1 Corinthians 14:22

“Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not: but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe.”

At the first glance one might be disposed to take the former part of the verse as indicating the salutary effect which glossolalia should produce in those who hitherto had not been able to believe (ἀπίστοις), through the wonder and amazement which such a gift will cause them (Chrysostom, Calvin hesitatingly, Grotius, Meyer in his first editions). But this meaning would be contrary to the words: And yet for all that will they not hear; and the example quoted in 1 Corinthians 14:23, instead of justifying, would belie this affirmation. Others, on the contrary, have thought that the language points to a sign announcing to unbelievers their near judgment, irae signum (Beza, Billroth). This is also Edwards' view: “The ecstatic cries in the midst of the assembled Church were intended by God to show unbelievers (the heathen of Corinth) that the day of the Lord was near.” In this sense, the ἄπιστοι are not merely people who have not yet believed; they are confirmed unbelievers. Without saying precisely that judgment is announced, we think that tongues are a testimony of unbelief made to the people to whom God thus speaks. God speaks to them unintelligibly only because they are deaf to His clear revelation. We find an analogous fact, Matthew 13, at the date when Jesus adopts speaking in parables as His habitual method of teaching (1 Corinthians 14:11-12). After seeking in vain to awake the conscience of the people by His previous teaching (Sermon on the Mount, for example), when Jesus comes to the time when He must reveal to His own the nature and laws of the kingdom which they are to labour to found, He uses the language of parable, which they alone can understand. It is a sign of His growing breach with the mass of the nation. So it is with tongues. Glossolalia is neither a means of conversion, nor a sign of approaching judgment on unbelievers. It is a demonstration given to their own conscience of the state of unbelief which God sees them to have reached. Would a God of light manifest Himself in the midst of His own by unintelligible sounds? Here there is a sign of severance which is gradually carried out.

It is wholly otherwise with prophetic exhortations. These are a sign of faith or of the disposition to believe which already exists in those to whom God thus speaks. It should be remarked that in opposition to ἀπίστοις, unbelievers, the apostle does not here say πιστοῖς, believers, as would seem natural, but πιστεύουσιν, those who at this moment are in the act of believing. This present participle denotes equally the state of a man who has just reached faith, and the state of him who already possesses it. Hence the general principle laid down here agrees with the result described in 1 Corinthians 14:24, where an ἄπιστος is brought to faith by prophecy. The man is so called only as not yet believing, and because of his state when he came; he is nevertheless a πιστεύων in respect of what takes place in him, in the course of the meeting.

Critics discuss the question whether the words εἰς σημεῖον, in sign of, used in the former clause, should be understood in the latter. It matters very little for the sense. Grammatically the ellipsis seems natural. But the meaning of the word sign is modified of course in passing from the one clause of the sentence to the other. In the former, the sign is one of displeasure, implying a charge of unbelief; in the latter, it is one of pity, powerfully calling the man to repentance and faith. Such an appeal is not directed to one already confirmed in unbelief (the ἄπιστοι of 1 Corinthians 14:22); but it is made to men such as the ἄπιστος of 1 Corinthians 14:23. Erasmus and Bleek have tried to resolve the difficulties of this verse by taking οὐ, not, both times in the sense of οὐ μόνον, not only. But why not say οὐ μόνον, if this had been his thought?

The apostle now supposes two cases fitted to impress by way of extreme examples the truth of the law which he has just stated: