Let me share a few thoughts on the sub­ject of tongues. I am aware that this is very con­tro­ver­sial, but so be it. Here I give you a list of how these pas­sages are often interpreted:

Let us lay the foun­da­tion to the cor­rect under­stand­ing of the Scriptures.

One of the keys to under­stand­ing the rel­e­vant pas­sages in Acts and 1Corinthians is Paul’s sim­ple statement:

1Cor 1:22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom…

So accord­ing to Paul the Greeks were not inter­ested in signs. They were after wis­dom. It was the Jews that sought after signs. We remem­ber that some of the Jews demanded mirac­u­lous signs from Jesus to prove that he was from God. Oth­ers dis­be­lieved him despite per­form­ing many such signs.

Signs always sig­nal some­thing, they com­mu­ni­cate a pre-agreed mes­sage. Once we encounter the signs we recog­nise the mes­sage. In the bible col­lege I attended there was a long thick metal rod hang­ing from the roof of the veranda. At a par­tic­u­lar time of the day those work­ing in the kitchen banged it a num­ber of times with another piece of metal. We heard it in the class­room and knew it was tea or lunch time. Take that rod to a shop­ping cen­tre, bang it and see if any­one will recog­nise the mes­sage you intend to com­mu­ni­cate. It is more likely the police will arrive.

There­fore, a sign is only mean­ing­ful to a par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances (i.e. to bible col­lege stu­dents in the bible col­lege). The sign is mean­ing­less to others.

Now let us exam­ine another plain state­ment from Paul:

1Cor 14:22 Thus, tongues are a sign not for believ­ers but for unbe­liev­ers, while prophecy is not for unbe­liev­ers but for believers.

Who are these unbe­liev­ers referred to by Paul? Well, it appears they are Jew­ish unbe­liev­ers, for the Greeks were only seek­ing wis­dom. You notice how Paul starts the sen­tence — “Thus”, there­fore he is point­ing back to what he had just said as the rea­son for his con­clu­sion. Here is the pre­ced­ing verse:

1Cor 14:21 In the law it is writ­ten, “By men of strange tongues and by the lips of for­eign­ers will I speak to this peo­ple, and even then they will not lis­ten to me, says the Lord.”

To whom does the law apply? To whom was it given? The Jew­ish peo­ple. Now we look­ing up the quote in Isa 28, and we find that the ref­er­ence is to the impend­ing judg­ment against the sin­ful Israelites, par­tic­u­larly Ephraim:

Isa 28:1 Woe to the proud crown of the drunk­ards of E’phraim, and to the fad­ing flower of its glo­ri­ous beauty, which is on the head of the rich val­ley of those over­come with wine! 2 Behold, the Lord has one who is mighty and strong; like a storm of hail, a destroy­ing tem­pest, like a storm of mighty, over­flow­ing waters, he will cast down to the earth [i.e. the land] with vio­lence. 3 The proud crown of the drunk­ards of E’phraim will be trod­den under foot; 4 and the fad­ing flower of its glo­ri­ous beauty, which is on the head of the rich val­ley, will be like a first-ripe fig before the sum­mer: when a man sees it, he eats it up as soon as it is in his hand. 5 In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a dia­dem of beauty, to the rem­nant of his peo­ple; 6 and a spirit of jus­tice to him who sits in judg­ment, and strength to those who turn back the bat­tle at the gate. 7 These also reel with wine and stag­ger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are con­fused with wine, they stag­ger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stum­ble in giv­ing judg­ment. 8 For all tables are full of vomit, no place is with­out filth­i­ness. 9 “Whom will he teach knowl­edge, and to whom will he explain the mes­sage? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? 10 For it is pre­cept upon pre­cept, pre­cept upon pre­cept, line upon line, line upon line, here a lit­tle, there a lit­tle.” 11 Nay, but by men of strange lips and with an alien tongue the LORD will speak to this peo­ple, 12 to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. 13 There­fore the word of the LORD will be to them pre­cept upon pre­cept, pre­cept upon pre­cept, line upon line, line upon line, here a lit­tle, there a lit­tle; that they may go, and fall back­ward, and be bro­ken, and snared, and taken.

