I Cor 12:1ff Now about spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be UNINFORMED. There are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but the same Lord.
There are different ways of working, but the same God works all things in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
TO ONE there is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, TO ANOTHER the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another...to another...All these are the work of one & the same Spirit, who apportions them TO EACH ONE AS HE DETERMINES.
But in fact, God has arranged the members of the body, every one of them, according to His design. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
Now you are the body of Christ & each of you is a member of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, and those with gifts of healing, helping, administration, and various tongues.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the better gifts. I will yet show you a still more excellent (far more excelling) way.
"Do all speak in tongues?" It is rhetorical in nature & the answer is: no, not all members of the body speak in tongues, whether out loud or in private to God in prayer while seated in the assembly of saints; they are still SPEAKING. That is the point the Apostle Paul is making.
'If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would NOT make it any less a part of the body.'
'The eye CANNOT say to the hand, “I do not need you.'
'If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?...
"If they were all one part, where would the body be?" As it is, there are many parts, but one body...
Now if the whole church GATHERS in the same place & everyone is speaking in other tongues (foreign languages), when uneducated people or unbelievers COME IN, will they not say you're mad?"
The rhetorical questions in I Cor 12 & 14 answer themselves. It is evident that if a member of the body does not have a certain gift based on the Spirit's DETERMINATION & utterance, that doesn't make them a LESSER part of the body, less spiritual somehow. Or that they are not part of the body at all, that they are not saved if they don't speak in tongues or speak in a private prayer language.
The one speaking in tongues cannot say to the member not speaking in tongues that we have no need of you or you are not part of the body of Christ.
I have been castigated by some Charismatics that I am not spiritual if I don't speak in tongues or pray in a prayer language; or that I am not saved if I don't evidence the baptism of the Spirit by speaking in tongues; or that I am missing out on a 'second' blessing, when God promised only one blessing in the Abrahamic covenant, not two; and some I won't even mention.
When this occurs, schisms are formed, divisiveness is in the body & love & concern are gone. The fruit of the Spirit is LOVE... Where these occur the Spirit is being grieved & quenched & not actively involved. Thus what is occurring is not Spirit generated or determined but man determined.
To balance this, I have wonderful MATURE Charismatic close relatives & brethren, who do none of the above & we love each other in Christ & have ministered together. We are equal members in the body of Christ & family.
Also there are brethren on the other side of the aisle, that would castigate me for thinking all the gifts are available today as the Spirit gives the utterance. Again those who are mature loving Christians don't do that.
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Rupertus Meldenius
I Cor 1:20-22 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the THE SAME THING (agree with one another in what you say) &
that there be NO divisions among you; but
that ye be perfectly joined (knit) together in the SAME MIND & {perfectly joined together} in the SAME JUDGMENT (discernment).
'But God has composed the body & has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no schism (division) in the body, but that its members should have the SAME concern for one another.'
My thoughts are on the Scriptural passages that mention speaking in tongues: Acts 2, 10,19; Mark 16:17; I Cor 12-14.
In the other passages where spiritual gifts are mentioned & exercised in the assembly of believers (I Pet 4; Romans 12; I Cor 7:7), there is no mention of the gift of tongues nor interpretation of tongues. These epistles, other than I Cor 7:7 on the gift of celibacy, were written later in time than I Corinthians.
Rom 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members & the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
I Pet 4:10,11 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.
Thus, as I understand Scripture in its plainness, not all members have this particular gift. Tongues is in the plural, meaning that there are more than one language as part of this gift, not just one, like is seen in Acts 2:7-11. There is not one private prayer language in the singular; it does not match what Scripture says.
This is also shown in I Cor 14:27,28.
If anyone speaks in a tongue, two, or at most three, should speak IN TURN & someone MUST interpret. But if there is no interpreter, he should remain silent IN THE CHURCH & speak only to himself & God.
To have no confusion in the assembly, up to three were to speak in tongues & they must be interpreted. Here is where I agree with you on your initial posting. Must is in the emphatic in the Greek. And by the way, the verb interpret is the Greek word, 'hermeneian' from which we get hermeneutics in the English.
But the question naturally arises: how do the ones speaking in tongues KNOW that there is people there who can interpret them?
In other words, if they do speak in tongues & there is no interpreter, then they are out of order & creating confusion since God is not the author of confusion. They are not edifying or building up the church, the members of the Christian assembly. So how does one know?
