NOTES for Co1 14:22

Speaking about tongues, the Apostle recalls Isaiah’s prophecy: “By people with stammering lips and with a foreign tongue this people will be addressed” (Isa 28:11). The Lord ordained this punishment for the Israelites because they “would not listen” (Isa 28:12) to the prophet. In Isaiah, a foreign tongue is the language of conquerors, a sign of God’s punishment. When the gift of tongues is used for the wrong purpose, does it not become a cause of division and therefore a sign of punishment?

The Apostle establishes a strict rule, forbidding people to speak publicly in tongues when there is no interpreter. Tongues are not rejected altogether; they may be used in private prayer (28). Yet the principle “keep silent in church” must have grieved those who were accustomed to boasting of this gift (compare Matt 6:1–8, 16–18).

Prophets must likewise observe order. Remarkably, the “spirits of prophets” are obedient to true prophets; they observe order so that believers may “learn and receive encouragement” (and for this, for example, prophets must not all speak at once, or no one will understand anything).

The requirement that “women... should keep silent” is hardly an absolute prohibition; earlier the Apostle permits women not only to pray but also to prophesy, requiring only that their heads be covered (see 11:5).

The words “everything should be done decently and in order” show that proper order is no less valuable than the freedom of the prophetic Spirit, who “blows where He wills” (John 3:8).

The sinful world inclines many people to think that freedom and order are incompatible, but they are united wherever love reigns. So it should be in the Church as well.

Continuing the discussion of prophecy and glossolalia, Paul points to the importance of interpreting the revelation received by the one who "speaks in tongues" (vv. 13-15). He understands perfectly the difference between spontaneous ecstasy, which can pass without any spiritual consequences for the one who experiences it, and revelation as such, which necessarily touches a person's spiritual "I" or "mind." Ecstasy sometimes is indeed the result of the direct action of God's breath on human nature, but a person's own spiritual "I," which makes him himself, may remain entirely untouched. Then such a person will be able neither to understand the meaning of the revelation nor to pass it on to others (vv. 16-17).

Meanwhile, for a Christian, if he considers himself and truly is an adult, spiritually mature member of the Church, the primary task should be his own spiritual development and the spiritual development of his church community, not joy over his ecstatic experiences, like the joy children feel over a toy they like (vv. 17-20).

Of course, sometimes, especially for unbelievers, glossolalia, like any other obvious action of the Spirit of God, can become a kind of testimony to the reality of the spiritual world, about which most people, as a rule, do not think. But for Christians themselves glossolalia is not testimony, because it adds nothing to the spiritual experience either of those who undergo it or of those who observe it from outside (vv. 21-22). Prophecy in its traditional form is a different matter: here the spiritual benefit is evident, because in this case revelation takes a form in which it can be received and assimilated.

Once again, what comes to the foreground for the apostle is not the experiences of individual people in themselves, even if they are connected with their spiritual life, but the measure of the experiencers' participation in the life of the Church, and therefore in the life of the Kingdom, connected with those experiences. Indeed, any spiritual experiences, even the most intense, come and go in themselves. Only the Kingdom remains, and that measure of real participation in its life which determines a person's destiny in eternity.