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# Strange Sounds in a Divided Church
A woman in our congregation sometimes prays quietly in tongues during the sung worship. She is discreet, her voice a soft murmur lost in the sound of the guitar and drums. Three rows behind her, an elder I deeply respect—a man who has taught me much about the sufficiency of Scripture—folds his arms. He believes the gift of tongues ceased with the apostles. Every Thursday morning, these two serve side-by-side on the food bank rota, sorting tins of beans and handing out parcels with a kindness that flows from a shared love for Jesus. I find myself more interested in what happens on that Thursday morning than in settling the exegetical argument that separates them on a Sunday.
And yet, we must have the argument. The exegesis matters precisely because bad theology is already doing damage—creating a silent, unacknowledged fracture between two people whom the gospel has made one. Their discomfort is a small echo of a much larger, louder, and often toxic debate that has divided swathes of the global church. We treat the question of tongues and other sign gifts as a theological final exam, a tribal marker that sorts the biblically faithful from the spiritually alive. But what if Paul's primary concern was never to provide a neat taxonomy of spiritual experiences? What if his argument was about something far more urgent—the very unity of a broken church in a broken city?
## The Corinthian Problem Was Not What We Think
To understand Paul's teaching on spiritual gifts, we must first understand Corinth. It was not Geneva in the 16th century or London in the 21st. Corinth was a boomtown, a newly re-founded Roman colony at a strategic crossroads of trade and culture—a city humming with ambition, obsessed with status, honour, and rhetoric. As the classicist Anthony Thiselton notes, it was a society of "haves" and "have-nots," where social standing was everything. This obsession with status had thoroughly infected the church.
We see it everywhere in Paul's first letter to them. They were dividing into factions based on which leader they followed: "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos" (1 Cor 3:4). Their celebration of the Lord's Supper had become a disgraceful display of social hierarchy, with the rich feasting while the poor went hungry (1 Cor 11:21). The Corinthian church was a microcosm of the city's divisions, importing the world's value system directly into the body of Christ.
It is into this social crisis that Paul speaks about the *pneumatika*, the "things of the Spirit." His discussion is not a detached theological treatise for a systematic theology textbook. It is a direct, pastoral intervention designed to correct a catastrophic misuse of God's gifts. The Corinthians were treating the gifts—particularly the more spectacular ones like tongues—as status symbols, another way to perform spiritual superiority, to distinguish the insiders from the outsiders, the spiritually elite from the common rank-and-file. Their "spirituality" was just the city's honour-shame culture baptised with a thin Christian veneer. We cannot possibly understand chapters 12 to 14 unless we see them as Paul's radical solution to this crisis of division.
## What Paul Actually Says in Chapter 12
Paul begins his corrective not with a list of rules but with a foundational theological statement. "No one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus be cursed,' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). The primary and universal evidence of the Spirit's work is not a spectacular gift but the heartfelt confession of Jesus's lordship. This immediately levels the playing field. Before anyone can boast about their unique spiritual endowment, Paul reminds them that the one thing necessary is something every true believer already shares.
From this unified starting point, he introduces the theme of diversity. "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work" (1 Cor 12:4-6). He then lists some of these workings: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in different kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. The list is illustrative, not exhaustive. Its purpose is not to create a catalogue but to demonstrate the breadth of the Spirit's activity.
The core of his argument, though, is the brilliant metaphor of the body. Just as a human body has many parts with different functions, so the church is one body in Christ with many members. This metaphor is a direct polemic against the Corinthian status game. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'" (1 Cor 12:21). Paul deliberately inverts their worldly values, insisting that "the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor" (1 Cor 12:22-23). This is a theological bomb thrown into the middle of their status-obsessed assembly. The Spirit doesn't create superstars; he creates a mutually dependent family where the weakest are honoured most. His pneumatology is his ecclesiology.
## Tongues as the Test Case, Not the Trophy
Given this focus on unity, why does Paul spend so much time on tongues—more than on any other gift? The reason is simple: tongues had become the Corinthian trophy gift. It was ecstatic, public, and—crucially for a culture obsessed with rhetoric—it sounded impressive. It was the easiest gift to fake and the hardest to verify, making it the perfect vehicle for spiritual one-upmanship. It required no study, no character, no long obedience in the same direction. Just instant, spectacular, spiritual status.
