1 Corinthians 14:7

Paul’s long teaching on spiritual gifts runs through 1 Corinthians 12–14. In 1 Corinthians 12 he shows that the one Spirit gives many different gifts, in 1 Corinthians 13 he sets love over them all as the reason for using any of them, and in 1 Corinthians 14 he brings both truths to bear on the church’s worship. He has just said that prophecy is the greater gift in the gathering because it builds the church up, while a tongue builds up the speaker alone unless someone interprets (1 Corinthians 14:1–5). Verse 6 opens with “Now, brethren” and shows why.

Paul makes himself the example. If he came to them “speaking with tongues”, he asks, “what shall I profit you?” The verb ōpheléō means to be useful, to do someone good. The question answers itself. Even an apostle helps his hearers only when they can understand him.

Then he names what would help them: speaking “either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine”. Revelation, apokálypsis, is a disclosure, God making known what was hidden. Knowledge, gnōsis, is the knowing and understanding of the things of God, insight that sheds light on truth already given. Prophesying, prophēteía, is speaking God’s message to his people, and Paul has just said that the one who prophesies speaks to men for their edification, exhortation and comfort. Doctrine, didachḗ, is teaching, both the act of teaching and what is taught. Paul sets the four side by side, and what joins them is that each reaches the hearer’s mind in words he can follow.

All of this rests on what Paul has already taught, that the Spirit’s gifts are given to each believer for the good of all (1 Corinthians 12:7). Christ gave his gifts to the church for the perfecting of the saints and the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11–12), and each of us is to please his neighbour for his good (Romans 15:2). Love, which fills the chapter just before this one, cares whether the brother beside us understands.

Paul next reasons from things everyone in Corinth knew. “And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp” begins with ápsychos, lifeless or inanimate. The pipe, aulós, was a flute, and the harp, kithára, was a lyre. Both were common across the Greek and Roman world, at religious ceremonies and at entertainments. Even these lifeless things are expected to make sounds that mean something.

The condition is that “they give a distinction in the sounds”. Diastolḗ means a variation or difference, and here it is the clear separation of one note from the next. The word for “sounds” in this phrase, phthóngos, is an utterance or a musical note, vocal or instrumental. When the notes are distinct, a listener can follow a melody or a rhythm. When they run together, the result is noise, and Paul asks, “how shall it be known what is piped or harped?” The verb for “known”, ginṓskō, means to know, perceive or understand. The listener is left guessing at the tune.

The trumpet in verse 8, salpinx, is an ordinary battle trumpet. Armies used its calls to tell soldiers to assemble, advance, attack or retreat, and a whole army’s ability to move together hung on how clear those calls were. Corinth was a Roman colony and a busy port, familiar with soldiers and their signals. “Uncertain”, ádēlos, joins a negative to the word for clear or plain, and it means hidden or indistinct. Verse 8 uses the same verb for “give” as verse 7, dídōmi, and the same word for “sound” as verse 7’s “giving sound”, phōnḗ, a tone of any kind, from a voice, an animal or an instrument.

“So likewise ye” brings the pictures home. Hoútō kaí hymeîs means “in this way also you”: what is true of pipe, harp and trumpet is true of the Corinthians when they speak. In “except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood”, the verb for “utter” is dídōmi, the same verb as the instruments’ “giving sound” in verse 7 and the trumpet’s “give” in verse 8. Speech is a sound the tongue gives, and it has to be as distinct as a note on a flute. “By the tongue” is diá, through, with glōssa, the same word as the tongues of verse 6, here the tongue that forms the words. The “words”, lógos, are things said together with the thought they carry.

“Easy to be understood” is one Greek word, eúsēmos. It joins eu, “well”, to a root meaning to signify, and it describes words that are well marked, clear and plain in meaning. Without them, “how shall it be known what is spoken?” The verb for “known” is ginṓskō again, as in verse 7, and the musical question becomes a question about speech.

God has always wanted his people to understand his word. When the law was read to the people in Ezra’s day, “they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8). Paul asks the same care of every believer’s speech: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:6).

Verse 10 turns from instruments to languages: “There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world”. “It may be”, tynchánō, grants the point freely, as if to say there are ever so many. “Kinds” is génos, a kind, stock or sort, and “voices” is phōnḗ, the word for “sound” in verses 7 and 8, here the languages of men. Corinth was a crowded port where Greeks, Romans, Jews and people from across the empire met, and anyone walking through its markets or along its docks heard many languages in a single day.

“And none of them is without signification.” The phrase “without signification” is one word, áphōnos, voiceless or mute, and figuratively meaningless. Every language is a voice that speaks, carrying meaning to those who know it. Paul puts it by denying the opposite, which makes the point stronger.

