33.What about the interpretation of the tongue? .

Back to Study the Book of First Corinthians

A believer should interpret. If there is no interpreter, those who are moved to speak with tongues should speak to themselves and to God, that is, silently, while assembled with the saints.

What Paul is stating here is not intended to be the commandment of God that there be no more than three utterances in tongues in one church service, and if there are four, the fourth one is of the flesh or Satan. This is not what is intended.

Paul is teaching concerning two issues: the building of the Body of Christ; and orderly participation on the part of all the believers so there is harmony instead of confusion in the household of God, and all are profited.

The elders of the assembly must determine the appropriateness of all the activities of the assemblies—appropriateness judged by whether the saints are being built up in Christ. In some services it would not be appropriate for there to be even one utterance with a tongue because the Holy Spirit was not directing that way. In another service in which the believers were taught the use of spiritual gifts, it might not be out of order to have fifteen utterances in tongues and twenty-five prophecies.

The governing of the assembly is the responsibility of the elders. Paul has given us the guiding principles—edification and order.

In many assemblies of the saints today the guiding principles are violated. First, the activities of the assembly do not build up the Body of Christ. They occupy the attention and they entertain, but the members are not growing in godly behavior. This means they are not growing in Christ.

Second, the activities of the assembly are limited to a few professional ministers. The widespread participation of which Paul is speaking does not exist in the majority of the assemblies of believers.

There is order, but it is the orderliness of spiritual death.

To insist there be no more than three utterances with tongues, and at the same time to violate the two principles Paul has presented, is to strain out gnats and swallow a camel. This is always the case when we become legalistic with the Old Testament or the New Testament.