What about speaking in tongues today?
Question 04123
Few topics in modern church life generate as much confusion, controversy, and pastoral difficulty as the question of speaking in tongues. For some believers, tongues is the defining mark of spiritual vitality, the indispensable evidence of the Spirit’s fullness. For others, it belongs entirely to the apostolic era and has no place in the church today. Both positions claim biblical support, and both carry real consequences for how churches worship, how believers assess their own spiritual health, and how the body of Christ relates to itself across denominational lines. The question deserves careful attention to what Scripture actually teaches, rather than what any tradition assumes.
What the New Testament Actually Says
The gift of tongues appears in three primary contexts in the New Testament. At Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11), the disciples spoke in languages they had not learned, and the gathered crowd from across the known world heard them declaring the wonders of God in their own native tongues. The text is explicit: these were recognisable human languages. The miracle was not ecstatic utterance but intelligible speech in languages the speakers did not know. In Acts 10:44-46 and Acts 19:1-7, tongues accompanied the initial reception of the Spirit by Gentile believers and disciples of John the Baptist respectively, serving as confirmatory signs that the same Spirit given at Pentecost was now being poured out on new groups entering the Church.
Paul’s extended treatment in 1 Corinthians 12-14 provides the theological and practical framework. Paul lists tongues among the gifts distributed by the Spirit “as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11), not as something every believer receives. His rhetorical question in 12:30, “Do all speak with tongues?”, expects the answer no. This alone dismantles the Pentecostal doctrine that tongues is the necessary initial physical evidence of Spirit baptism. If tongues were the universal marker of being Spirit-filled, Paul’s question would be nonsensical.
In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul describes tongues as speech directed toward God rather than toward people (14:2), distinguishes it from prophecy (which he considers more beneficial for the congregation because it is immediately intelligible), and lays down strict regulations for its use in public worship. No more than two or three speakers, each in turn, and only if an interpreter is present (14:27-28). If there is no interpreter, the tongue-speaker is to remain silent in the assembly and speak privately to God. The governing principle throughout is oikodomē, edification: whatever builds up the body is to be pursued; whatever produces confusion or disorder is not from the Spirit, because “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (14:33).
Has the Gift Ceased?
The cessationist position holds that the miraculous gifts, including tongues, ceased with the completion of the New Testament canon or the death of the last apostle. The key proof text is 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, where Paul writes that tongues “will cease” and that “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” If “the perfect” (to teleion) refers to the completed canon of Scripture, then tongues ended in the late first century.
The difficulty with this reading is substantial. The context surrounding Paul’s statement points unmistakably toward the return of Christ, not toward canon formation. Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (13:12). No believer, however well they know the completed New Testament, sees “face to face” or knows “fully, even as I have been fully known.” That language describes the consummation, the moment when believers see Christ as He is. The cessationist reading requires “the perfect” to bear a meaning the surrounding verses cannot sustain.
This does not mean that everything practised under the label of “tongues” in contemporary charismatic churches reflects the biblical gift. It means that the exegetical case for cessation is not as strong as its proponents claim, and that a careful, biblically tethered continuationism is the more responsible position. The gifts have not ceased by divine decree. They remain available as the Spirit distributes them according to His will. What has happened, in many cases, is that the biblical parameters governing their use have been abandoned, and the result has been confusion, manipulation, and spiritual harm dressed up as spiritual power.
Where Contemporary Practice Goes Wrong
The Pentecostal insistence that tongues is the necessary initial evidence of Spirit baptism has caused enormous pastoral damage. Believers who have genuinely trusted Christ and been sealed by the Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14) are told they lack something essential because they have not spoken in tongues. The anxiety, self-doubt, and spiritual insecurity this produces is not the fruit of the Spirit but the fruit of a doctrine that Scripture does not support. Every believer is baptised in the Spirit at conversion (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Spirit distributes gifts as He wills, and tongues is one among many, not the defining mark of spiritual authenticity.
The practice of entire congregations speaking in tongues simultaneously, often without interpretation and without any semblance of the order Paul prescribes, contradicts 1 Corinthians 14 at every point. Paul could not have been clearer: “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (14:19). The elevation of tongues above prophecy, teaching, and intelligible worship inverts Paul’s own ranking and creates an atmosphere where emotional intensity is mistaken for spiritual depth.
The phenomenon of “prayer languages,” understood as a private devotional use of tongues, has somewhat more nuance. Paul does say, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (14:18), and the private, God-directed nature of the gift in 14:2 does suggest a personal devotional dimension. What it does not support is the idea that every believer should seek this experience as a mark of spiritual maturity, or that those who do not have it are operating at a lower spiritual level. The Spirit gives as He wills, and the believer’s response is gratitude for what has been given, not anxiety about what has not.
So, now what?
The biblical position on tongues today is neither the cessationist denial that the gift exists nor the charismatic insistence that it defines spiritual life. The gift remains available because the Spirit has not withdrawn it, but it operates under the strict parameters Paul laid down in 1 Corinthians 14: intelligibility, interpretation, order, and edification. Where those parameters are honoured, the gift functions as Paul intended. Where they are ignored, what results is not the work of the Spirit but the confusion the Spirit does not produce. The believer’s confidence rests not in any particular gift but in the Giver Himself, who distributes to each one individually as He determines (1 Corinthians 12:11), and whose presence is confirmed not by spectacular manifestation but by the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
“Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” 1 Corinthians 14:1 (ESV)