What Is the Gift of Tongues in the New Testament?

What is the gift of tongues, and how should we understand its purpose in the New Testament? Today, Joel Kim explores this extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit and its role in the early church.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: We’re recording live at Ligonier’s 2024 National Conference for this week’s episode of Ask Ligonier, and we’re joined by Reverend Joel Kim who is president and assistant professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary California. Reverend Kim, what is the gift of tongues in the New Testament?

JOEL KIM: The gifts indicate a certain gifting given to all believers by the Spirit Himself as we call upon the name of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Over time, we made a distinction between what are considered to be ordinary gifts of the Spirit versus the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and extraordinary in the sense that when revelation was given to us—where we believe that revelation has now come to an end, these revelatory revealings of who Christ is, and in particular, the mystery of God’s salvation now given to us in Christ Jesus—as it’s being proclaimed in the giving of the Word, it was verified by the signs that were given.

Many of us might remember that the gospel of John does not talk about miracles. It talks about signs, signs that indicate to us not only are the proclamations true, but these extraordinary signs verify the truth that’s been given to us. One of those extraordinary gifts in the first century—and we see this not only in the book of Acts, but also in 1 Corinthians—these things called “tongues,” that were extraordinary gifts, were given.

We believe, or I believe, that as the Reformation tradition has argued from Scripture, that such extraordinary gifts have come to an end, primarily because what their function was, was to simply verify the revelatory knowledge that God has given to us through the Apostles, which are now inscripturated. With Scripture now being given to us, these extraordinary gifts are no longer necessary. So, though that this gift certainly existed in the church recorded for us in Scripture, we believe that they have ceased, and we use words and phrases like cessation of extraordinary gifts to indicate that they are no longer.

Having said that, the question still remains, What was it? Because there are times where the debate takes place, where there’s this ecstatic language, perhaps even as Romans 8 declares, “Groans that words cannot fully comprehend,” and others have argued that these are languages that people are using. As you saw in Acts 2, especially with the descent of the Holy Spirit, people were speaking in tongues, but people actually comprehended what they were saying. They just happened to be a different language altogether.

I grew up in a bilingual family where, because I was born and raised in Korea, we spoke Korean and English. And so, as we talk about languages, it’s always kind of intriguing because there are languages that exist that we don’t understand that others may be able to speak, but these languages are acquired. But by the outpouring of the Spirit, there seemed to have been this ability to reverse the curse that took place in Genesis 11. Whereas people were building this tower to have the name for themselves before God, God scattered them by making the languages confusing. And what seems to happen in Acts 2 is the reversal of that curse, by people now being able to communicate and understand despite the fact that there are different tongues at work here.

All that to simply say, certainly it is possible in the realm of imagination that these may be extraordinary utterings that are not human. But I do think that Scripture is referring, most often than not, to tongues that are given in extraordinary ways to people who did not acquire them as the reversal of that curse is taking place. Even at that, I do believe that the extraordinary gifts have ceased because we do not have any ongoing revelation that God gives to us.