1 Corinthians 14:18 Commentary and Bible Study

The apostle also had the gift of tongues speaking but in the light of what he has been saying, it is clear he always had a message when he did so. ‘I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all’, which probably does not mean that he spoke in tongues more often than they did, but that he had been given by the Holy Spirit the capacity to speak in more languages than they spoke in. That is not surprising: the apostle went from region to region, country to country, and always he went to the Jewish synagogue first. So the sign came, which was to astonish the unbelieving Jews, that, ‘This man can speak our language, which is peculiar to this region, and he has not been brought up here, and he has never lived here. But look how he can speak so plainly in our language the wonderful things of God. This is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah, that the new age, the Messianic age, has come.’ ‘Yet in the church I had rather speak’ – look at this statistic – ‘five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in a foreign language.’ Ten thousand words! Better to have five in a language which the people can understand.’ How long does it take to speak ten thousand words? Well, from transcripts of sermons I would say that in a public gathering it would take you about two hours. One short sentence that is meaningful is far better than two hours which is not meaningful, is the apostle’s assessment. So he is not actually outlawing tongues altogether; he is simply telling them to get this gift in proportion.