Thank you for listening to First Day. I am Patrick Cooley. Please like, subscribe, and share so the podcast can reach its goal of seventy new listeners per series. And speaking of series, we are coming up on the conclusion of this series on 1 Corinthians. So, let’s get going on chapter fourteen.

Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy. For the person who speaks in a tongue is not speaking to people but to God, since no one understands him; he speaks mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the person who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement, and consolation. The person who speaks in a tongue builds himself up, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. I wish all of you spoke in tongues, but even more that you prophesied. The person who prophesies is greater than the person who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets so that the church may be built up.

Paul continues his discussion of charismata and his focus on agape. Teaching, preaching, healing, miracles, and prophecy all have been gifted by God for the purpose of building up the Church and the people of God, “for their strengthening, encouragement, and consolation.” Although he does not dismiss the most valued gift among the Corinthians—gift of tongues—out of hand Paul does diminish its importance because in the exercise of this gift a “person who speaks in tongues builds himself up” and not rest of the congregation. Paul tacks a caveat onto the end of this that if the tongue is interpreted then there is greater value of the members of the Body. 

Paul’s most treasured gift—and the one that he suggests all Corinthians should strive to possess—is the gift of prophecy. This charisma does not allow a person to look into the future like a fortune cookie or like Sister Roberta and her crystal ball; no, the gift of spiritual prophecy has been present since the very beginning of humankind’s relationship with God. Put simply, God’s prophets examine the world and the people around them and seek to bring them in harmony with God’s righteousness and life. They have been chosen by God to speak His word, thus “the one prophecies builds up the church.”

In these verses we may well be catching a glimpse of why the Corinthians’ are so enamored with glossolalia. Often in Paul’s letters we are not told exactly what problem a congregation is facing. So, we must make an educated guess about the circumstance by examining the details of the instruction that Paul gives them. When considering the ongoing theme of this letter and Paul’s effort to convince the Corinthians to come together as one community instead of continually working to show-out, Paul’s words reveal that the Corinthians are babbling “divine” language that no one can understand. It's just noise that draws attention to the speaker and humiliates the listener. I can imagine it. “Well, you don’t understand because you aren’t as wise as I am. I guess I’m just holier than thou.” If we apply the same standard that Paul used when discussing Holy Communion, it is reasonable to argue that these Corinthians may not even be practicing this charisma. 

Paul has already explained why the Corinthians should seek the spiritual gifts that edify others over glossolalia. Here, the apostle points out that there are two limitations to their sought-after gift. Firstly, without interpretation the gift is “unfruitful” in edifying one’s Christian sisters’ and brothers’ understandings. Secondly, the charisma engages only the speaker’s spirit; it is internally focused.  

There is some debate over Paul’s use of to pneumati—“the spirit”. Is he speaking of the Holy Spirit or the human spirit? Which one it is depends on if the translator has chosed to capitalize the S in spirit or not; in Greek script there is not variation script size: everything is written in lower case letters or in upper case ones. Here, I think Paul is referring to his human spirit, since he contrasts “the spirit” with the mind—interpreted here as “understanding”. Notice the contrast in these statements:

“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful…if you praise with the spirit, how will the outsider say, ‘Amen’ at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying…yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, in order to teach others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”  

It appears that when Paul uses “the spirit” he is speaking about his spirit. This is the intangible, unrelatable part of human existence that only you yourself and God know—his emotions and feelings, perhaps. It’s raising your hand in praise during the song or the sermon. It’s what Mary did that night when the shepherds came and told her about the angels: She cherished it in her heart. Paul compares this to his mind.

He would rather speak five words from his own understanding to others and ten thousand words in a tongue. To put this another way, he would rather speak a few words of his head for others’ understanding than to speak countless words from his heart. 

How we modern Christians should take this to heart! Recall from back in chapter two when Paul tells the congregation that the wisdom of God will sound like nonsense to the rulers of the world/those concerned with earthly things. If everyone is speaking in tongues and no one is interpreting them, it proves that everyone in the church is looking out for themselves, and the visitor will be wide eyed and confused. 

Practically, we should see Paul’s teaching here to be proof that we should be paying a bit more attention to hospitality and a little less to who is sitting in our spot. The choice is ours. We must remember that it is our responsibility to introduce those outside of the Church to the gospel and not to scare them away from it!

Here, Paul tells the Corinthians that outsiders are just as capable to understanding the gospel as they were if they communicate it in a comprehensible way. Again, recall chapter two where Paul tells the Corinthians that only Spirit understands the things of God and that the Spirit wants people to know those things. It’s just that those concerned with the world don’t want to know them. But just as Paul communicated to them in an approachable way—although it was the Spirit that opened their minds to it—they, too, must do the same for outsiders.

Paul uses the Greek word idiotes that translators have chosen to interpret as “outsiders”. I think it’s safe to assume what English word we get here. But is Greek, this word doesn’t include a sense of stupidity or ineptness; the apostle uses it to describe a person as unskilled in discerning the things of God; he or she should be understood to be novice. And we learn a possible result of this in following verses. 

The goal is not for church members to set themselves apart but to bring others to repentance and into possession of a new heart. The product of the Corinthians’ actions should be the declaration from the idiotesthat “God is really among you.” So the chaos and self-absorption of the Corinthians’ worship is a problem of biblical proportions. Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11,12 in verse 21 where God criticizes those have who received Him as “a crown of beauty and a diadem of splendor” for “stagger[ing] because of wine and stumbl[ing] under the influence of beer.” The prophet describes God’s remnant as “confused”, stumbling in their judgement, and “muddled in their visions.” The Corinthians, by allowing themselves to be wise in the ways of the world—to be adults in sin—risk failing in their calling to demonstrate the power of the gospel to change lives.

Paul tells the Corinthians that there must be order in their worship for the sakes of outsiders who are present with them. Worship, then, is just as much as a tool of evangelism as it is intended to bring them into contact with God: You can’t have one without the other. Worship is not a place of “tale-topping” but one where the unskilled, the outsider, might take his or her first step with Christ—the Way, the Truth, and the Life. However, we mustn’t take this to mean that Paul is telling us to add or remove smoke machines and screens from our sanctuaries. He is telling us that our worship must be genuine and must remain free from manipulation. 

This is harsh language. It’s out-and-out declaration that women are completely subject to their husbands and that they are enjoined to keep silent in worship contradict Paul’s earlier teaching in this very letter that husbands and wives are to be in subjugation to one another and where women are clearly shown to be praying and prophesying in worship: suggesting that these three verses are a later editorial addition, according to some scholars—indicated by the lack of any specific law to prove Paul’s teaching. (It just says, “as the law also says.”) 

On the other hand, this may be Pauline sarcasm—another example of the Corinthians’ “childish” thinking. Men in the Corinthian church may be responding to the apostle’s demand for order by blaming the women for speaking in public worship. After all, equality in the Hellenized world is not understood to be all that equal by today’s standards; nor would it have been by Paul’s standards since in Christ there is “no male and female.” In Greek culture, males were equal and free to speak at the agora and women…not so much. 

I promised to be as direct and as honest as possible; so here it is: 

I believe that men in the Corinthian church are—or have been—attempting to bring order to their worship by silencing the women’s voices. This is evidenced by what Paul writes in the concluding verses of the chapter. 

Church members should be wary of neglecting instruction on how they are to live their lives as demonstrated by Jesus’s life and interactions with others—including women. We should also be careful of adding to our practices those that have been imported into the Church from society and the culture at large. “…be eager to prophecy [unless you are a woman], and do not forbid speaking in tongues [again, unless you are a woman].” Loses something, doesn’t it?