Today at Church

Test Everything, Hold Fast What Is Good

Today my wife and I attended a church we had never visited before.

The music was loud, but I enjoyed it. The preaching was good as well. At first I had a little trouble following where the pastor was going, but eventually everything came together, and I felt that much of what he said was grounded firmly in the Word of God.

Yet there were two things during the service that troubled me.

They concern subjects Christians have disagreed about for a very long time: speaking in tongues and physical healing.

Before going any further, I want to make something clear.

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe the spiritual gifts described in Scripture were real.

I believe God can heal.

I believe God can intervene in ways that cannot easily be explained by human ability.

I am not interested in explaining away everything supernatural simply because I cannot understand it.

But neither do I believe that everything labeled “the Holy Spirit” necessarily comes from Him.

Scripture gives us a wonderfully balanced instruction:

“Do not quench the Spirit... test everything; hold fast what is good.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:19–21

Those commands belong together.

We should not quench the Spirit.

But we should test what happens.

And the standard by which I believe spiritual experiences should ultimately be tested is Scripture.

Speaking in Tongues

I believe speaking in tongues is biblical.

Acts 2 makes that impossible for me to deny.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they began speaking in other tongues. People from many different regions heard them speaking in their own languages.

That is important.

The miracle was not meaningless sound.

Communication took place.

People understood.

The Gospel was proclaimed.

Years ago I witnessed something within my own family that has stayed with me.

During a Bible study, my uncle suddenly began speaking Spanish.

As far as I knew, he could not speak Spanish.

Sitting beside him was a woman who struggled with English.

She understood him.

What happened helped her understand the Gospel, and that very night she placed her faith in Christ.

I cannot scientifically prove what happened in that room. I can only describe what I witnessed and what I believe happened.

But it resembled something I recognize in Acts:

God overcoming a language barrier so that someone could understand the Gospel.

That is very different from some other things I have witnessed in churches.

I have sat in services where people produced streams of sounds that appeared to have no identifiable meaning, no interpretation, and no apparent purpose other than demonstrating that the person was supposedly speaking in tongues.

That troubles me.

Not because I believe tongues are impossible.

It troubles me because Scripture itself places boundaries around their use.

What Does Paul Actually Require?

First Corinthians 12–14 contains Paul's most extensive discussion of spiritual gifts.

And Paul does something very important.

He neither tells Christians to reject tongues nor gives them permission to do whatever they please with them.

He regulates their use.

In 1 Corinthians 14:27–28, Paul says that if someone speaks in a tongue publicly, only two or at most three should speak, they should speak one at a time, and someone must interpret.

Then comes something that I think modern churches need to take very seriously.

If there is no interpreter, the person is to remain silent in the church.

That is not my rule.

That is Paul's.

Paul repeatedly emphasizes the reason:

The church is supposed to be edified.

If someone stands in a congregation and speaks something nobody understands, and nobody interprets it, what has the congregation learned?

Paul asks essentially the same question.

He compares speech with musical instruments and even a military trumpet. If the sound has no recognizable meaning, how does anyone know how to respond?

Meaning matters.

Understanding matters.

Order matters.

Edification matters.

Paul eventually says that God is not a God of confusion but of peace, and he concludes his discussion by saying that everything should be done decently and in order.

Yet we also have to be careful not to make Paul say something he did not say.

At the end of the chapter he specifically says:

Do not forbid speaking in tongues.

Therefore I cannot biblically argue:

“Tongues are false, so churches should prohibit them.”

Paul will not allow me to do that.

But neither can someone simply say:

“The Holy Spirit made me do it, therefore no biblical restrictions apply.”

Paul will not allow that either.

The biblical position seems to require both openness and discernment.

Do not quench the Spirit.

Test everything.

Are Tongues Always Human Languages?

I personally lean strongly toward understanding biblical tongues as genuine languages, particularly because Acts 2 explicitly describes people hearing languages they recognized.

But I also need to be careful here.

First Corinthians 14 contains statements Christians interpret differently. Paul speaks about someone who “speaks in a tongue” speaking mysteries to God, and he describes praying with his spirit while his understanding is unfruitful.

Christians have debated what precisely Paul means.

So I do not want to make the same mistake I have criticized others for making.

I should not say:

“The Bible unquestionably proves every tongue must be a previously known human language.”

The evidence deserves more careful treatment than that.

What I can say with confidence is that Paul does not permit disorderly, uninterpreted public displays simply because someone claims they are spiritual.

If someone speaks publicly in a tongue, Scripture requires interpretation.

That alone should cause us to examine some modern practices very carefully.

Experience Cannot Become Our Bible

I have experienced things in churches that I believe were genuine works of God.

I have also experienced things that caused me serious concern.

I once witnessed a Christian presentation in which the Word of God was being proclaimed, and during the event a young woman underwent something that those of us present understood as spiritual deliverance.

I have witnessed people communicate across language barriers in remarkable ways.

In Mexico, I watched a woman who knew essentially no Spanish communicate with children by drawing pictures in the sand. They understood one another well enough that before long the children were trying to invite her to go swimming with them.

God has given human beings many ways to communicate.

But none of those experiences—even the ones I regard as extraordinary—gets to become my authority.

Experience must be tested by Scripture.

Otherwise someone can say:

“I experienced this, therefore God did it.”

Another person can say:

“I experienced the opposite, therefore God did that.”

Soon everyone has a different truth.

Scripture gives us a standard outside ourselves.

What About Healing?

The second thing that troubled me involves sickness and disability.

There are Christians who teach, in one form or another, that a faithful Christian should not remain sick or disabled.

