This week we tackle 1 Corinthians 14 which brings a couple of difficult textual problems. Foremost among them being 1 Cor. 14:34-35
Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but should be subordinate, as the law also says. 35 If there is something they want to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
Then we move to the topic of tongues and prophecy within the church gathering. Love is to guide the use of all the gifts in church (1 Cor. 13). Put differently—Jesus is the canon or ruler for how the gifts are practiced.
In short, because the gifts are about love (Jesus!) and the upbuilding of the whole body, the gifts are for your neighbors not primarily for yourself. (This is Paul’s problem with how the Corinthians are practicing the gift of tongues.) As Revelation 19:10 puts it, “The testimony (martyria) of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.”
And, I might, add it is the Spirit of tongues as well. The Spirit draws us out (ec-static) of our old, cramped ways of being in the world and into the vast, open space of reality constituted in the person of Jesus.
The spiritual gifts can never be an escape from reality. Rather, they lead us to Jesus who is himself reality. As Bonhoeffer never tires of reminding us:
Whoever sees Jesus Christ does indeed see God and the world in one. He can henceforward no longer see God without the world or the world without God.
In Jesus Christ the reality of God entered into the reality of this world… God and the world are comprised in his name.
Tongues and prophecy should lead us into the heart of reality because they lead us into the life of Jesus. Which means they lead us to those around us in their suffering, sin, guilt, and shame. That’s where Jesus is. God and the world at one in his face. He is the heart of reality.
The illustration of tongues breaking us out of our boxes comes from this sermon from Chris Green. I hope you’ll listen to it.
Jesus Is the Spirit of Prophecy (and Tongues)