Here’s a text that should make both sides in the debate uncomfortable.

If 1 Corinthians 14:26–40 is a live rule book for church meetings today, most charismatic services on the planet are breaking it. Paul allows a maximum of 3 people to speak in tongues in any one gathering. He says they must speak 1 at a time, never together. He says if nobody present can translate, the speaker must stay completely silent. A whole room speaking at once, with nobody translating and nobody testing what’s said, isn’t what this chapter permits. It’s precisely what Paul forbids.

The discomfort cuts both ways. Because if these gifts have gone, why does Paul even close the chapter with a plain command? “Earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39). And 2 verses earlier he raises the stakes as high as they go: what he’s writing is “a command of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 14:37).

That’s the honest problem. Many work through the chapter and conclude the case is closed. Paul organised these gifts, so he must have expected them to carry on. That stand appears to be conclusive. But does the other side have good enough reasons to infer otherwise?

What Paul Is Actually Doing in This Chapter

The church in Corinth had a problem. Their meetings were chaos. People were speaking in tongues on top of one another, nobody was translating, and visitors walked out thinking Christians had lost their minds (1 Corinthians 14:23).

So Paul lays down rules. 1 Corinthians 14:26 describes the raw material he’s working with: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.” Then comes the principle that governs everything: “Let all things be done for building up.”

Now watch what happens. Paul doesn’t widen the freedom. He narrows it, line after line.

Hold on to one observation from that table. This is the most restrictive chapter on public worship anywhere in Paul’s letters. It’s almost always quoted as though it were the most permissive.

The Strongest Case That the Gifts Are Still for Today

Let’s put the continuationist side at its best—in a form they’d recognise and approve.

• Paul commands; he doesn’t merely permit. “Earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues” (verse 39). A command is either binding or it’s cancelled. If it’s binding, no church may forbid tongues.
• Paul himself raises the stakes. “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord” (verse 37). Verse 38 adds a warning: anyone who ignores this will himself be ignored.
• You regulate what you expect to continue. Nobody writes a careful timetable for an event that’s about to be cancelled. Paul caps, orders and sequences these gifts. That’s how you treat a permanent feature of church life.
• Verse 26 sounds ordinary, not exceptional. “Each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation.” Paul describes this as what happens when the church gathers, not as a one-off in a strange season.
• Nothing here carries an expiry date. There’s no “until”, no “for a time”, no hint anywhere in the chapter that any of this is due to stop.
• “Let the others weigh what is said” (verse 29) points to something below Scripture. Nobody checks God’s word to see if it’s right. So why does Paul tell the church to check prophecies? Wayne Grudem built a famous argument on that question. His answer: the prophecy spoken about in the New Testament was a lower kind of prophecy. Even if the message came from God, the person passing it on could get details wrong—so it had to be tested. If that’s true, prophecy can carry on today without ever competing with the Bible.

8 Reasons This Chapter Doesn’t Prove the Gifts Continue

Most articles on this subject rest everything on one verse—1 Corinthians 13:10 and the phrase “when the perfect comes”. We will not do that, and we will explain why shortly. A case resting on a single disputed verse is a case waiting to collapse. What follows is eight separate reasons. Knock any one of them down and the rest still stand.

1. A rule about something isn’t a promise that it will last

Leviticus gives detailed rules for animal sacrifice. Nobody reads those rules as a guarantee that sacrifices continue forever. Paul gives detailed rules for enrolling widows in 1 Timothy 5, and careful instruction about apostolic ministry, and nobody concludes the apostolate goes on because it was once organised.

Rules tell you how a thing must work while it exists. They tell you nothing whatever about how long it exists. On its own this doesn’t prove cessation. But it does quietly dissolve the other side’s main argument. “He regulated it, therefore he expected it forever” simply does not follow.

2. Paul calls it revelation—and that changes the question entirely

This is the point most discussions miss, and it’s decisive.

Verse 30: “If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.” The Greek word is apokalypsis. It means God disclosing something genuinely new, something that couldn’t be reached by study or reflection.

So Paul isn’t describing a preacher applying Scripture well. He isn’t describing a strong impression, a wise hunch, or a timely word of counsel. He’s describing fresh revelation from God.

That reframes the whole debate. The question was never “can God still speak?” or “can God still heal?” Of course He can, and does. The question is narrower and far more serious: is God still giving new revelation? Put that way, this stops being a discussion about spiritual gifts at all. It becomes a discussion about whether the Bible is finished.

3. “Let the others weigh” doesn’t create a second-class prophecy

Everything now depends on Wayne Grudem’s idea that there are 2 levels of prophecy. Take that idea away, and the modern case has nothing left to stand on. So it’s worth testing carefully. It runs into 4 problems.

