Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Let All Things Be for Building Up
1 Corinthians 14:26-33
26 What is it then, brothers? When you come together, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has another language, or has an interpretation. Let all things be done to build each other up. · WEB
A remarkably participatory meeting is regulated by limits, turns, and silence — and the prophets are told their own spirits are under their control.
What is it then, brothers? When you come together, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has another language, or has an interpretation 1 Corinthians 14:26.
A glimpse of an actual first-century meeting, and it is strikingly participatory: each one of you has something to contribute. Nothing here suggests an audience. And then the standard, stated for the last time: let all things be done to build each other up. Every rule that follows is an application of that clause rather than an independent regulation.
If any man speaks in another language, let there be two, or at the most three, and in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in the assembly, and let him speak to himself and to God 1 Corinthians 14:27–28.
Three limits: a number, an order, and a condition. Two or three at most — a gift genuinely from the Spirit is nonetheless rationed, because a meeting has a purpose and a length. In turn — not simultaneously, which is evidently what had been happening 1 Corinthians 14:23. And no interpreter means silence, with the alternative left open: let him speak to himself and to God. The gift is not forbidden; it is relocated out of the assembly where it does not serve.
Let two or three of the prophets speak, and let the others discern 1 Corinthians 14:29.
The same limit falls on the gift Paul has been recommending, which keeps the chapter from being a campaign for one party. Prophecy is capped too, and it is subject to assessment — let the others discern. A congregation does not receive prophecy passively; it weighs it, as Scripture requires elsewhere 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21 1 John 4:1.
But if a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first keep silent. For you all can prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be exhorted 1 Corinthians 14:30–31.
A speaker with the floor yields to someone who has just received something — which requires that a man be more interested in what is said than in being the one saying it. And the purpose is given twice in one verse: that all may learn and all may be exhorted. The point of taking turns is that everybody gets something.
The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets 1 Corinthians 14:32.
The sentence that makes the whole chapter possible, and it dismantles the assumption the Corinthians had brought from the pagan temples 1 Corinthians 12:2. A genuine gift of the Spirit does not seize a person and override him. I could not help myself is not available as a defense, which is why every instruction here is addressed to people presumed capable of obeying it.
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints 1 Corinthians 14:33.
The theological ground, and it settles what disorder actually is. A chaotic meeting is not an excess of God's presence; it misrepresents his character. And the final clause removes any suggestion of a local rule — this is how it is in all the assemblies.
settled What this mark means