1 Corinthians 14:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Of course it never happened that the whole church spoke in tongues; this is an illustration in which he is using the technique of arguing from exaggeration. If everyone in the church spoke in a foreign language, what a miracle! Alternatively, he could mean the platform party – ‘If your little group of teachers, prophets and tongues speakers – the three, four, or five people on the platform – were to all speak in tongues, what would be achieved? Either way it wouldn't do much good, if it wasn't interpreted. Any unbeliever who came in would say, ‘This is a madhouse’, even though it was a genuine miracle, because they wouldn’t understand a word of it. They would say, ‘These people are insane because in their meetings they come together to speak words that no one understands and yet they do it with such enthusiasm.’ Even an unbeliever would be able to see how ridiculous this was. They would apparently be able to see it more clearly than the Corinthian believers did. So there is no point in tongues without an interpreter, says the apostle. The passage leads us to believe that, when unbelievers came into their meeting, those men on the platform would one by one preach an evangelistic message. They would preach for the salvation of souls.