The Guardrails of the Spirit Text: 1 Corinthians 14:39-40
Introduction: Liberty and Liturgy
We come now to the end of a long and very practical discourse from the apostle Paul. The church at Corinth was a mess. It was a vibrant, gifted, energetic, charismatic, and chaotic mess. They had everything, it seemed. They were not lacking in any gift. But in their enthusiasm for the spectacular, they had managed to turn the Christian assembly into a showcase of spiritual ego. Their worship services resembled a sort of spiritual free-for-all, where everyone spoke at once, no one understood what was being said, and the unbeliever who wandered in would be entirely justified in concluding that they were all stark raving mad.
Into this confusion, Paul brings the bracing clarity of apostolic order. He has spent this entire chapter explaining the proper use and relative value of the spiritual gifts, particularly prophecy and tongues. He has elevated prophecy, which is the clear declaration of God's mind in an intelligible language, and he has subordinated tongues, which, without interpretation, edifies no one but the speaker. He has insisted that the goal of the corporate gathering is edification, the building up of the whole body. Individual experiences must serve this greater end.
Now, in these two final verses, he provides the summary conclusion. He gives us the bookends, the guardrails that keep the whole enterprise from running off the road into either the ditch of quenching legalism or the ditch of charismatic chaos. He gives us a positive exhortation and a negative prohibition, followed by a foundational principle that governs everything. What we have here is a call for a zealous, passionate, and yet deeply orderly church. The modern church often thinks it must choose between these two things. You can either have Spirit-filled zeal, which looks like a Pentecostal revival, or you can have order, which looks like a Presbyterian funeral. Paul will not let us make such a foolish choice. The Spirit of God is not the author of confusion, and so true spirituality will always be orderly. And the worship of the living God should never be dull, so true order will always make room for genuine zeal. These two verses are the apostolic mandate for a sane and Spirit-filled church.
The Text
"Therefore, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak in tongues. But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner."
(1 Corinthians 14:39-40 LSB)
Zeal for Intelligibility (v. 39a)
Paul begins with his primary, positive command, which echoes what he has said throughout the chapter.
"Therefore, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy..." (1 Corinthians 14:39a)
The word for "earnestly desire" is the same one he used at the beginning of the chapter. It is a word of zeal, of passionate pursuit. We are not to be passive about this. We are to covet, to burn with desire for, the gift of prophecy. But we must define our terms as Paul has defined them. What is this prophecy we are to so eagerly desire? Given the entire context of the New Testament, and the cessation of the foundational, revelatory gifts with the passing of the apostles, this cannot be a desire for new, extra-biblical revelation. The canon of Scripture is closed. God has spoken His final word in His Son, and that Word is now written down for us.
Prophecy, in its foundational sense, was foretelling, the revealing of future events as a sign of divine authority. But its central function was always forth-telling, which is the clear and authoritative proclamation of the mind of God. The Old Testament prophets spent far more time calling Israel to repent based on the existing law of Moses than they did predicting the future. They were preachers of the covenant. They took the Word of God and applied it, with power and precision, to the current situation of the people.
This is the prophecy we are to earnestly desire. We are to desire that the Word of God be preached with power, clarity, and application. We should want our pulpits to be filled with men who can handle the sword of the Spirit with skill, men who can rightly divide the word of truth. We should pray for preaching that convicts, that comforts, that challenges, that builds up the saints. This is the great need of the church in every age. A church that is not being fed by the clear, authoritative exposition of Scripture is a dying church, no matter how many spiritual phenomena it can manufacture.
To desire prophecy is to desire intelligibility. It is to desire substance over style, clarity over clamor. It is to want to understand what God has said so that we can do it. This is the paramount gift for the edification of the church, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. You cannot be built up by what you cannot understand.
Permission, Not Pursuit (v. 39b)
Next, Paul gives a balancing prohibition. It is a crucial guardrail on the other side of the road.
"...and do not forbid to speak in tongues." (1 Corinthians 14:39b LSB)
Now, for a cessationist like myself, this verse requires careful handling. Some of our continuationist friends will wave this verse as though it settles the whole matter. "See? Don't forbid tongues!" But Paul is not writing to a 21st-century church in Idaho. He is writing to a first-century church in Corinth, where the foundational gifts of the Spirit were still in operation. The gift of tongues, as demonstrated at Pentecost, was the miraculous ability to speak in real, human languages previously unknown to the speaker. It was a sign gift, specifically a sign of judgment to unbelieving Israel, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 28. It was a temporary, judicial sign that God was turning from the Jews who rejected the Messiah to build a new temple out of the Gentiles.
