvation, for the filling of the Spirit, or for a higher level of spirituality all believe that Acts and I Corinthians refer to the same phenomenon and that Acts gets priority.  Of course, my experience is a limited sample, but that is my experience.

So let’s talk about Acts and I Corinthians.  And let’s begin with some either/or thinking.  Acts and I Corinthians either refer to the same phenomenon or they don’t.  If they do refer to the same phenomenon, they do so with different approaches and genres.  Acts gives us descriptive narrative, and I Corinthians gives us explanation and command. 

Narrative tells us what happened at that time.  It does not necessarily tell us what should happen all the time.  Explanation and command, however, are designed intentionally to tell us how things work in general and how we ought to think and live.  Thus, if Acts and I Corinthians refer to the same phenomenon, then we ought to give priority to I Corinthians concerning how to think and live regarding charismatic gifts.  That is not to knock Acts.  It is the inspired Word of God.  But it is focused on what happened; I Corinthians, however, is focused on what should happen.  It is often tricky to get commands out of narrative, but it is not so tricky to get commands out of commands.

But I do not think that Acts and I Corinthians refer to the same phenomenon.  The reason people think they do is that the two books use similar nomenclature – baptism in the Spirit, speaking in tongues.  But the same word or phrase can have different meanings in different contexts.  That is a basic principle of language, and it is often an exegetical fallacy (to borrow Carson’s term) to read the same meaning into the same word or phrase in a different context.  Examples of this from the English language are legion.  In Scripture, the following words have different meanings in different contexts:  flesh, love, wisdom, world, judge, jealous, breath, know, drink, man.  I could go on, but you get the point.  What this means is that if you look only at the words themselves and not at the context, you are being irresponsible in how you handle the Bible.

To me, it is obvious that Acts and I Corinthians do not have the same contexts, and I do not think that claim is debatable.[1]  I Corinthians addresses an ongoing spiritual gift that one uses to build up the body of Christ.  It is a gift that not all who are baptized in the Spirit taste (I Cor 12:13; 27-31), and the use of the gift is within the context of the public worship service or assembly of believers and requires an interpreter.

Acts, however, gives no evidence of an ongoing spiritual gift to be used in public worship, and there is no mention of the need for an interpreter.  Instead, Acts relates one-time events in which the Spirit comes to a particular people — Jews (Acts 2), Samaritans (Acts 8:14-17), Gentiles (Acts 10:44-6), those who had been baptized in John’s baptism (Acts 19:2-6).  In addition, in Acts tongues are the sign of the baptism in the Spirit. 

The doctrinal problems ensue when people read Acts into I Corinthians.  Instead, they need to let Acts be Acts and I Corinthians I Corinthians.  The two books refer to different phenomena.  Acts is a narrative describing a special time in which God sent a specific sign when the gospel advanced to a new people group.  That sign was not a spiritual gift in the same sense as that which Paul describes.  I Corinthians discusses various spiritual gifts God gives for the purpose of building up the church — wisdom, knowledge, prophecy, teaching, helping, administration.  In I Corinthians, tongues is one among many such gifts, and the context is a plurality of gifts.  In Acts, tongues is not one among many gifts.  It is the sign of the Spirit. 

Thus, if Acts and I Corinthians do refer to the same phenomenon, we need to give priority to I Corinthians because its genre is actually intended to tell us how to practice the gifts.  If Acts and I Corinthians do not refer to the same phenomenon, we need to not read Acts into I Corinthians.  This approach will help resolve exegetical issues, like “are all believers baptized in the Spirit?” and it will resolve false doctrines like “one must speak in tongues to be baptized in the Spirit.”

Sometimes all we need is to approach Scripture with the Spirit of God and a commonsense sophistication that we would use to approach any other piece of literature. 

[1] I’m sure there will be people who will debate this nonetheless; there are people who deny the Holocaust.

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