Sometimes the implication is that if you are not healed, something must be wrong with your faith.

Sometimes it becomes even worse:

You must have unrepented sin in your life.

I know what it is like to hear that.

I have been in churches where people refused to pray for me because they believed my disability must be the consequence of some sin I had failed to confess.

That hurts.

But more importantly, I do not believe Scripture supports such a sweeping conclusion.

Jesus Addressed This Directly

John 9 contains one of the most important passages on this issue.

Jesus and His disciples encountered a man who had been blind from birth.

The disciples immediately asked the question human beings still ask:

Who sinned?

Was it this man or his parents?

In other words:

Someone must be responsible for this disability.

Jesus rejected their assumption.

He told them that neither the man's sin nor his parents' sin explained why he had been born blind.

That passage alone should make Christians extremely cautious before looking at someone with a disability and declaring:

“You must have unconfessed sin.”

We do not know that.

And claiming to know something God has not revealed can itself become a serious spiritual error.

Faithful Christians Got Sick

The New Testament also refuses to give us a picture in which faithful Christians never suffer physically.

Paul describes a “thorn in the flesh” in 2 Corinthians 12.

He asked God three times to remove it.

God did not.

Instead, God told Paul that His grace was sufficient and that His power was made perfect in weakness.

Whatever precisely Paul's thorn was, the principle is unmistakable:

God sometimes accomplishes His purposes through weakness rather than removing it.

Timothy had recurring physical problems. Paul advised him regarding his stomach and frequent illnesses in 1 Timothy 5:23.

Epaphroditus became so sick that he nearly died according to Philippians 2.

In 2 Timothy 4:20, Paul says that he left Trophimus sick at Miletus.

Think about that.

This is Paul.

A man through whom God performed extraordinary miracles.

Yet Paul did not simply heal every Christian around him whenever someone became sick.

That should tell us something.

Does That Mean God Does Not Heal?

Certainly not.

Scripture contains healing from beginning to end.

Jesus healed.

The apostles healed.

James tells believers to pray for the sick.

I believe Christians should pray for healing.

I believe we should ask boldly.

I believe God can heal someone instantly if He chooses.

But I do not believe we have biblical authority to promise that every Christian will be physically healed in this life if only he possesses enough faith.

Sometimes God says yes.

Sometimes God works through physicians.

Sometimes God gives strength to endure.

Sometimes healing does not come in this life.

Christian hope is ultimately bigger than temporary physical healing.

The resurrection is the final healing.

There will come a day when the bodies of those who belong to Christ will no longer suffer injury, disease, disability, deterioration, or death.

But we are not there yet.

Romans 8 describes creation groaning as we await redemption, including the redemption of our bodies.

Until then, Christians still live in bodies affected by a fallen world.

My Own Body

I have lived with a spinal cord injury and chronic pain for years.

My lower back hurts most of the time. Some days are much worse than others.

I would be lying if I said I enjoy pain.

I don't.

Pain is not my friend.

But strangely, God has used it.

Before I was injured, my life was busy.

Too busy.

I did not spend the time with God that I should have.

Church could be pushed aside.

Bible reading could be postponed.

There was always something else demanding my attention.

Then my body forced my life to slow down.

The pain did not make God good.

God was already good.

But God used something painful to change me.

Since becoming disabled, I have spent far more time studying Scripture.

I have read the Bible from beginning to end repeatedly.

I have spent years examining questions about God that I might never have taken seriously otherwise.

Before the injury, I never really imagined wanting to preach or teach God's Word.

Afterward, I did.

My physical weakness forced me to confront my spiritual priorities.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:16 that although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self can be renewed day by day.

I understand that verse differently now than I once did.

My body can hurt while my faith grows.

My legs can fail while my spirit remains anchored.

My physical condition does not determine the condition of my relationship with God.

We Need Both Faith and Discernment

So where does all of this leave me when I visit a church where I hear preaching I appreciate but encounter practices that concern me?

I do not think the answer is immediate condemnation.

Christians disagree about spiritual gifts.

Faithful Christians have reached different conclusions about tongues.

We disagree about healing.

We disagree about how the Holy Spirit works in particular situations.

But disagreement does not mean that anything goes.

We still possess Scripture.

That is where we must return.

If a church practices tongues, I want to ask:

Does it follow Paul's instructions?

Is there interpretation?

Is there order?

Does it edify the congregation?

Does it glorify Christ or draw attention primarily to the speaker?

If a church teaches healing, I want to ask:

Does it acknowledge the sick believers in Scripture?

Does it recognize that Paul himself lived with weakness?

Does it allow for God's answer to be, “My grace is sufficient for you”?

Does it comfort suffering people or accuse them?

Does it pray for the sick without pretending to know why every person is sick?

Those seem to me to be fair biblical questions.

And the same questions must be asked about things I believe.

I cannot demand that someone else's theology submit to Scripture while allowing my own theology to escape examination.

Test Everything

I am still not entirely sure whether the church we visited should become our church home.

But perhaps that uncertainty is not necessarily bad.

It forces me to do something Christians should be doing anyway.

Listen.

Study.

Pray.

Compare what I hear with Scripture.

And test everything.

I do not want to become so skeptical that I quench something the Holy Spirit genuinely wants to do.

But neither do I want to become so eager for supernatural experiences that I stop exercising the discernment Scripture commands.

So I return again to those words:

Do not quench the Spirit.

Test everything.

Hold fast what is good.

That seems to me to be one of the safest places a Christian can stand.

Not afraid of the Holy Spirit.

Not impressed by every claim made in His name.

But firmly anchored in the Word of God.