13For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So 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. 16If 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? 17You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified.
18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.
Dig Deper
It’s funny how something that can be so appropriate and even welcomed in one situation can be completely out of place and inappropriate in another situation. People love a good joke, but there are times, a funeral for instance, when telling jokes would be completely out of place. In the same way, there are certain aspects of the Christian life that are important, but just not appropriate for public worship services. This is the sort of thing that Paul is addressing with the Corinthians. If we forget that he is dealing with an issue of the right place and right time, we might miss the point of what he is saying. Paul is not arguing that the gift of speaking in tongues was worthless or should be shunned, only that it must be exercised at the right place and time. The way that some in Corinth had been exercising this gift wasn’t just a demonstration of bad taste or bad timing, it had become another demonstration of their arrogance and self-absorption.
To reiterate, the gift of tongues was a special gift from God that allowed the speaker to praise God in a foreign language that was understandable to speakers of that language, but was an unknown language to the speaker. It was a wonderful tool to be used when out spreading the word of God, but it was not a very useful gift during a worship service of believers who likely spoke the same language. Using tongues was flashy and could even be impressive but it did virtually nothing in the way of furthering the body of Christ in their spiritual development.
This is the reason, Paul says, that anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. Rather than getting up in front of the assembly and doing what amounts to showing off, they should at least pray that they can then understand and interpret what the speaker just said so that someone at least can understand it.
What is at issue, in one sense, is that the Corinthians were compartmentalizing the mind and the spirit as though they were not interrelated. They were engaging in speaking in tongues as a form of corporate worship, when that was not its intent. This led to emotion-driven worship that did not engage their minds at all. True worship of God involves all aspects of the person: mind, body, soul, and spirit. They simply cannot and should not be treated as though one aspect can be engaged, while the rest are left to sit. Recently, I watched a service on TV where the attendees were watching the speaker, who did nothing but speak in the modern Pentecostal form of tongues for over 15 minutes (this is, of course, not the same as the biblical tongues but it is analogous because the listeners could not understand what was being said). What I witnessed was a service in which people were whipped into an emotional frenzy, but there was no true understanding, no discerning, and the people there were not truly spiritually edified in any sense of the word.
Paul definitely wants them to pray with their spirit, but also with their minds engaged. Otherwise they might truly be praising God in another language, but the other people there have no ability to understand what is being said, and thus the best they can do is to get whipped into an emotional frenzy. They cannot actually learn from what is being said and stand in agreement by saying ‘amen’. The purpose of corporate worship is the edification of the body and speaking in tongues just does not fulfill that goal.
Paul wants to make it clear that he is not some sort of tongues hater. No, he speaks in tongues more than anyone. This would make sense for an apostle who was constantly traveling and meeting people of different language groups. It could even be a valuable gift in a port town like Corinth, where one might run into many foreigners of another tongue. While spreading the gospel down at the ports, one might absolutely find tongues a valuable gift. That would be the right place and the right time.
Within the confines of worship at the normal assembly of believers, however, tongues should not be stressed. Paul says he would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. This should always be the standard in worship. We cannot engage in flashy displays that make us seem more spiritual at the expense of true discernment and wisdom. All of the spittin’ and shoutin’ in the world cannot, in Paul’s mind, replace five good words of spiritual wisdom that would edify both the spirit and the mind.
Devotional Thought
When you come to worship services is your goal to edify the body and give to others, or do you tend to come with a self-absorbed attitude? What are some ways that you might display a self-focus during a worship service? What can you do to have the proper focus on worshiping God and building up the body of Christ?
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