1 Corthians 14

The contrast between tongues and prophecy.

(1)The guiding principles.

Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

Pursue love: Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, brilliantly declared the preeminence of love for Christians in 1 Corinthians 13. Now, since love is the greatest, we must pursue it.

Desire spiritual gifts: There was nothing wrong with the Corinthian Christians’ desire for spiritual gifts. But they made a godly desire into an obsessive pursuit, when the main pursuit for Christians should be love. Gifted~and hateful. Could you imagine having the gift of healing, and your enemy needed a miracle in their body, would you go pray?

or say things like Touch not my anoited, do my profit no harm.

In the Corinthian church, there was an over-emphasis on tongues and an under-emphasis on prophecy.

prophecy has the primary elements of prediction and revelation.”

(2-3) Prophecy and tongues contrast in whom they speak to.

(2-3) Prophecy and tongues contrast in whom they speak to.

If we are in a tarrying service, and someone speaks in tongues, thats not for you!! They are speaking to God.

With the gift of tongues, the speaker addresses God, not men.

If we misunderstand this, we misunderstand Acts 2 and think the disciples preached to the crowd in tongues on the day of Pentecost. Instead, they spoke to God and the multi-national crowd overheard their praise to God. Acts 2:11 says, we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God. Later, Acts 10:46 describes the hearing of the gift of tongues: they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.

However, this does not mean that all intelligible speech is the legitimate gift of tongues. Some, not understanding the gift, may imitate it, or fake it, just to “prove” something.

Paul’s context in 1 Corinthians 14 is more focused on what the Corinthian Christians do when they come together as a church than on what they do in their own devotional life.

In Paul’s ministry, he spoke so all could profit.

(7-9) Examples demonstrating the importance of speaking so all can profit.