What the Bible Actually Says about the Gift of Tongues

Few topics in the church generate more confusion, more fear, or more controversy than the gift of tongues. Some churches treat it as the definitive marker of Spirit-filled Christianity. Others have quietly buried it in the footnotes of theological history, convinced it no longer applies. And a lot of ordinary followers of Jesus sit somewhere in the middle — vaguely unsettled by strange experiences they've witnessed, or by the pressure some communities have placed on them to produce something they weren't sure was legitimate.

If any of that describes you, I want you to know: I understand. And I want to help.

The problem isn't the gift. The problem is that most of us have been working from an incomplete picture of what tongues actually is. Incomplete pictures breed confusion, fear, and abuse — none of which Paul intended when he wrote about it in 1 Corinthians. What I want to do here is give you the fuller picture.

Before we can understand the gift itself, we need to clear up a translation issue that has quietly shaped how most people read these passages for the past four hundred years.

1 Corinthians 14:6, depending on your translation, you may see something like: "...if I should come speaking in an unknown language..."  That word — unknown —  is not in the original text.

William Tyndale, who gave us the first English New Testament, used "unknown" as an explanatory adjective. His reasoning was understandable: later in the same chapter, Paul speaks of others not understanding what is being said, so Tyndale reasonably reads that context back into the earlier verse. By the time the King James Bible was published, that inserted word appeared in italics — a way to signal that the underlying Greek word was not actually there.

Over time, the italics disappeared from most editions. And when they did, readers stopped reading it as an adjective and started reading it as a noun. In so doing, the gift of tongues stopped being about languages and started being about this one unknowable, mysterious unknown tongue. Everything else Paul was actually saying got crowded out.

The underlying Greek word is glōssa, which Latin rendered as lingua — the same root our Spanish-speaking community would recognize immediately. Lingua means "tongue," but in context it consistently refers to language. We still use it this way today. When someone speaks in their mother-tongue, we mean their mother-language. Which means the gift of tongues is more accurately translated as the gift of languages.

Once you see that, much of the confusion and fear begins to go away.

When you read the New Testament passages on tongues without the lens of that single distorting word unknown, the context becomes a bit clearer. Paul is not describing a single gift with a single expression. He is describing at least three distinct expressions of what he calls glōssa — and each one has its own orientation, its own purpose, and its own guardrails.

TYPE ONE: The Missional Tongue

The first type appears in Acts 2 at Pentecost. Jews from across the known world have gathered in Jerusalem, and the early disciples begin speaking in glōssai — languages. What makes this astonishing is what happens next: people from a dozen different regions hear the message in their own native language (Acts 2:8). This is a real, verifiable, foreign human language — supernaturally spoken by someone who had never studied or learned it.

Its orientation is outward, toward people who do not yet know Jesus. Its purpose is evangelistic, to bridge a language barrier so the gospel can be heard and understood. And its guardrail is not interpretation — it's external verification. The people who heard it could confirm whether it was a real language. No interpreter was present at Pentecost, and none was needed, because the communication itself was immediately intelligible to its intended audience.

Author R.T. Kendall tells the story of a pastor who felt an insistent compulsion to share the gospel with a stranger on an airplane. When he finally obeyed, the man turned to him and said he had just spoken a language known only to a small village of his people — a language the pastor had never studied. That is a Type One tongue: a Spirit-given capacity to communicate the gospel across a barrier the speaker cannot naturally cross.

TYPE TWO: The Devotional Tongue

The second type emerges in 1 Corinthians 13:1, where Paul mentions the tongues of angels. This is a different category entirely. Later in chapter 14, he describes it this way: "If I pray in tongues, my spirit is praying, but I don't understand what I am saying..." (1 Corinthians 14:14). This is not a known human language. It appears to be something closer to what Paul describes elsewhere as "groanings that cannot be expressed in words" (Romans 8:26) — a Spirit-enabled language of the heart that bypasses rational comprehension and moves directly into deep communion with God.

