The Gift of Tongues
The gift of tongues, or ‘speaking in tongues’, is prayer or praise spoken through the power of the Holy Spirit in a language that the speaker doesn’t know. By the power of the Holy Spirit, when we speak in tongues, we pray in languages that we don’t understand.
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
The gift of tongues points to a heavenly reality
This moment of wonder and amazement in Acts 2 is an opportunity for Peter to tell the crowd the good news about Jesus. About 3000 people start following Jesus that day as a result.
When people see the power of the Holy Spirit at work, they are drawn to wonder and ask questions. In Acts 2, after the crowd heard the disciples praising God in languages they couldn’t possibly have learned, the people were open to hear their message.
Why is worshipping in tongues so appealing to the onlookers? Because it points towards a heavenly reality.
We are all made with a longing for God, a longing for heaven. We were created to be eternal worshippers of God, so when we catch a glimpse of the purpose that we were designed for, we start to wonder. Somewhere deep inside us we instinctively know that there is more to life than this, and so when we see spiritual gifts being used, when we see heaven touching earth, we just can’t look away. Because it’s what we were made for.
As followers of Jesus, we have a glimpse, a foretaste, of the heavenly reality of the Kingdom of God. We are called to demonstrate this to the world, to give those who don’t know Jesus a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. To proclaim – “repent, turn around, change your ways, for the Kingdom of God has come near to you!”
Gifts of the Spirit are part and parcel of the new covenant that came into effect when Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Gifts of the Spirit equip us to carry out our ministry until Jesus returns, and they give a foretaste of the age to come. The gifts of the Spirit are foretastes of the fuller working of the Holy Spirit that will be ours in the age to come. The gift of tongues is a foretaste of the complete unity in worship of God that we will experience in heaven, without confusion, without communication barriers, without limits on our language from our intellect or our vocabulary.
3 ways we can exercise the gift of tongues:
Private prayer
Praying to God on your own, without needing to find words in English. Often when we are overwhelmed, we struggle to know what to pray for, but speaking in tongues is a way to communicate the prayers of our spirit to God without the need for human language. When we pray privately in tongues, our spirit, our innermost being, connects in worship to the God who made us. The scope of our prayers are no longer limited by our grasp of our human language, by our vocabulary – praying in tongues engages not our minds, but our spirits. (1 Corinthians 14:14)
Publicly in a human language
Sometimes when we speak in tongues publicly, the Holy Spirit occasionally uses us to communicate truths about God in a human language that we as the speaker don’t understand, but some of our hearers do. This is what we see in Acts 2. The disciples are each speaking a language they don’t understand, but they are understood by the crowd who have gathered – “we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” God can speak through us, using the gift of tongues to cut through language barriers and speak directly to people in their native language.
Publicly with interpretation
We can pray in tongues publicly, with interpretation, to build up the church. Paul writes very clearly in 1 Corinthians about how we should use the gift of tongues when we gather together publicly. The gift of tongues is something that we have self control over; we can use it in an ordered way in worship, for the building up of the church. The gift of interpretation of tongues is quite simply, reporting to the church the general meaning of something spoken in tongues. The Holy Spirit gives us the meaning of a heavenly language, to communicate to the church in English. The Bible is very clear on this - when a tongue is shared publicly, it should be interpreted, so that the whole church can understand what is being said, and be encouraged.
Three ways that God uses the gift of tongues. Private prayer, where our spirits communicate with God, without limitation of human language. This Acts 2 style speaking in human languages unknown to us, to cut across language barriers and proclaim the wonders of God in the mother tongue of people listening. And public tongues with interpretation, as part of our worship, for the building up of the church.
Our prayer as a church is that we experience more of this. That we speak in tongues more, that we operate in the gifts of the Spirit more, to become a more accurate reflection of what the kingdom of God is like.