That historical purpose has been fulfilled. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70, confirming the judgment that the gift of tongues signified. The foundation of the church has been laid by the apostles and prophets, and we do not need to keep laying it. Therefore, we do not pursue this gift. We do not seek it. It is not a normative part of the Christian life today any more than the pillar of fire or the manna from heaven.
So what does Paul mean? He means that in their zeal for order, the Corinthians were not to overreact and create a blanket prohibition against a genuine gift of the Spirit that was, at that time, still active. You don't solve the problem of abuse by banning the thing itself; you solve it by commanding its proper use, which is what Paul has spent the chapter doing. The proper use was that it must be done in turn, by two or at most three, and it must be interpreted. Without an interpretation, the speaker was to keep silent.
So, for us today, the application is one of principle. We do not forbid what the Scriptures record. We honor the historical record. We do not mock or caricature the genuine gift as it was practiced in the apostolic era. But neither do we seek to replicate it. To forbid it would be to disrespect the apostolic history; to pursue it would be to misunderstand redemptive history. We are to be zealous for what is central and permanent, which is the preached Word, while being respectful of what was peripheral and temporary.
The Overarching Mandate of Order (v. 40)
Finally, Paul lays down the great, non-negotiable principle that governs all our corporate worship. This is the foundation upon which everything else rests.
"But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner." (1 Corinthians 14:40 LSB)
This is the capstone of the entire argument. Whatever you do, whether it is preaching, singing, praying, or administering the sacraments, it must all be done decently and in order. The word for "properly" or "decently" has to do with right form and propriety. It means that our worship should have a fitting shape and structure; it should not be ugly or chaotic. The word for "orderly" is a military term. It means keeping rank, following a proper sequence. It speaks of discipline and coordination.
Our God is a God of majestic order. We see it in the six days of creation, where He brought form out of formlessness. We see it in the intricate laws of the tabernacle worship. We see it in the disciplined logic of the apostolic epistles. God is not a God of chaos, and His worship should not be chaotic. The Spirit's work is not to produce confusion, but to produce the fruit of self-control. Therefore, a worship service that is a jumble of spontaneous outbursts, where everyone is doing their own thing, is not a sign of the Spirit's presence. It is a sign of carnality, the very thing Paul diagnosed in the Corinthians earlier in this letter.
This is why we believe in what we call covenant renewal worship. Our liturgy is not a straightjacket that quenches the Spirit. It is the trellis that allows the vine to grow strong and bear fruit. It is the riverbanks that channel the power of the water. We follow the biblical pattern of worship: God calls us, we confess our sin, He consecrates us through His Word, He communes with us at His Table, and He commissions us to go out into the world. This is a divine and orderly dialogue. This is doing things "properly and in an orderly manner."
This principle is a direct assault on the democratic, individualistic spirit of our age, which has infected the church. The modern assumption is that worship is primarily about my self-expression, my feelings, my experience. Paul says that is nonsense. Worship is about the corporate edification of the body and the glory of God, and this requires that individual impulses be submitted to the good of the whole, under the authority of the elders, according to the pattern of the Word.
Conclusion: Sane Spirituality
So where does this leave us? Paul's conclusion provides us with a balanced and sane spirituality. We are to be a people who are zealous for the Word of God. We should want more preaching, better preaching, deeper preaching. We should desire that the mind of God be made known among us with power and clarity. This is where our passion should be directed.
At the same time, we are to be a people of profound order. Our liberty is not a license for chaos. Our zeal is not an excuse for confusion. The Christian life is a disciplined life, and the Christian assembly should reflect the beautiful order of our Creator and Redeemer. The freedom of the Spirit is not the freedom of a riot; it is the freedom of a well-trained army marching in lockstep. It is the freedom of a symphony orchestra, where every instrument plays its part according to the score, producing a harmony that no individual could create on his own.
The world looks at the church and it should see a colony of heaven. It should see a people who love one another, who are being built up in the truth, and who conduct their common life with a dignity, reverence, and order that is utterly alien to the chaos of a fallen world. When our zeal is for the right thing, the preached Word, and our practice is governed by the right principle, biblical order, then the church becomes what it is meant to be: the pillar and support of the truth, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.