Does the gift of tongues make you more spiritual? Does it make you into a better Christian? I will show here from Scripture that it does not, and that the belief that it does is a deception. Our guide for this study is the Bible, not experience.
YOU CAN SKIP A BIT
I will first show that all believers are equally blessed with the presence of and access to the Holy Spirit of God: there are no second-class Christians in the eyes of God. I will also show that God does not measure spirituality by which gifts you have or whether you feel spiritual, but by how you live out your life.
This article is quite long, so you may want to scroll down to a sub-title which takes your interest. I apologise for any ugly ads or gaps in the post.
WHERE THE HOLY SPIRIT IS
As I’ve shared before, I’ve heard people declare that if your church doesn’t have people speaking in tongues and being slain in the spirit, you should find a different church, because the Holy Spirit isn’t there. And to repeat my response, Jesus Christ’s answer to that one is this:
“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).
If you can’t believe that the Spirit is there without seeing people fall over or speak in tongues, you aren’t living by faith at all, but by sight. This is idolatry.
ONE SPIRIT, ONE BODY
If you want to trash a gathering of Christians simply because you don’t hear them speaking in another language, you are trashing a gathering of the body of Christ, in which Jesus Christ himself is present by His Spirit. Your church does not have a spirit in addition to the Spirit of Christ unless, of course, you are worshipping a spirit masquerading as the Spirit of God. What did Paul say about this?
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).
There is only one Holy Spirit, which, says Paul, is “in all”. It’s a false gospel which claims that you have to seek the baptism of the Spirit after salvation, with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Why? Because you lack nothing. Speaking of Christ, Paul wrote this:
For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:9-10).
CONPLETE IN CHRIST
Again, it’s a false gospel which tries to tell you that you are incomplete if you “only” have Jesus and “only” believed the gospel. Since the earliest days of the Church, the Holy Spirit is given to you at salvation:
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him (Romans 8:9 NASB).
You cannot be a believer; you cannot be saved from your sins without having the Spirit of God in you. It’s this salvation which places you into the body of Christ, and which binds the Church together. No Spirit, no Church:
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).
NO RESURRECTION WITHOUT THE INDWELLING HOLY SPIRIT
Further, if you didn’t have the Spirit of Christ-the Holy Spirit, since there is only one Spirit-you could not be raised from the dead-you would not be saved at all:
But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you (Romans 8:10-11).
If you are a true believer, says Paul, you have the Spirit. This is why he had to tell the Corinthians the following:
“…no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3b).
If you want to look down your nose at another believer who is not afraid to say that Jesus is Lord, simply because he or she does not claim to speak in tongues, you are making a mistake. Your brother or sister has the same Holy Spirit as you do.
ANY CHILD OF GOD HAS THE INDWELLING HOLY SPIRIT
Paul said that being a child of God is inseparable from the indwelling Holy Spirit. You can’t have one without the other:
“Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6).
TONGUES ARE NOT THE WAY TO SPIRITUALITY
Therefore the ground is truly “level at the foot of the cross”. There are no “haves” and “have nots” in the Christian world. There are no believers further up the ladder of spirituality because they fall over backwards in church. God’s measure of spirituality as opposed to fleshlyness is very different.
Contrary to a very commonly held belief, the claimed ability to speak in the miraculous gift of tongues is not the way to the spiritual life. This mistaken view was held by the Corinthians. As we know (if we read our Bibles at all) the Corinthians were very hot on tongues and other showy gifts. However, Paul felt the need to put them firmly in their place over several things, beginning in the very first chapter of his first letter. But the shocker for those in Corinth who thought they were on a higher plain was when Paul told them this:
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).
FEELING SPIRITUAL
Their charismatic gifts, if they really had them, did not make the Corinthians spiritual. Instead, they were “carnal” said Paul, because of their divisive attitudes. No amount of speaking in tongues, or falling over, can make you into a spiritual person, and it doesn’t matter how spiritual you feel. Singing and swaying and falling over and speaking in tongues may make you feel spiritual and tingly all over, but that feeling is a deception, which is common across the Christian world, due to false teaching. Are you self-deceived?
CHILDREN
Paul, in discussing the Corinthians’ use of tongues, told them to stop being childish:
Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults (1 Corinthians 14:20).
Tongues, then, didn’t make the Corinthians more spiritual: instead Paul described them as being “carnal” and “childish”.
LOVE
It was in that same letter to the Corinthians that Paul wrote what we call the “love chapter”. In chapter thirteen he stated that even if he could speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but didn’t live in love, he would be “nothing”. You can feel as spiritual as you like, but if you don’t love, including loving those who don’t love you, as Jesus said, you are not spiritual at all. John noted the same principle:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7).
SPIRITUAL WORSHIP
People lay on the floor of the church, and sway to the music, and speak and sing in tongues, thinking that this is the way to really worship God properly. This is what Paul said about that:
So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air (1 Corinthians 14:9).
WORSHIP OR PRAYER WITHOUT THE ENGAGEMENT OF THE MIND IS INFERIOR, NOT SUPERIOR
Speaking (and by extension singing) in tongues which no-one understands is no more than “speaking into the air” said Paul. It’s not a better form of worship-it’s a worse form of worship. Instead, said Jesus Christ, we are to worship with our whole being-including our minds:
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).
Paul clearly described what true worship is:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship (Romans 12:1).
TRULY SPIRITUAL WORSHIP
Living out your life in obedience and in love is the way to worship. Paul detailed the spiritual life in his letter to the Galatians. Charismatics will go straight to his discussion on the fruit of the Spirit here, skipping earlier verses, and use is to make a distinction between fruits of the spirit and gifts. However, shortly before his “fruit of the spirit” reference, Paul makes clear that he’s discussing how to live in the Spirit as opposed to living in the flesh. No amount of speaking in tongues can do it for you-it’s all down to how you live:
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law (Galatians 5:16-18).
Paul is speaking about living by, or in, the Spirit, and he’s going to tell the Galatians, and us, just how to do that:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (verses 22-23).
NO SHORTCUTS TO SPIRITUALITY
If you’re really “in the Spirit” says Paul, this is how it will show-not by falling over at the front of the church. Where does the New Testament ever tell us to fall over and speak in tongues as a way to spirituality and an effective Christians witness?
Peter went into some clear and precise detail about how to be effective as a spiritual believer, but first he declared the first principle I discussed, that is, that all true believers have been given the potential, spiritually, to be an effective spiritual witness. He has given us the potential-it’s for us to live it out:
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Peter 1:3).
Knowing Christ, not tongues, provides us the potential to be what we should be. Notice that Peter did not say “His divine power has given some of us everything we need…”
EFFORT, NOT TONGUES
Peter then went on to explain how to live an effective Christian life and tells us so. Remember that Peter was Christ’s spokesman on the first Day of Pentecost, yet here he doesn’t mention speaking in tongues or any gift as the way to effectiveness:
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:5-8).
In conclusion, any speaking in tongues, and no amount of it, can make you into a spiritual person. Instead, you and I must make the effort to fulfil the potential God has given us by His Spirit
Fuel for Faith 