Its orientation is upward, not outward. It is personal and private. Paul says it edifies the person praying (1 Corinthians 14:4) — it builds them up spiritually. And its guardrail is very clear: Paul explicitly silences this expression in the public gathering. "In a church meeting, I would rather speak five understandable words to help others than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue" (1 Corinthians 14:19).

This is not a rejection of the gift. It is a protection of both the gift and the gathered church. What is sacred and meaningful between a person and God in private can become chaotic and alienating when projected onto others without context. Paul's argument is not that the devotional tongue is somehow lesser. It's that love for the people around you governs how and when it's expressed. The moment a personal prayer language turns outward, the rules change.

TYPE THREE: The Instructional Tongue

The third type is where things get a little tricky if we aren't paying attention to the text. In 1 Corinthians 14:5, Paul writes: "I wish you could all speak in tongues, but even more I wish you could all prophesy. For prophecy is greater than speaking in tongues, unless someone interprets what you are saying so that the whole church will be strengthened."

This version of tongues is linked to prophecy. It is the only version that requires interpretation. And its orientation is neither outward to the unbeliever nor upward to God alone — it is inward, toward the believing community. It strengthens the church. It functions like a prophetic message: a Spirit-prompted utterance that carries revelation for the assembled body.

Here is how Paul describes the ideal: "A person who speaks in tongues should pray also for the ability to interpret what has been said" (1 Corinthians 14:13). The ideal is not one person speaking in tongues while another person across the room interprets. The ideal is a single person who carries both the utterance and its interpretation — a kind of internal two-key system where the Spirit gives both the message and its meaning to the same vessel before anything is said aloud.

This also clarifies what to do if you sense that your private prayer language (Type Two) might carry a word for the church (Type Three). Paul's counsel is not to stand up and speak it without understanding it. Seek the interpretation first. Come with both the message and its meaning, or come with neither. The guardrail here is not silence — it is clarity in service of the body.

What Paul is doing throughout 1 Corinthians 14 is not suppressing the gifts. He says it plainly: "Be eager to prophesy, and don't forbid speaking in tongues" (1 Corinthians 14:39). He is not closing a door; rather, he is building a doorframe.

He adds another guardrail worth noting: "Remember that people who prophesy are in control of their spirit and can take turns. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace" (1 Corinthians 14:32-33). In other words, this is not an involuntary experience. The Spirit does not override your will. You are in control of yourself. Any expression of spiritual gifts that involves a person claiming they had no agency — "I couldn't stop it, it just came out of me" — should be evaluated carefully against this text.

And finally: the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life is not that you speak in tongues. It's that you are empowered for mission. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). The Spirit's signature is not a particular experience or an outward expression. It is a life increasingly shaped by Jesus — one that moves towards the mission with power it didn't generate on its own.

The three-type framework — missional, devotional, instructional — does not resolve every question about tongues. But it does dissolve most of the fear and confusion.

There are people at Bay Hills who pray in a devotional tongue privately and have never known what to call it or whether it was okay. It is. Keep it between you and God; let it build you up and deepen your life of prayer. Paul's silencing of that gift in the assembly is not a condemnation against it — it is a protection of it.

There are others who have suppressed a prompting to speak a prophetic word because they weren't sure what to do with it. Paul's counsel isn't permanent suppression — it's to seek the interpretation first, and then to speak it clearly, in order, in a real language the community can receive and evaluate.

And there are certainly some who don't have this gift, feel no particular draw toward it, and have never experienced it. You are not spiritually deficient. The Spirit distributes as He wills, not according to our rankings, but sometimes according to our desires (1 Corinthians 14:1). He gives every believer at least one gift (1 Corinthians 12:7) — but He alone decides which one (1 Corinthians 12:11).

"Let love be your highest goal..." (1 Corinthians 14:1). That is Paul's actual conclusion after four chapters on spiritual gifts. Everything else — every gift, every expression, every guardrail — is in service of that. Tongues without love is noise. Prophecy without love is performance. But gifts submitted to love and order become one of the primary ways the Spirit builds the church into something the world cannot explain.

I think that's worth being open to.