No verse in the Bible teaches it. Search the New Testament and you’ll not find a single passage saying there are now 2 kinds of prophecy, one high and one low. The idea doesn’t come out of the text. It’s brought to the text to explain a difficulty.

The church is testing the speaker, not scoring the message. Paul gives the same instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21, and John gives it in 1 John 4:1. In both places the church is asking a simple question: is this man really from God, or not? They’re not picking through one message to separate the true parts from the false.

God never lowered His standard. In Deuteronomy 18:20–22 God gave one test for a prophet: did what he said actually happen? If it didn’t, he wasn’t speaking for God. Nowhere does the New Testament cancel that test or make it gentler.

Agabus doesn’t save the theory. He’s the example everyone reaches for—a prophet who supposedly got the details wrong about Paul’s arrest (Acts 21:10–11). But look at what happened. The Jewish leaders did hand Paul over, and the Romans did take him into custody. Agabus was right. If we judged prophecy by that fussy a standard, a great deal of the Old Testament would fail the test as well.

So we’re left at a fork in the road, and there is no third path.

4. Verses 37–38 place the written word above the prophet

Here’s the turn that almost every reader walks straight past.

Paul doesn’t tell the prophets to weigh his letter. He tells the prophets to submit to it. “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.”

Read that again slowly. Inside the very chapter that supposedly protects ongoing prophecy, the apostle sets his own written instruction above every living prophetic voice—and then makes obedience to that writing the test of whether a man is spiritual at all.

That’s the principle of a closed Bible in seed form. The direction of travel in 1 Corinthians 14 is not away from Scripture and towards fresh revelation. It runs the other way.

5. Foundations are laid once

Ephesians 2:20 says the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Ephesians 3:5 confirms these are New Testament prophets, not Old Testament ones.

Richard B Gaffin Jr pressed the obvious implication. A foundation is laid at the beginning of a building, and it’s laid once. If prophets belong to the foundation, then prophets belong to the beginning. Nobody pours concrete footings on the third floor.

You can watch this happening inside the New Testament itself. Ephesians 4:11 lists apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers. But when Paul writes to Timothy and Titus about settled, ordinary church life, the offices he installs are elders and deacons—and he locates the church’s stability in “the pattern of the sound words” and in Scripture that is “breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 1:13; 3:16). The extraordinary gives way to the ordinary within the pages of the New Testament.

6. The gifts were God’s signature on a message being delivered

Hebrews 2:3–4 tells us plainly what the miraculous gifts were for. The message was declared by the Lord, confirmed by those who heard Him, “while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

Notice the shape of that sentence. The gifts are God’s signature on the envelope, authenticating the messengers who carried it. Paul says the same about himself: “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you” (2 Corinthians 12:12).

A signature is needed while a document is being delivered. Once the document has arrived and been filed, the signature has done its work. It’s not needed again every time somebody reads the letter.

7. Tongues were a sign aimed at unbelieving Israel

This is the part of the chapter nearly everyone skips, and it may be the most important.

In verse 21 Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11–12: “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me.” Then verse 22 draws the conclusion: “Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers.”

Go back behind Isaiah to Deuteronomy 28:49, and the picture becomes clear. Hearing God’s message arrive in foreign languages was a covenant curse. It was the sound of judgement falling on a nation that had refused to listen in its own tongue.

O Palmer Robertson drew out what this means. Tongues weren’t designed as a permanent device for building up a congregation. They were a sign marking one specific hinge in history—judgement on unbelieving Israel, and the gospel moving out to all the nations. That is a purpose tied to a moment, not a feature built to run forever.

8. If this chapter binds us today, it condemns today’s practice

Now we return to where we started. Suppose we grant the other side everything they ask for. Suppose 1 Corinthians 14 binds churches fully in our own day. Then hold modern practice up against it.

• Verse 27 — no more than three people speaking in tongues in any meeting.
• Verse 27 — one at a time, never simultaneously.
• Verse 28 — always translated, or complete silence.
• Verse 29 — no more than three prophets.
• Verse 29 — every prophecy publicly tested by the others.
• Verse 32 — speakers in full self-control from beginning to end.

Hundreds of voices at once, untranslated, untested, in states of visible loss of control, fail every single line of that list. The chapter does not authorise that practice. It outlaws it. Whichever side you land on, 1 Corinthians 14 is not the friend of contemporary charismatic worship that it is assumed to be.

What We Aren’t Saying

Overstating a case is the fastest way to lose it. So let’s be plain about the limits of the argument.

