Three scenes, three very different pictures. In the first, a crowd of pilgrims in Jerusalem hears uneducated fishermen declaring “the mighty works of God” in the pilgrims’ own native languages. In the second, a church in Corinth is so enthusiastic about spiritual speech that Paul has to write a whole chapter of traffic rules. In the third, a believer alone in a room prays in words nobody else could translate, and Paul calls it speaking “to God” rather than to men. All three scenes involve the same gift — speaking in tongues — and all three are needed to understand it, because any one scene alone will distort it.
The Greek word is glōssa: tongue, or by extension, language. The gift appears first at Pentecost, recurs in Acts, and is regulated at length in 1 Corinthians 12–14. Scripture treats it as real, as given by the Holy Spirit, and as one gift among many — never as the measure of a Christian, and never as a license for disorder. The question is not whether tongues are biblical. The question is what the Bible says they are for, and how they are to be used.
Scene One: Pentecost — Tongues That Translate
Acts 2 is the founding scene. The disciples were gathered in Jerusalem when “there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind,” and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:2, 4). The crowd that gathered was not a local congregation; it was a United Nations of pilgrims — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Crete, Arabia. And each one heard the disciples “telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11).
Whatever else tongues may be elsewhere, in Acts 2 they were intelligible human languages, miraculously spoken by people who had not learned them. The miracle was not noise; it was communication. The Spirit reversed, in a small way, what happened at Babel, where God confused human language. At Pentecost, God used language to gather what sin had scattered. The content mattered more than the phenomenon: the disciples were not showing off. They were declaring God’s mighty works.
Peter then stood and preached, and three thousand people were added to the church. The tongues were the sign; the sermon was the substance. That order matters. The Spirit’s work always points beyond the experience to Christ. Any use of tongues that draws attention to the speaker rather than to Jesus has already missed the point of Pentecost, however impressive it sounds.
Scene Two: Corinth — Tongues That Need Rules
The Corinthian church had the opposite problem from a church that lacks spiritual gifts: it had them in abundance and used them without order. Paul devotes three chapters to correction, and chapter 14 is the most practical. His principles are clear and, for some, uncomfortable.
First, intelligibility matters. “If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?” (1 Corinthians 14:9). A message nobody understands cannot build anyone up. Second, love outranks display. Paul would rather speak five intelligible words than ten thousand in a tongue (14:19), because the goal of gathered worship is edification — the building up of others — not the exhibition of the gifted. Third, public tongues require interpretation. “If there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God” (14:28). Fourth, everything must be done “decently and in order” (14:40), because “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”
Paul also ranks prophecy above uninterpreted tongues in public worship, because prophecy — intelligible speech from God — builds up the whole church, while uninterpreted tongues build up only the speaker. That is not a dismissal of tongues; Paul says, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (14:18). It is a reordering of priorities: the gift that serves others outranks the gift that serves the self, and in public worship, the church’s edification is the measure of everything.
Scene Three: The Private Room — Tongues That Pray
Paul also describes a private dimension: “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:2). And: “the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself” (14:4). Here tongues function as prayer — a Spirit-enabled groaning when ordinary words fail.
That connects with Romans 8, where the Spirit “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). There are griefs too heavy, joys too large, and confusions too tangled for sentences. In those moments, the gift of tongues can be a release valve: prayer that bypasses the mind’s need to articulate and goes straight to God. Paul’s own practice seems to have included this private use, alongside his public emphasis on intelligibility.
This distinction — public tongues with interpretation, private tongues in prayer — resolves most of the confusion. The same gift has two settings, and the rules for the two settings are different. What is edifying in private can be disorderly in public. What is appropriate in a prayer closet can be a stumbling block in a congregation where unbelievers are present. Maturity is knowing which setting you are in.
What Tongues Are Not
Scripture is equally clear about the negatives. Tongues are not required evidence of salvation or of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Paul’s rhetorical questions in 1 Corinthians 12:30 — “Do all speak with tongues?” — expect the answer no. The Spirit distributes gifts “to each one individually as he wills” (12:11). No believer has every gift, and no gift is the test of belonging to Christ. A church that makes tongues the entrance exam has added a requirement Scripture never imposed, and it will inevitably produce either pride in those who have the gift or shame in those who do not.
Tongues are also not a mark of spiritual superiority. The Corinthians had the gift and were, by Paul’s own diagnosis, spiritually immature — divided, proud, tolerant of sin, and suing one another. Gifts are not grades. They are tools, and a tool can be misused by an immature hand. The fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience — is the true measure of maturity, and Paul places the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, deliberately between his two chapters on gifts, as if to say: without love, the gifts are noise.
And tongues are not something to be chased as an experience. Scripture never tells believers to seek a particular gift; it tells them to “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy” (14:1) — the gift that builds up others. The Christian life is not a hunt for phenomena. It is a walk of faith, obedience, and love, in which the Spirit gives what He wills, when He wills, for the good of the body.
How Churches Should Handle This Well
For churches that practice tongues, Paul’s rules are the guardrails: interpretation for public messages, limits on how many speak, order rather than simultaneity, and a constant test — does this build up the church? For churches that do not practice tongues, Paul’s warning cuts the other way: “Do not forbid speaking in tongues” (14:39). A church may hold a cessationist position, but contempt for those who practice the gift is not a position Scripture allows. The gifts belong to the Spirit, not to a theological camp.
The Fruit Test for Every Gift
Whatever a person believes about tongues, Scripture gives a single test for every spiritual gift: does it produce the fruit of the Spirit? A gift exercised in love builds up the church. The same gift exercised in pride divides it. Paul’s order in 1 Corinthians is deliberate — gifts in chapter 12, love in chapter 13, order in chapter 14 — because love is the context that makes gifts safe. A church that measures spirituality by experiences will always be unstable, because experiences rise and fall. A church that measures spirituality by love, joy, peace, patience, and self-control has a measure that cannot be faked for long. If your practice of any gift makes you more loving, more patient, and more eager to serve others, it is bearing good fruit. If it makes you proud, secretive, or contemptuous of other believers, something is wrong — not necessarily with the gift, but with the heart using it.
For the individual believer, the wisest posture is the one Paul models: openness without obsession. If you have the gift, use it privately with gratitude and publicly only within Paul’s rules. If you do not have it, do not manufacture it, do not envy it, and do not doubt your standing. The Spirit who gave the gift is the same Spirit who gave you yours, and the body needs every member. As Paul’s body image insists, the ear cannot say to the eye, “I have no need of you.” The church that learns that lesson will find that its arguments about tongues shrink, and its love grows — which is, after all, the greater gift. The practice has been widely studied and debated; a general overview of glossolalia covers its history across traditions and disciplines.