I sug­gest you read the whole pas­sage in con­text. The sign of God’s impend­ing judg­ment will be the for­eign lan­guages they will hear. When they hear it they shall know that it is God who speaks to them [i.e. the mes­sen­gers of God speak His instruc­tions], yet they will not heed it and fall under judgment.

The above pas­sage sheds light to why the peo­ple in Jerusalem are so fright­ened when the first dis­ci­ples (a hun­dred and twenty of them — Acts 1:15 — they would have spo­ken to groups of peo­ple who gath­ered around them because they under­stood what they said in their own native lan­guage) pro­claim the won­der­ful works of God in for­eign lan­guages and hear Peter say­ing that this is what Joel proph­e­sied. They recog­nised that judg­ment was at hand, and asked how they could avoid the wrath that was to come upon the nation because of their sins.

Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apos­tles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”

The quest was how to avoid the wrath of God com­ing upon the nation.

I said, tongues were for­eign lan­guages. Do we have proof? Cer­tainly, they are named in Acts:

Acts 2:5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven [i.e. in the Roman world — exag­ger­a­tion]. 6 And at this sound the mul­ti­tude came together, and they were bewil­dered, because each one heard them speak­ing in his own lan­guage. 7 And they were amazed and won­dered, say­ing, “Are not all these who are speak­ing Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native lan­guage? 9 Par’thians and Medes and E’lamites and res­i­dents of Mesopota’mia, Judea and Cappado’cia, Pon­tus and Asia, 10 Phryg’ia and Pamphyl’ia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belong­ing to Cyre’ne, and vis­i­tors from Rome, both Jews and pros­e­lytes, 11 Cre­tans and Ara­bi­ans, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

This was surely the ful­fill­ment of Isa 28. The warn­ing sign of God’s impend­ing wrath.

It is often claimed that the hear­ers were given the mirac­u­lous abil­ity to under­stand what the dis­ci­ples had to say in a spe­cial lan­guage that oth­er­wise only God under­stood. How­ever, we see no such things in Acts. On the con­trary, we find that the dis­ci­ples were sim­ple peo­ple, they did not know these lan­guages, and it was the Spirit of God that gave them the abil­ity to speak these lan­guages with­out prior learning:

Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utter­ance.

There­fore the mir­a­cle was the speak­ing of those lan­guages and not the under­stand­ing of them.

So we may con­clude that in Acts the tongues are for­eign lan­guages, and the mir­a­cle serve as the sign of impend­ing judg­ment to the Jew­ish people.

In order to under­stand the tongues of 1Corinthians we need to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between the sit­u­a­tion in Jerusalem and Corinth.

In Jerusalem there were many for­eign­ers who came to cel­e­brate Pen­te­cost. Corinth, on the other hand, was a Greek con­gre­ga­tion. The lan­guage they spoke was Greek. Now if the mirac­u­lous gift was the Egypt­ian lan­guage, and if a per­son gifted with that tongue stood up and spoke the mys­ter­ies of God in that lan­guage, of course, no-one under­stood it. Only God under­stands all human lan­guages. So Paul iron­i­cally says,

1Cor 14:1 Make love your aim, and earnestly desire the spir­i­tual gifts, espe­cially that you may proph­esy. 2 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.

