Speaking in tongues

“Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” 1 Corinthians 12:29-30
As we learned yesterday, the Corinthian church was big on gifts of the Spirit, especially speaking in tongues. Similarly, today there are many churches, particularly of the Pentecostal variety, that are big on speaking in tongues. I know; I was in one. They taught that the baptism of the Holy Spirit came ‘with the evidence of speaking in tongues.’ That is, if you were baptised in the Holy Spirit, you would speak in tongues. It then logically followed, that anyone who didn’t speak in tongues wasn’t baptised with the Spirit.
But is this a true teaching? Nowhere in the Bible do the words ‘the evidence of speaking in tongues’ appear. In fact, when we read what Paul wrote at the end of 1 Corinthians 12, we find the opposite.
Paul asks a series of seven rhetorical questions. Let’s look at them. Are all apostles? No. Are all prophets? No. Are all teachers? No. (These are all different ministries given by the Holy Spirit, see Eph. 4:11.) Do all work miracles? No. Do all have gifts of healing? No. Do all interpret? No. (Paul touched on these gifts in 1 Cor. 12:9-10.) And finally, Do all speak in tongues? The answer, in the context of all these other questions, must be the same: no.
If you do speak in tongues, praise God – and praise God with them. If you don’t, don’t worry. The Holy Spirit will have given you another gift instead.