God made a world full of meaning. The heavens declare his glory (Psalm 19:1–4), and his invisible things are understood through the things that are made (Romans 1:20). The many languages of men go back to Babel, where God confounded their speech (Genesis 11:7), and so every language a Corinthian heard on the docks was a voice with meaning, waiting for someone who knew it.

“Even so ye” draws the whole comparison to its point. The words are kaí hoútō hymeîs, and hoútō, “in this way”, here looks back over the pipe, the harp, the trumpet and the languages. “Forasmuch as” is epeí, since, and “ye are” is esté, a present state: they are eager now. “Zealous” is zēlōtḗs, a zealot, someone eager and devoted. Paul affirms their eagerness and gives it its aim.

The word under “spiritual” is pneûma, breath or wind and so spirit, and the KJV supplies “gifts”, which the context of chapters 12 to 14 supports. Their eagerness is for what comes from the Spirit, and Paul is glad of it.

Then comes the command: “seek that ye may excel”. To seek, zētéō, is to go after something. To excel, perisseúō, is to abound, to overflow, to have more than enough. The abundance Paul wants is abundance in what builds others up, and the striving he asks for is a striving to be useful to the church, with prominence left aside.

“To the edifying of the church” names the goal. Prós is “to” or “toward”. Oikodomḗ is the act of building, and also a building, so “edifying” is an image from architecture: the church built up, strengthened and made stable and mature. The church, ekklēsía, is the assembly, the congregation of God’s people.

Building up answers every trouble in this letter. The Corinthians were divided into parties (1 Corinthians 1:10–13), puffed up with pride (1 Corinthians 4:6–7) and disordered in their worship, though God is the God of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33). Paul’s answer is that each member uses his gift for the others, as he teaches elsewhere of the many members of one body (Romans 12:4–5) and of the different gifts each is to use faithfully (Romans 12:6–8). Peter says the same: each one is to use the gift he has received to serve others (1 Peter 4:10). Paul gathers it into one rule, “Let all things be done unto edifying” (1 Corinthians 14:26), sets out an orderly gathering in 1 Corinthians 14:26–33, and closes the chapter asking that all things be done “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).

Paul is setting the rule for tongues in the gathered church, and the rule is that a tongue spoken there must be interpreted. If someone speaks in a tongue, there is to be an interpreter, and if there is none, he is to keep silence in the church and speak to himself and to God (1 Corinthians 14:27–28). The gift itself stands, and its public use is ordered for the good of all. Paul also thinks of the newcomer and the unbeliever who walks into a gathering where everyone speaks in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:23).

The same rule reaches everything said when the church meets. A sermon, a Bible study, a song or a public prayer helps the people present when they can follow it, and words full of unexplained terms leave them where the uncertain trumpet left the soldiers. Paul says that he will sing with the understanding as well as with the spirit (1 Corinthians 14:15).

God has spoken to us plainly in his Son. He spoke in many ways through the prophets, and in these last days he has spoken by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–3). John calls Jesus the Word, who was with God and was God and was made flesh (John 1:1–14): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Son has made the invisible God known (John 1:18), and his name is called The Word of God (Revelation 19:13).

The four ways of speaking in verse 6 all meet in him. He is God’s revelation in person. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in him (Colossians 2:3). He was a prophet mighty in deed and word (Luke 24:19), and he taught with authority (Matthew 7:28–29). He spoke to the crowds in parables, plain pictures that ordinary people could grasp (Matthew 13:34). He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The gospel about him is proclaimed so that people may hear it, understand it and believe (Romans 10:14–17). At Pentecost the Spirit whom he sent let people from many nations hear the wonders of God in their own languages (Acts 2:4–11), and the division of tongues that began at Babel gave way to understanding.

Christ also builds his church. He is its one foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11). He humbled himself and served others even to death on the cross (Philippians 2:5–8), and he loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy (Ephesians 5:25–27). When believers use their gifts to build one another up, they carry on the work of the one who built up his people by giving himself.

These verses show us a God who wants to be understood. He gives his church revelation, knowledge, prophecy and teaching so that his people may know his mind and grow in it. He gives his gifts for one another, so that what one believer receives serves the rest. And he takes the eager, faulty zeal of the Corinthians and points it toward building up the church, which is the work of love.

The pictures Paul chose stay with us. The flute whose notes can be followed, the trumpet that sounds a clear call and the language that is understood all show the church’s gathering as God means it to be, where every word spoken reaches the people it was spoken for. When you speak among God’s people, the “words easy to be understood” of verse 9 are one way of loving the brother or sister beside you.