Answers to Chuck Smith on the gift of Tongues

Chuck Smith: One of the areas of sharpest controversy within the body of Christ today involves speaking with other tongues, "glossalalia." At one extreme are people who label any exercise of tongues as satanic. At the other extreme are people who declare that you are not filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit unless you speak with other tongues. They declare that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In I Corinthians 13:1 Paul declares that tongues in themselves are not a valid evidence of the Holy Spirit within the life of a believer, for, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love [agape], I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." In other words, the tongues are only meaningless sounds and have no validity if there is not that accompanying agape love.

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Chuck Smith:
Tongues Versus No Tongues

In the book of Acts, speaking in tongues often accompanied the epi relationship to the Holy Spirit. Such is the case in Acts chapters 2, 10, and 19. However, in the eighth chapter of Acts, when the Samaritan believers received the Holy Spirit, there is no mention that they spoke in tongues. However, it is obvious that there must have been some kind of phenomena that accompanied their receiving the Holy Spirit, for Simon the sorcerer was seeking to buy the power that Peter and John possessed; he desired that he might also be able to lay hands upon people that they might receive the Holy Spirit. It is evident that some kind of phenomena accompanied their receiving the Spirit because Simon wanted to buy the power so he could duplicate the feat. Later, in Acts 9:17, when Ananias laid his hands upon Saul (Paul) that he might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, there is no mention of Paul speaking in tongues. However, we do know that subsequently, as Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he thanked God that he spoke in tongues more than all of the Corinthians. When Paul first experienced the gift of tongues is not divulged.

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Chuck Smith: We must point out that a person who speaks in tongues and lacks agape love has less valid evidence of the indwelling or the filling of the Spirit in his life than a person who has never spoken in tongues and yet manifests love and other dynamic qualities of God's Spirit. I cannot deny the validity of the Spirit-filled lives of many of those dynamic leaders and laymen in the church today who have never enjoyed the experience of speaking in tongues, and I prefer their fellowship over many who promote the speaking in tongues as the only true evidence of the Spirit-filled life, but whose personal lives are marred by strife or pride and often even heresy.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians he declared, "The fruit of the Spirit is love." The real proof of God's Spirit filling a person's life is love. Love is the most valid evidence that a man is truly filled with the Spirit, and tongues without love are just meaningless sounds.

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