Proph­esy­ing ful­fills the pur­pose of God regard­ing the edi­fi­ca­tion of believ­ers, but tongues serve no such pur­pose, since tongues were signs for unbe­liev­ing Jews. If nobody under­stood the speaker, he didn’t speak to his hear­ers, but to God. He alone under­stood him. The pur­pose of speak­ing in the church is edi­fi­ca­tion, and if no-one under­stands what is being said, this very pur­pose is defeated. If peo­ple in the church don’t under­stand each other, they are like for­eign­ers to each other:

1Cor 14:11 but if I do not know the mean­ing of the lan­guage, I shall be a for­eigner to the speaker and the speaker a for­eigner to me. 12 So with your­selves; since you are eager for man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Spirit, strive to excel in build­ing up the church. 13 There­fore, he who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to inter­pret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruit­ful. 15 What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. 16 Oth­er­wise, if you bless with the spirit, how can any one in the posi­tion of an out­sider say the “Amen” to your thanks­giv­ing when he does not know what you are say­ing?

The issue in the Corinthian church is the mis­use of the spir­i­tual gift, not a dif­fer­ent kind of tongue. They lacked the under­stand­ing that the edi­fi­ca­tion of the assem­bly was of pri­mary impor­tance. If they stood up and spoke in tongues (look what I can do!!!), that is, with the spirit, not mak­ing sure that the audi­ence would be edi­fied, they only edi­fied them­selves, not others.

You may notice the men­tion of “mind” that is “unfruit­ful”. It is often thought it means the per­son speak­ing in a tongue him­self didn’t under­stand what he said. How­ever, real­ity is quite the con­trary. Let us exam­ine a few verses where the Greek terms for “fruit­ful” or “unfruit­ful” appear:

Matt 13:22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruit­ful.

Mark 4:19 but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruit­ful.

Eph 5:11 Take no part in the unfruit­ful works of dark­ness, but instead expose them.

Phil 1:22 If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruit­ful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I can­not tell.

Titus 3:14 And let our peo­ple learn to apply them­selves to good deeds, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not to be unfruit­ful.

2Pet 1:8 For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being inef­fec­tive or unfruit­ful in the knowl­edge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You shall see from these quotes that being “fruit­ful” is about doing good deeds, about ben­e­fit­ing oth­ers, about pro­duc­ing the fruits of right­eous­ness, that is, ful­fill­ing the law of God. It is not about doing things to self, but to oth­ers. The peo­ple who are “unfruit­ful” lack right­eous deeds or sim­ply do evil deeds. The fol­lower of Jesus is called to be fruitful.

Let us return back to the 1Corinthian pas­sage. The speaker in the tongue under­stands what he him­self says, for he edi­fies him­self. How­ever, his mind is “unfruit­ful”, that is, what he says doesn’t ben­e­fit oth­ers. He has noth­ing to give, his mind yields noth­ing that pro­duces growth in oth­ers. If he proph­e­sied his mind would have been fruitful.

Even though tongues were a sign to unbe­liev­ing Jews, their usage was not pro­hib­ited in the assem­bly pro­vid­ing it was inter­preted, so that the con­gre­ga­tion was edi­fied. There­fore the need for pray­ing for (mirac­u­lous) power to trans­late it into the spo­ken language.

Well, this doesn’t mean a lot of sense, does it? If they spoke those for­eign lan­guages and under­stood what they said, why would they have dif­fi­cul­ties to trans­late it? How­ever, if you leaned another lan­guage you know how dif­fi­cult is to trans­late it. It is a spe­cial skill to put one lan­guage into another. Even thought I spoke and under­stood Eng­lish rea­son­ably well when my wife came to Aus­tralia, I strug­gled when I tried to trans­late to her the ser­mon the pas­tor preached in the church. Other times I wrote arti­cles in Eng­lish and tried to trans­late them into Hun­gar­ian. It took me days to trans­late them, while I wrote them in just a few hours. I tell you, it would have been much faster to write them again from scratch in Hun­gar­ian, rather than trans­lat­ing them. So trans­la­tion is a spe­cial skill that not every­one who speaks another lan­guage has.

More could be said about the sub­ject, but I don’t intend to give a full expo­si­tion on 1Cor 14–15 here. What was sad is suf­fi­cient to see what tongues were all about.