What is the gift of speaking in tongues? Is it for today?

The gift of speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift, given by the Holy Spirit, in which a person speaks words they did not learn and often do not understand. Scripture describes it two ways: as real human languages understood by hearers (Acts 2), and as a form of prayer and praise directed to God that needs interpretation to benefit a gathered church (1 Cor 14). On whether the gift continues today, sincere Christians who love the same Bible land in different places. The honest answer is that Scripture nowhere announces an expiration date, so we should hold our conclusions with humility and our hearts open to God.

What the Bible actually says about tongues

Tongues first appear on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit fills the believers, and they begin "speaking in other languages" (Acts 2:4). The crowd from across the empire is stunned because each person hears the wonders of God in their own native dialect. Here the gift is unmistakably real human language, a sign that the gospel is breaking out beyond Israel toward every nation.

Paul gives us the fullest teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. He lists tongues among the gifts the one Spirit distributes as he alone decides "which gift each person should have" (1 Cor 12:11). He describes a person with the ability to speak in tongues who is "talking only to God, since people won't be able to understand" without interpretation (1 Cor 14:2). And he sets firm boundaries for public worship: no more than two or three speakers, one at a time, and always with someone to interpret, "so that the whole church can be strengthened" (1 Cor 14:26-28).

Two threads run through it all. The Greek word here is simply glossa, meaning "tongue" or "language." And love, not the gift itself, is the point. Without love, Paul says, even the most dazzling utterance is "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1).

Is the gift for today? Two faithful answers

This is where genuine believers part ways, and both sides reason from Scripture rather than against it.

The cessationist view holds that gifts like tongues belonged to the founding era of the church. They functioned to authenticate the apostles and their message before the New Testament was complete. Their key text is 1 Corinthians 13:8-10: tongues "will cease" when "the time of perfection comes." When the canon of Scripture was finished, the argument runs, the foundational sign-gifts had served their purpose and quietly ceased.

The continuationist view holds that all the gifts remain available until Christ returns. They read "when the time of perfection comes" as pointing to the second coming, when "we will see everything with perfect clarity" (1 Cor 13:12) — the verse whose footnote renders the Greek literally as see face to face. Since we plainly do not yet see with that clarity, the gifts have not yet ceased. Paul even commands, "don't forbid speaking in tongues" (1 Cor 14:39).

Here is the careful part. The Bible never explicitly says the gift has stopped. The cessationist case is an inference, a reasonable one, but an inference. So while many in the Reformed tradition lean cessationist on good grounds, we should be slow to bind another believer's conscience where Scripture has not spoken plainly. A posture of "open but cautious," eager for whatever the Spirit gives yet anchored to the written Word, fits the evidence well.

What about the confusion and the abuses?

Much of the heat around speaking in tongues comes from misuse, and Paul saw it coming. The Corinthians had turned the gift into a status symbol, a spiritual trophy that made the public meeting chaotic and unwelcoming to outsiders (1 Cor 14:23). His correction is bracing: in church, "I would rather speak five understandable words to help others than ten thousand words in an unknown language" (1 Cor 14:19).

A few myths deserve naming. Tongues are not proof you are saved; salvation rests on faith in Christ, not on any gift (Eph 2:8-9). Tongues are not for everyone; Paul asks plainly whether we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages, and the expected answer is no (1 Cor 12:30). And tongues are not the measure of spiritual maturity; the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience (Gal 5:22-23). A quiet servant who has never spoken a syllable in tongues may be far closer to Christ than the most fluent speaker in the room.

What this means for the way we live

Whatever you conclude about the gift's continuation, Paul's pastoral aim is clear and freeing: pursue the gifts that "strengthen the whole church" (1 Cor 14:12). The Spirit gives gifts not to decorate us but to build others up. So the right question is rarely "Do I have the flashier gift?" but "Am I using what God has given me to serve?"

And we hold our convictions here with grace. A church should neither idolize tongues nor police the conscience of those who seek them. If God grants the gift, receive it with thanks and order it by love. If he does not, you lack nothing essential, for you already have the Spirit himself.

For all the debate, every true gift points past itself. The same Spirit who came at Pentecost was poured out because Jesus had ascended in triumph (Acts 2:33). At Babel, human language was scattered as judgment on our pride; at Pentecost, the curse began to reverse as the Spirit gathered the nations to hear one gospel in their own tongue. Tongues, then, are a small foretaste of that final day when every language under heaven will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.