1 Corinthians 14:26-33

 

In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul addressed the issue of spiritual gifts, specifically speaking in tongues. In the first 25 verses of the chapter, he emphasized the importance of clarity. Speaking in tongues is not helpful to the church unless it is interpreted. Understanding is the key both to edification and evangelization. Here, Paul extends the point to speak more generally about church worship.

In this passage, we get a glimpse of what church services were like in the first century, or, at least, in Corinth. The picture seems to be that multiple people would all play a part in the service, each one coming with some gift. Tongues and interpretations of tongues we have already talked about. Revelation may correspond to prophecy—something supernaturally revealed by God—while doctrine would be teaching or preaching as we understand it today. A psalm probably refers to some kind of music, whether they were singing the OT psalms or whether there were already Christian hymns being written. The point is that we have all these different people, with different gifts, taking part in the service.

That really isn't so different from how we have church today. We have various people pray, lead singing, sing specials, testify, and preach. However, based on this scripture, many believe that at Corinth, these weren't being done as part of a single, orderly service. Instead, in the church meeting, you might have a man in one corner of the church singing a psalm with a group listening to him, while in another corner, there is one preaching, and so on. You can see how much confusion that would cause. And then you add to that the fact that many of these were speaking in an unknown tongue that few (if any) understood, and you see how a church service could become chaotic and disorderly

That is the goal of this section--to bring about order in the church. And Paul lays down his main advice at the end of verse 26: “Let all things be done unto edifying.” It appears that many people in the church had lost sight of this. Perhaps they were becoming proud and wanted to show off their particular gift. Perhaps they were just excited. But whatever the reason, they were putting their own exercise of a gift above the good of the church. And Paul brings us back around to the main point—church worship should be for the good of the church. 

On that general principle, Paul lays down a few practical guidelines. First, if there is speaking in tongues, then it shouldn't be the whole service. Just two or three would be fine. He says they should speak “by course.” This seems to have the idea of taking turns—not all talking at once which, as I said, seems to have been the case before. Perhaps it might even include having a plan beforehand; certainly that wouldn't be a bad idea. And since—as we established in the first part of the chapter—speaking in tongues is pointless without interpretation, no one should speak in tongues unless there is also someone who will be able to interpret.

He said that, in the absence of an interpreter, the tongue-speaker should “keep silence... and... speak to himself, and to God.” There is an important point we have to understand here. This whole emphasis on edification may seem odd to us. We tend to emphasize that our church activities are done before God; it is God who receives and evaluates the worship we perform in church. If it is a performance, then God is the audience and the critic. 

And that's true, of course. Obviously, even edification must be done as part of our relationship with God. The church is not a social club for merely human self-improvement. But the thing to understand is that the church is a social setting; it is a gathering of believers. And therefore everything done there must be in that context. When Hannah prayed silently, God heard and understood her prayer. But if Hannah had been called upon to pray in church and had prayed that way, no one else would have heard or understood her prayer. Public worship must be performed for the public good.

Of course, you could take this idea too far. It could be that your testimony, say, would be beneficial to others even if you don't think it would be. But we still have to keep the general principle in view—all things must be done for edifying. That is the goal and the plan.

In the first part of the chapter, Paul spent considerable time comparing speaking in tongues with prophecy, showing the superiority of the latter. And yet even prophecy must be constrained and regulated. You can have too much even of prophecy. And even prophets cannot edify the church if they are all talking at once.

The details of verses 29-30 are a little difficult to make out. The main idea seems to be that only one person should prophecy at a time. Paul seems to suppose that God might reveal something to one prophet while another was speaking and, in that case, the speaking prophet should yield the floor. Since we don't deal with prophecy in this sense in the modern church, it is hard to picture the situation.

But the general idea is that there should be peace and order. Prophets are the mouthpieces of God, but that is no excuse for poor behavior. No one should monopolize the church; the goal is for all those who have been gifted to have a chance to use their gifts, and for the entire church to learn and be comforted by them.

In verse 32, Paul says that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. We have accounts in the Bible of persons being demon-possessed and speaking a sort of prophecy. The man Jesus met in the Gadarenes had supernatural knowledge. But in that case, the man was a passive instrument, seemingly having no power or will in the matter. He was enslaved entirely by the demons. That is not how prophecy works when it comes from the Holy Spirit. God does not remove our agency even with supernatural gifts. Perhaps, some of the spiritually gifted (whether prophets or tongue-speakers) claimed that they couldn't control their gift, that they couldn't just be quiet and participate in the church service in an orderly way, because they were so full of God. But Paul makes it clear that we can and should exercise self-control, even in spiritual things. As Adam Clarke put it: “God grants no ungovernable gifts.”

Paul sums his argument up in verse 33. “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.” The NET Bible translates that: “God is not characterized by disorder but by peace.” Often, God's way may seem strange and even explosive to the world. God's ways bring change and turmoil to those who are bent on doing something else. As Jesus Himself said, He brought a sword and division. But that is only because people are not in tune with God. God Himself is always in tune. There is always harmony in Heaven; there is discord on Earth because people are playing their own music.

But God is a God of order and peace, and our worship should be in accordance with that. A church service that is a chaotic mess is probably out of tune with God, especially when that mess is caused by individuals trying to get their own way instead of working together for the common good. Paul says that this was the case in all churches of the saints. He wasn't laying down special rules for the Corinthians—it just happened that they seem to have been the only church to be so disordered as to require such a passage.