Biblical Glossolalia - Thesis 6

William Graham MacDonald

This article contains the sixth of seven theses presenting a defense of biblical glossolalia. Thesis 1 contended that glossolalia is inaccessible to worldly comprehension because of its holiness, its “from heaven dimension,” and its inextricable connection with the glorified Jesus. Thesis 2 argued that in its inception and continuation the Pentecostal experience of the Spirit glorifies Jesus. Thesis 3 contended that biblical glossolalia has no antecedents, no precedents, and no parallels, either in the Old Testament, or paganism, or pathology. Thesis 4 stated that biblical glossolalia has a uniform character throughout the New Testament. While there are “kinds of tongues/languages” spoken in the Spirit, and kinds of situations where glossolalia is appropriate, there are not kinds of glossolalia. Thesis 5 argued that whenever it was Luke’s intention to feature the initial responses of believers being immersed in the Spirit’s power, the one constant biblical indicator of that experience was glossolalia — whatever the other episodic variables. This historic norm bears full doctrinal authority because Jesus, “the Way,” is “the same,” temporally and universally. The last of these seven theses will be printed in the Spring 1994 issue of Paraclete.¹

Thesis Six

While “spiritual gifts” are corporate in nature, intended by the Lord to build up the church as a whole, glossolalia is the one gift given primarily for the benefit of the individual: “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself (1 Corinthians 14:4).

Being filled with the Spirit is always an individual experience, even if others also are so filled within the same time frame. When a believer in Jesus is filled to capacity out of His immensurable fullness (John 3:34), that one’s tongue will express a segment of the verbal glory of God by the Spirit’s enabling. Glossolalia is a coordinate effect of this filling, an anointing of one’s tongue with His power, the immersion of one’s self in the depths of His Spirit, bonding one in spirit and in speech with the supreme “servant of the Lord” so as to secure His equipment for representing Him in the world today. Since that service has at least some minimal spoken dimensions, it is altogether fitting that one’s untamable tongue (James 3:3–10) be subdued completely under His domination.

Why is glossolalia especially suited for individual or personal edification, and why is the gift that is least valuable for the community as a whole the greatest for individual edification, in some estimations?² One does not have to understand everything that benefits him as long as he understands well the gift’s Giver. The baptism in the Spirit is nothing if not an intimate surrender of all that is within one’s psyche and physique, including the speech center, to “the Word” ’s control. When God’s Spirit, like a skilled organist, plays on one’s vocal keys, the inevitable effect is that the concert will leave the believer edified.

Value Of Glossolalia For Personal Edification

1. Glossolalia makes prayer and praise to God more intimate, intense, and interesting. Pity the person who gets bored with his own prayers, or who recites prayer-formulas endlessly like pagans, or who reads/recites general purpose prayers that do not apply specifically or exactly to his situation. Praying in the Spirit heightens praying with the understanding rather than replaces it. In glossolalia a new level of intimacy is sustained with God, and the believer finds he prays more confidently and more frequently in tongues and his own language because he shares much more in common with God. When he communes in a tongue, he never feels he is boring God with perfunctory devotion or interceding with stale petitions that are not vital to his spiritual situation.

Glossolalia is guaranteed to strike the right balance between worship and intercession. The Spirit knows when one should be praising and when one should be praying for oneself or others, and leads Spirit-filled ones so to do. Prayer becomes less stereotyped and more spontaneous, often less formal and more continual throughout the day. Since talking to the Lord is the most important single activity of any believer’s day, how blessed one is to be able to “pray in the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:15) an expression parallel to “pray in a tongue” of the preceding verse. “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4).

2. Glossolalia brings moments of transcendence into one’s life. The speaker participates in the suprarational without in any way damaging or eroding his rationality. He utters “mysteries by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:2), and that humbles the mind while transcending it. Twin blessings of transcendence and humility are packaged together in glossolalia. The content of what is being spoken is furnished by the Spirit, generating transcendence of the mind, and at the same time, its not being disclosed to the conscious mind conditions one with humility in the presence of the omniscient Lord.

Human thirst for God goes beyond the rational. One means by which that deep desire is fulfilled is by praying in the Spirit. Charles Wesley’s hymn, “0 For a Thousand Tongues,” expresses a yearning that in some measure is satisfied in glossolalia. Exhilaration and soaring above the mundane realm are customary (Isaiah 40:31). But nothing is conceded here to irrationality, nonsensicality, ecstatic frenzy, dissociation, or babbling. The Spirit within as “Christ in you” — God immanent — communicates to “the Most High,” to God transcendent “in the heavenly realms,” and the speaker is built up in the process.

