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Tongues Governed, Not Ghosted

Tongues are one of those topics where two ditches sit on either side of the road, and both can feel righteous.

One ditch turns tongues into an identity badge: proof you're "really" spiritual, really filled, maybe even really saved. The other treats tongues like a dead artifact—something God used briefly, then shelved for good. Both ditches share the same problem: they answer by reflex instead of with Paul.

Before I go any further, here’s the shared ground that matters: Scripture is sufficient, Christ is enough, and the flock should be protected from manipulation, counterfeit spirituality, and pressure-driven performances. Those instincts are right. The disagreement is not whether the church should be guarded—it’s how Paul guards it.

And to be explicit about my goal: I’m not trying to win a fight or recruit people to a team. I’m trying to reduce overconfidence—especially the kind that rests on a single proof text carrying more weight than it can actually bear.

Paul doesn’t deny gifts because they can be abused. He governs them because they’re real.

That’s the key frame. The New Testament doesn’t present tongues as a spiritual hobby or a salvation add-on. It presents tongues as a gift that must serve love, clarity, and the edification of the church. And precisely because tongues can be counterfeited, weaponized, and used for ego, Scripture gives constraints.

If we want a responsible position, we have to start where Scripture starts.

Acts 2 as a controlling example: meaning is not optional

In Acts 2, the Bible doesn’t leave “tongues” undefined. The crowd hears in their own languages. The phenomenon isn’t “private ecstasy” on display—it’s intelligible communication that magnifies the works of God.

People debate details here (Was the miracle in speaking, hearing, or both?). Fine. But Acts 2 still functions as a controlling example in at least one way: tongues, in public life, are tied to meaning—to real communication that can be understood.

So whatever else tongues may involve across the New Testament, any practice that treats unintelligibility as the point—and offers no interpretation—has already drifted from the clearest scriptural pattern. At minimum, if no one can understand what’s being said and nothing is interpreted, it isn’t doing what Paul requires gifts to do in the gathered church: edify.

And yes—some modern “tongues” practices likely aren’t biblical. Saying that out loud isn’t a concession to cessationism. It’s basic discernment.

Corinth proves the next point: real gifts can be really misused

Corinth wasn’t confused because gifts were fake. Corinth was confused because gifts were real, and people were immature.

Here’s what matters: Paul doesn’t respond to chaos by pronouncing the gift dead. He responds by tightening the rules.

He insists on edification, intelligibility, and order—not abolition. He requires interpretation. He limits the number of speakers. He rejects chaotic overlap. He warns against self-centered display. He cares what unbelievers think when they walk in. And he closes with a principle that should sober every church that confuses disorder with “freedom”: God is not the author of confusion.

Paul’s remedy for abuse isn’t denial. It’s governance.

That’s the whole posture of the text. He regulates tongues inside a messy local church—he doesn’t write as if the gift has expired. And the symmetry is important: Paul’s solution to counterfeit risk is not denial, but discernment plus order.

The “perfect” question: what this text can and can’t prove

This isn’t the only cessationist argument. But it is the most common popular proof text: “tongues will cease… when that which is perfect is come,” with “perfect” equated to the completed canon of Scripture.

Let me say what needs to be said in the same breath: the canon is sufficient. The question here is not whether Scripture is enough for faith and practice. It is. The question is narrower: what does Paul mean by “that which is perfect” in this passage?

Paul doesn’t describe “the perfect” as “a completed book.” He describes it as a change of mode—moving from partial to full, from childish to mature, from dim sight to direct sight:

In other words, Paul locates “perfect” in the then, not in a first-century administrative milestone. That language isn’t about having more pages in your Bible. It’s about reaching the state where partiality gives way to fullness—where seeing is no longer mediated and knowing is no longer fragmentary. “Face to face” is encounter language, not “completed book” language. “Then shall I know even as also I am known” is the language of consummation, not publication.

Even the most saturated, obedient, Scripture-shaped Christian still knows in part. We have real light, but not full sight. We have true revelation, but not exhaustive knowledge. Scripture is sufficient for obedience and doctrine now—but it does not transform our present mode of knowing into “even as I am known,” and it certainly does not equal “face to face.”

So the canon reading may be sincere, but this text can’t bear the weight people often put on it. It is contrasting the present age—where gifts operate amid partiality—with the “then” of fullness, when the need for such gifts ends because the conditions they serve have ended.

Removing the “perfect = canon” assumption doesn’t prove that every claimed gift today is genuine. But it does remove the most common conversation-ender people use to settle the question. And once that’s gone, the conversation has to return to Paul’s actual emphasis: not “Did it stop?” but “Is it being used as God intended?”

If “perfect” means the canon, more than tongues is affected

Tongues aren’t the only thing Paul connects to that same “then.” He ties tongues, prophecy, and partial knowledge together.

So if “then” is the completed canon, the logic doesn’t just silence tongues. It flattens the entire contrast—as if we no longer “know in part” or see “through a glass, darkly.” But Paul’s point is a future change in mode: from dim to direct, from partial to full, from mediated sight to “face to face.” That isn’t canon language. That’s consummation language.

And in practice, even people who appeal to this passage still talk as if we still “know in part,” still strain toward clearer understanding, still wrestle with what we see dimly—because we do.

A balanced path isn’t compromise—it’s obedience

If we treat tongues as the litmus test of spirituality, we contradict Paul. If we treat tongues as impossible, we also depart from Paul’s posture, which is to regulate gifts—not abolish them—in the life of the church and to call everything to love and edification.

The New Testament pattern is neither spectacle nor cynicism. It’s sober, ordered, meaningful spiritual life. And for what it is worth, I have both heard of and observed first-hand the miraculous gift even in Baptist churches—where the speaker proclaimed the gospel message, and the hearer understood it in their own language. It served the purpose God gives the gift, in the framework Scripture displayed the gift, within the confines that Paul placed on the gift—and souls were saved. Experience is no substitute for Scripture, but the experience certainly caused me to rethink my dogmatic rejection of God's gift.

And here’s an “at minimum” place that should be safe for almost everyone to agree on: whatever your conclusion about cessation, Paul’s rules in 1 Corinthians 14 still define what “biblical tongues in the assembly” would have to look like.

So the better approach is simple:

We don’t need to be gullible.
We don’t need to be cynical.
We do need to be biblical.

Tt's possible to defend the sufficiency of Scripture while holding an interpretation more tightly than the passage itself demands. Confidence can quietly become closure. Honoring Scripture means not only guarding it from error, but guarding ourselves from assuming we've already settled every question it leaves open.

If tongues are a real gift from a real God, they will harmonize with the real constraints He gave—because the Spirit who gives gifts is the same Spirit who inspired the rules.

That’s the road between the ditches: Scripture over experience, edification over exhibition, love over performance, and governance over chaos.

And that road doesn’t need a victory lap. It needs careful hands on the wheel.