One doesn't. Why? Because when they speak in tongues, this is something that the Spirit of God does through them. It is not something they arbitrarily decide to do or manufacture; it is determined by the Holy Spirit as 'He gives utterance.'
The Spirit KNOWS there are interpreters in the Christian assembly, because He had gifted them & determined ahead of time that they will give utterance as He leads them. Therefore if He chooses to have someone speak in tongues in the assembly, He knows that He will also choose those to interpret those tongues.
I have talked to someone before who interpreted someone speaking in tongues. They were visiting in that Christian assembly that I was in & He verified the language spoken because he knew it & gave the interpretation of what was spoken. But he didn't know ahead of time that speaking in tongues was to occur nor that he would be the interpreter. The same thing occurred at Pentecost in Acts 2.
There is another vitally important reason why no tongues are to be spoken out loud if there is no interpreter. That is one of the MUSTS. Yet there is another 'must' that is also in the emphatic.
I Cor 14:26 What then shall we say, brethren? When you COME TOGETHER (ASSEMBLE), each one has a psalm or a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All of these MUST BE DONE TO BUILD UP (EDIFY) THE CHURCH ('ekklesia' the assembly).
In other words, all those things listed, including speaking in tongues & interpreting them, must be done to edify & build up the church assembled. When assembled, speaking in tongues must be interpreted so the body of Christ can be edified.
That is another reason why someone remains silent, because there is no one to interpret the foreign language & what it means. Thus no one in the assembly gets built up because they can't understand it, to give an amen.
Since Acts 2 is one of the passages that talks about speaking in tongues, I would like to examine closely what is actually said there.
'began to speak with OTHER tongues': other languages that were not native to them nor were learned; different from their own native tongue. They were recognized as Galileans but were certainly not speaking at all like a Galilean!
'as the Spirit gave them utterance': this was NOT something they were looking for or expecting or had practiced until it suddenly flowed from their mouth. It was suddenly done as the Spirit determined & at that ideal time & location. Jesus told them to wait until power on high would come.
'from every nation (ethnos) under heaven': these were the scattered Jews of the Diaspora--God had scattered them to all the Gentile nations, such as James & Peter wrote to in their epistles.
Josephus, the Jewish historian wrote: (Bell.,
Acts 2:16,) “there was not a people upon earth who had not Jews inhabiting among them..."
These tongues, as most Greek scholars attest, were languages that weren't native to the speakers; i.e, they were not learned languages. And most recognized the speakers were Galilean.
Yet what was coming out of their mouths was not Galilean Aramaic but their actual native dialect of their own nation, as if they were speaking like a native born resident. Not wonder they were confounded & confused. How could this be?
'now when this was NOISED (sounded) abroad (rang out)': the Greek word here is 'phones' where we get phonetic. These native speakers were hearing their native dialect ringing out loudly.
No WONDER they came running to see what was going on, as a native born speaker was telling them in their own dialect, of the mighty acts of God. And as the crowd gathered, this would be amazing & astounding. One would expect someone to speak in Greek or Aramaic & one speaker at a time, which was the normal thing expected.
'the multitude...were confounded {confused, bewildered}, because every man heard them speak in HIS OWN LANGUAGE': here the Greek word is not 'glossa', tongue, but the Greek word 'dialekto', literally dialect. That would get my attention quickly!
And the other amazing thing is the word 'speak' is in the middle voice in the Greek, meaning that this was something that they were acting upon themselves. (I--myself) In other words, the subject is both the cause & the focus, the agent & experiencer, of a verbal action.
You can imagine people in the crowd talking to each other in the vernacular common language of Aramaic, the very dialect & accent that they expected those at Pentecost to speak in.
I can see them saying that this was bewildering because we are hearing them speak in our own native born peculiar dialect, sounding just like us who were born learning our dialect & yet they are Galilean! How in the world is this possible?
And to make it more stunning, the verb 'speak' in the Greek is in the imperfect tense, meaning the action happened & continued to happen for awhile. In other words, this kept on going for awhile; it wasn't a short burst of speech & then stopped.
'In his own language or dialect' stands as an equivalent for the "tongue" in Acts 2:11; it was used for a dialect, in the modern sense of the term, as well as for a distinct language. The same word is used in Acts 1:19.
YLT "...And it {Judas' hanging) became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem, insomuch that that place is called, in THEIR PROPER DIALECT (own language), 'Aceldama', that is, field of blood." (to be continued)