Paul's strategy for dealing with this is masterful. He does not deny the validity of the gift—to do so would have been pastorally disastrous, alienating the very people he was trying to reach. Instead, he co-opts it and reframes it. He begins chapter 14 by stating his own credentials in their currency: "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you" (1 Cor 14:18). This is not a boast; it is a brilliant piece of rhetorical judo. He establishes that he can beat them at their own game, which gives him the authority to then completely dismantle the game itself.
In the very next verse, he delivers the knockout blow: "But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue" (1 Cor 14:19). With that single sentence, he demolishes their entire value system. He subordinates the spectacular-but-private to the mundane-but-communal, redefining "greatness" not as personal spiritual ecstasy but as service that builds up the whole body. He is not saying tongues are worthless; he is saying that in the context of the gathered church, their value is almost zero unless they are made intelligible to others. The trophy is melted down and recast as a tool for service.
## Chapter 14 and the Criterion of Intelligibility
The governing principle of chapter 14—the standard against which every gift is to be measured,is intelligibility for the sake of edification. The Greek word is *oikodomē*, which literally means "house-building." Paul asks a relentless series of pragmatic questions: does this action build up the house of God?
He contrasts prophecy and tongues on precisely this point. "Anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God," and therefore "the one who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves" (1 Cor 14:2, 4). Prophecy, on the other hand,which Paul defines as speaking "to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort",edifies the whole church (1 Cor 14:3). In the public gathering, then, prophecy is the "greater" gift: not because it is ontologically superior, but because it is functionally more useful for the community. The only exception is when tongues are interpreted, at which point they become functionally equivalent to prophecy because they have been made intelligible.
Paul then extends his argument to consider the outsider, the "unbeliever or enquirer" who might wander into the assembly. "So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and enquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or an enquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secret things of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you!'" (1 Cor 14:23-25).
This is a profoundly missional argument. The church's gathered worship is not a private spiritual spa for the initiated. It is a public witness to the reality of God, and what happens in that gathering must therefore be comprehensible. Chaos, confusion, and unintelligible sounds alienate the very people the church is called to reach. The test for any spiritual practice on a Sunday morning is not "Is this an authentic experience for me?" but "Does this build up the family and bear witness to the watching world?"
## The Cessationist Case, Taken Seriously
Many serious and godly Christians argue that this entire debate is moot because the gift of tongues and other "sign gifts" have ceased. This position, known as cessationism, deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed as the nervous reaction of those who fear disorder. Its arguments are primarily theological and historical.
The central text is 1 Corinthians 13:8-10: "Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away." Cessationists argue powerfully that "the perfect" (*to teleion*) refers to the completion of the New Testament canon. Once God's final revelation in Scripture was complete, the partial and preparatory modes of revelation,prophecy and tongues among them,were no longer necessary. The foundation had been laid.
This argument is often linked with Ephesians 2:20, which describes the church as being "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." The foundational roles and their accompanying sign gifts, the argument runs, were unique to the apostolic era, designed to authenticate the apostles' message before the New Testament was written and circulated.
There is also a historical argument. While not universally absent, many point to the records of church history and note a significant decline in the more spectacular gifts after the first or second century. For thinkers like B. B. Warfield, this was evidence that the gifts had served their foundational purpose and had been withdrawn. This is not an argument from fear but a coherent theological position rooted in a high view of the sufficiency and finality of Scripture,an attempt to guard the flock from false prophecy and from any experience that might claim an authority equal to the Bible.
## The Continuationist Case, Held Accountable
While the cessationist case is coherent, it faces significant exegetical challenges. The interpretation of "the perfect" in 1 Corinthians 13:10 as the canon is a possibility, but a more natural reading of the context suggests it refers to the eschatological state,the return of Christ and the new creation. Paul follows it with the line, "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face." That "face to face" encounter sounds far more like seeing Jesus than completing the Bible.
