15. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.
16. Otherwise when you are praising God in the Spirit, how can someone else, who is now put in the position of an enquirer, say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving, since they do not know what you are saying?
17. You are giving thanks well enough, but no one else is edified.
18. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.
19. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.
20. Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
21. In the Law it is written:‘With other tonguesand through the lips of foreignersI will speak to this people,but even then they will not listen to me,says the Lord.’
22. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers.
23. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and enquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
24. But if an unbeliever or an enquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all,
25. as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’
26. What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.