1 Corinthians 14:15-25

14:15 What should I do? ¹  I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing praises with my spirit, but I will also sing praises with my mind. 14:16 Otherwise, if you are praising God with your spirit, how can someone without the gift ²  say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 14:17 For you are certainly giving thanks well, but the other person is not strengthened. 14:18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you, 14:19 but in the church I want to speak five words with my mind to instruct others, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue.

14:20 Brothers and sisters, ³  do not be children in your thinking. Instead, be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. 14:21 It is written in the law: “By people with strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, yet not even in this way will they listen to me,” ⁴  says the Lord. 14:22 So then, tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers. Prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers. 14:23 So if the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and unbelievers or uninformed people enter, will they not say that you have lost your minds? 14:24 But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or uninformed person enters, he will be convicted by all, he will be called to account by all. 14:25 The secrets of his heart are disclosed, and in this way he will fall down with his face to the ground and worship God, declaring, “God is really among you.”

[14:15]  ¹ tn Grk “what then is it?”

[14:16]  ² tn Grk “how can someone who fills the place of the unlearned say ‘Amen.’”

[14:20]  ³ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:10.

[14:21]  ⁴ sn A quotation from Isa 28:11-12.