What does the Bible say about praying in tongues?

Praying in tongues traces back to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the disciples and “enabled them” to speak in other languages, so that people from many nations each heard the gospel “in our own tongues” (Acts 2:4-11). In that moment, tongues functioned as real, known human languages, miraculously understood across a language barrier, serving as a sign that the gospel was now going out to every nation.

Paul later addresses tongues at length in his letter to the Corinthian church, where the gift had become a source of both spiritual richness and significant confusion and disorder in worship gatherings (1 Corinthians 12-14).

Paul explains that “anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:2). He describes this as praying “with my spirit,” while his “mind is unfruitful” — meaning the speaker’s own rational understanding is not engaged even though something genuine and spiritual is taking place (1 Corinthians 14:14).

Rather than rejecting the gift, Paul says plainly, “I would like every one of you to speak in tongues... I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (1 Corinthians 14:5, 18). He personally values the gift and its role in private prayer, describing how it can edify, or build up, the individual who prays that way (1 Corinthians 14:4).

Despite valuing tongues personally, Paul is emphatic that unintelligible speech in a public gathering, without interpretation, does not build up the church, since no one else can understand or say “amen” to what is being prayed (1 Corinthians 14:16-17). He insists that in the assembled church, he would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others “than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:19).

His solution is not to ban tongues but to regulate their public use: if someone speaks in a tongue in church, “someone must interpret,” and if there is no interpreter, “the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God” (1 Corinthians 14:27-28). The overriding principle governing every gift, including tongues, is that “everything must be done so that the church may be built up” (1 Corinthians 14:26).

Sincere, Bible-believing Christians hold different views on whether tongues, along with certain other miraculous sign gifts, continue in the same form today or were tied especially to the foundational, apostolic era of the church. Some point to passages like 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 as suggesting tongues would eventually cease; others read that passage as pointing to the return of Christ rather than the end of the apostolic age, and hold that the gift continues in believers today.

This is a secondary matter on which faithful churches disagree, and it should never become a test of someone’s salvation or spiritual maturity. What all sides can affirm from the text is Paul’s clear priorities: intelligibility and edification in public worship, humility rather than pride over any spiritual gift, and love as the context in which every gift, tongues included, must be exercised (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Paul makes clear that the Holy Spirit distributes different gifts to different believers, and no single gift, including tongues, is meant to be universal or treated as proof of a more advanced faith. Listing several gifts, he asks rhetorically, “Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” (1 Corinthians 12:29-30), with the expected answer being no. Spiritual gifts are distributed “just as he determines” (1 Corinthians 12:11), not according to a checklist every Christian must complete.

This matters pastorally, because some believers have been made to feel like second-class Christians for not speaking in tongues, as though it were the necessary evidence of the Spirit’s presence in their life. Scripture never teaches this. The clearer, universal evidence of the Spirit’s work is a transformed life bearing “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23), fruit available to every believer regardless of which specific gifts they have received.

Whatever position you hold, the underlying lesson applies to every believer’s prayer life: prayer should engage both spirit and mind. “I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Whether or not tongues are part of your experience, genuine prayer should never become empty performance disconnected from real understanding and love for others.

If you are part of a church or tradition that practices tongues, seek to do so with humility, order, and a heart set on building up others, exactly as Paul instructed the Corinthian believers two thousand years ago.