Do All Speak in Tongues?
There is a commonly held belief that whenever someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of this is that they speak in tongues. 1 Corinthians 12 is the key chapter on this issue, and I encourage you to read the whole thing in context. Context alone is enough to make it clear that Paul doesn’t expect everyone who is filled with the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues. He argues that the church is “one body” even though it has “many members”. He compares the different gifts people have to different parts of the body. He writes (verse 15):
If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
It’s a metaphor. The implication is that if someone says “because I do not speak in tongues, I do not belong to the church,” that would not make them any less a part of the church. God has given different gifts to different people, so that the church works together as a whole, just as he has given different functions to the hand and the foot, but they work together.
But in spite of the context being so clear, there is still some confusion. In part, this is probably due to people taking 1 Corinthians 13:5 at face value:
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