Furthermore, Paul's instructions in chapter 14 are relentlessly practical and seem to assume the ongoing practice of the gifts. He concludes his entire argument with two clear commands: "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way" (1 Cor 14:39-40). The command "do not forbid" places a heavy burden of proof on those who would argue the gift has been forbidden by God himself. On this point, the continuationist who argues that the gifts remain available for the church today seems to have the more straightforward reading of the text.
Winning the exegetical argument, though, is not the same as being faithful to the text. This is where the continuationist movement must be held accountable. Too often, in practice, charismatic circles have recreated the very problems of Corinth. Tongues can become a marker of a spiritual elite, a "second blessing" that creates a two-tier church of those who have it and those who don't. It can become a performance, driven by a desire for ecstatic experience rather than a desire to edify the body. When a church culture subtly or explicitly suggests that you are a less mature or less spiritual Christian because you don't speak in tongues, it has committed the very sin Paul was condemning,taking a gift of the Spirit and turning it into a tool of division, a badge of status. This is a profound and tragic failure to heed the apostle's warning.
## What the Spirit Is Actually Doing in a Divided City
This brings us back to the streets of London, to a city of breathtaking diversity and shocking division. We are a city of "poor doors," where new apartment blocks are built with separate entrances for private owners and for those in social housing. We are a city where life expectancy can differ by almost a decade between one Tube stop and the next, where drug dealers and investment bankers share a postcode but inhabit different worlds.
Into this fractured city, what is the Holy Spirit trying to do? He is not trying to create a league table of spiritual superstars. He is trying to build a church,a community so radically united across class, race, and cultural lines that the city stops and asks, "How is this possible?" The purpose of the spiritual gifts,all of them, from the spectacular gift of healing to the "boring" gift of administration, from prophecy to serving coffee,is to build this impossible community. They are the tools God gives us to construct a living, breathing preview of the new creation.
Any use of a gift that re-establishes the world's hierarchies inside the church is a contradiction of the gospel. A gift used for self-promotion is, by Paul's definition, a gift misused. The true test of the Spirit's work is not the sound of tongues on a Sunday morning but the sight of the banker and the bus driver, the Nigerian mother and the English student, serving one another on a Thursday morning at the food bank,the tangible love, honour, and mutual dependence that makes the world scratch its head. The Spirit works to make us a body, a single new humanity that testifies against the divisions of the old. Look for the fruit of the Spirit,love, joy, peace, patience,before you look for the gifts.
## So What Do We Do on Sunday Morning?
What does this mean for the woman praying in tongues and the elder with his arms folded? What does it mean for our churches, which are so often a messy mix of cessationists, continuationists, and the confused in between? Paul does not leave us without a flight plan. His concluding commands in chapter 14 provide the practical wisdom we need.
First, "be eager to prophesy" (14:39). We should actively desire and make space for God to speak to his people for their encouragement and strengthening. We should not let a fear of disorder or a tidy theological system quench the Spirit's work. Be a people who expect God to show up and speak.
Second, "do not forbid speaking in tongues" (14:39). This is a clear, negative injunction. While we must insist on order and interpretation in the public gathering, an outright ban seems to go beyond a plain reading of Scripture. It may mean encouraging the gift in private prayer, or in smaller group settings where interpretation is possible,allowing for its use in a way that edifies the individual without disrupting the corporate body.
Third, "everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way" (14:40). This is the balancing imperative. Freedom must not become chaos. Our gatherings should be characterised by a beauty and coherence that reflects the character of our God, who is not a God of disorder but of peace. The principle of intelligibility and edification must govern all that happens when the church gathers as a public witness.
Holding these principles in tension is not easy. It requires immense pastoral wisdom, humility, and trust. The cessationist elder must learn to see the genuine faith of the charismatic woman, even if he disagrees with her practice. The charismatic woman must be willing to submit her experience to the good of the whole body, valuing its unity above her personal expression. Both must see that their joint service on a Thursday is as profound a work of the Spirit as any gift on a Sunday. The goal is not to have the most spectacular gifts, but to be the most united body, bound together by a love that builds the house of God.