3.Glossolalia signifies New Testament authenticity of faith and practice, uniting believers in spirit and praxis with those of the first century. It affords an experiential indication and an authentic memento that our faith today is no less Pentecostal than that of the Early Church. Water baptism is a sign of cleansing and burial with Christ, but its three or more historical modes of performance leave doubts in some minds as to which mode is authentic. Even if one knows beyond all reasonable doubt that immersion was the only biblical mode practiced, still it must be acknowledged that water baptism is performed by men, on earth. But baptism in the Spirit can be performed by no one except the glorified Jesus from heaven. Glossolalia does not replace water baptism as a witness before the world, but it has its own internal witness value as one reads the New Testament and identifies with the individual believers at Jerusalem, Caesarea, Ephesus, and Corinth who spoke in tongues as the glory of Jesus flowed over their tongues. It is edifying to realize one’s experience with Christ is continuous with that of those who were eyewitnesses of His glory.

4.Glossolalia is a sublime way to enhance and extend one’s own submission to God on a continuing basis. The Lutherans are notable for heralding each participation in the Eucharist as a renewal of one’s water baptism. The Pentecostals are notable for heralding each experience of glossolalia as a renewal of one’s baptism in the Spirit. Submission is the key whether for water or Spirit-baptism, and glossolalia confirms that spiritual submission again and again.

Once one has fully yielded himself to the Spirit’s complete linguistic control, no deeper depth of positive physical submission to the Lord is possible. (Fasting, which has negative implications, is more characteristic of the Old Testament.) One is not full until his tongue too is filled as Pentecostals have always said. That level of yieldedness assures one who communes with the Lord in tongues that he is keeping nothing back from Him, and therefore he is available to Him for any of the other gifts the Lord would want to give His Church through His submitted servant. The glossolalia gift does not guarantee that any other gifts will follow, but in certain ways it serves as the threshold gift to the inventory of other supernatural gifts.

The greater God is perceived to be, the more profound one’s sense of humility grows in His presence, and the more appropriate glossolalia seems as the proper way to extol His stupendous majesty, to realize His ineffable glory, and to do so in such a way that simultaneously expresses submission and humble awe in His presence. Submission and worship are tremendously edifying.

5.Glossolalia is a gift that will go with the believer anywhere and be available to him at all times. Even when he must not speak out loud in a situation, he can practice subvocal glossolalia, in the congregation (1 Corinthians 14:28) or wherever. When he is unavoidably separated from the body of believers as in jail, persecution, or in bodily isolation for other reasons, he is not thereby completely cut off from spiritual gifts. In glossolalia he, like a solitary Old Testament priest praying in the Holy Place of the temple, can minister to the Lord and in the process be built up by contact with God.

6.Glossolalia signifies the blessing promised to the nations and reminds the speaker, however indirectly, that Christ’s body will not be complete until some believers from every linguistic group in the world are brought into allegiance to Jesus as Savior and Lord (Revelations 5:9,10; 7:9). As reinforcement of worldwide vision, glossolalia adds an audio component, especially at those times when one praying in tongues senses in his spirit (Psalms 25:14) that he at that moment is praying for those at the frontiers of evangelism. Though a believer consciously may be able to speak but one learned language, because of his speaking also in other tongues, he is sensitized so as to identify more readily with people of other languages not his own.

7. In spite of the limited value of glossolalia for the assembled congregation, and even if it is only practiced within one’s private moments, it has a way of uniting Christians that meet for the first time as Pentecostals. Mutual glossolalic experiences produce a sense of kinship of believers of diverse backgrounds, even those who have been theologically and denominationally deadlocked for centuries. Since glossolalia is always spiritually tuned in to the intimate adoration of the risen Christ, it is bound to bring humble people together in their sense of values. Glossolalia’s tapping the transcendent glory of Christ has a way of uniting them in spirit in a manner different from that of external creeds and organizations.

Conclusion

“He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4). That holy process endures for as long as edification is needed — for the entire Church Age.Glossolalia as “the tongues of men and angels” edifies because it accesses the ascended glory of the Lord.

—William Graham MacDonald, Th.D., Front Royal, Virginia, taught a combined 22 years at Southeastern College, Central Bible College, and Gordon College, before engaging in a full-time writing ministry.

Endnotes

1. Thesis 7, which will follow in the Spring 1994 issue of Paraclete, states that glossolalia is always directed to God, and only to Him. In form, glossolalia is spoken or sung to Him. In content, biblical glossolalia consists of worship or prayer. It consists of praise or petition, thanksgiving or intercession. Because glossolalia is unidirectional to God, it cannot be an oracular utterance. Designed for individual edification, glossolalia when properly interpreted, rests at the bottom of the apostolic scale of gifts benefiting the congregation.

2. Robert I. Brandt values it as “in many respects, the greatest gift of the Spirit.” Charismatics: Are We Missing Something? (copyright by author, 1981) 123. William G. MacDonald, “The Place of Glossolalia in Neo-Pentecostalism” Speaking in Tongues: Let’s Talk About It, Watson E. Mills, ed. (Waco, TX: Word, 1973) 83–89.