• We’re not saying God has stopped working miracles. He answers prayer. He heals. What has ceased is a standing gift entrusted to a person, not God’s freedom to act however He pleases.
• We’re not resting on 1 Corinthians 13:10. Many older writers said “the perfect” meant the finished Bible. Honestly, the context points to the return of Christ—”then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (verse 12). We hand that verse over, and our case is untouched, because it never stood there.
• We’re not claiming the Bible names a date. No verse says “the gifts stop in AD 100.” The argument is drawn from the shape of God’s plan across the whole of Scripture—which is exactly how the doctrine of the Trinity is drawn too.
• We’re not calling our opponents frauds. Some of the most serious, prayerful, Christ-loving believers alive disagree with us here. Disagreement isn’t an accusation.

What the Church Has Believed

The historical record is often oversimplified by both sides. Here is a fair summary.

Timeline

• 4th century—John Chrysostom, preaching through 1 Corinthians, told his congregation that this section was hard to understand precisely because the events it describes no longer happened in his day.
• 5th century—Augustine of Hippo said the gift of languages had served its purpose and passed away. Honesty requires us to add that he continued to record healings in The City of God, and the other side rightly points this out.
• 16th century—John Calvin held that these gifts were temporary, given to adorn and confirm the gospel at its first appearance, and not intended to be permanent ornaments of the church.
• 17th century—the Westminster Confession stated that God’s former ways of revealing His will have now ceased, because everything necessary has been committed to writing.
• 1918—BB Warfield published Counterfeit Miracles, describing the gifts as “the credentials of the Apostles”. His case was powerful, though at points overstated, and later writers have had to refine it.
• 20th century onwards—the Pentecostal and charismatic movements reopened the question with enormous energy. It hasn’t closed since.

Where People Actually Stand

The debate is usually presented as 2 camps. It’s really 4, and knowing the difference will save us a great deal of unnecessary argument.

It’s worth saying DA Carson, who leans towards the continuing side, has been unusually honest about how difficult the exegesis is in both directions. That honesty is a better model than the confidence we find in most of what’s written on this subject.

But Does Our View Disobey “Do Not Forbid”?

This is the fair question to end on.

No, it doesn’t—because there’s a real difference between forbidding something and believing it isn’t there. A church that says “we don’t believe this gift is being given today” isn’t banning a work of the Spirit. It’s making a judgement about what the Spirit is doing. Paul’s command lands on churches that are tempted to suppress a gift they know to be genuine. Given how disorderly Corinth had become, that temptation was very real there.

And notice how little enthusiasm Paul shows for tongues in this chapter. He says he’d rather speak 5 words with his mind than 10,000 words in a tongue (verse 19). “Do not forbid” is the language of bare permission. His actual encouragement goes somewhere else entirely: “earnestly desire to prophesy.”

So what should a church do in practice?

• Teach the chapter; don’t avoid it. Congregations always sense when a passage is being quietly skipped, and they draw their own conclusions.
• Hold the line on order. Verse 40 binds every church in every age: “all things should be done decently and in order.”
• Be generous about people and firm about doctrine. You can love a brother, learn from him, and still think he’s wrong here.
• Point people to the ordinary means. Scripture read and preached, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, prayer and the fellowship of the saints. These aren’t the consolation prize. They’re what God has actually promised to bless.

The Bottom Line

So is 1 Corinthians 14 proof that tongues and prophecy continue? No—though it is easy to see why so many think so, and anyone who waves the question away has not read the chapter carefully.

Paul regulates these gifts, and regulation says nothing about duration. He calls them revelation, which turns the debate into a question about whether the Bible is finished. He subordinates every prophet to his own written instruction, which is the closed canon in embryo. He places prophets in the foundation of a building that is now many storeys high. He explains that tongues were a sign pointed at unbelieving Israel at a particular hinge of history. And if, despite all that, the chapter still binds us word for word, then it condemns almost everything done in its name today.

The deepest point is the simplest one. Paul ends this chapter by telling the most gifted church in the New Testament that his letter outranks their revelations. That instinct—written word above spoken impression, Scripture above experience—isn’t a later invention of cautious theologians. It’s apostolic, and it’s right here in verse 37.

God has spoken. He has finished speaking in that way. And what He has said is enough.

Related Reads

• What Are Spiritual Gifts and How Do I Find Mine? A Biblical Guide
• The Holy Spirit’s Indwelling: How Can I Be Sure I Have It?
• Is Being ‘Slain in the Spirit’ Biblical?
• Filled Vs Baptised With the Spirit: What’s the Difference?
• Does God Still Talk Directly To His People?
• What Does It Mean to Quench the Spirit? What the Bible Teaches