Troublesome Topic: Precepts about Tongues from I Corinthians 12:27-30

“a share”: This word is often used of receiving an inheritance or of being given an assignment and a commission. It means “a portion, a share, a part, what is due you or what is assigned to you.”

Also “establish, appoint or assign.”

This is consistently the word for “church” in the New Testament. It means “assembly, or the assembled ones.”

The word “apostle” means “sent one” but in the New Testament it was often used of those who had special authority in the churches because they had been with Jesus (Paul qualified because Jesus had met him on the road to Damascus). It was through them that the accepted message of Jesus was passed on to others. Their role was to receive something special and pass it on. Today there can be apostles with a lower case “a” meaning those who have been “sent,” but there are no longer any Apostles with an upper case “A”, meaning those through whom the teachings of Jesus have been passed on because they spent time with Jesus.

The act of prophesying in Scripture is usually associated with calling people to the correct course of action based on a current spiritual reality. It often sounded like this: “You people are far from God and living in sin. You need to repent and change your ways, or you will suffer God’s judgment. So turn to God while you still have a chance.” Notice in this example that no details are given about God’s judgment, only that it is warranted and therefore they should repent. Only rarely did prophecy include foretelling what would happen in the future. Usually it was connected to the present and projected spiritual truths in general terms into the near future. Thus, the act of prophesying was to speak truth in a practical, livable way.

Teachers are important because they help us understand God’s word clearly.

This is a compound word coming from “take or receive” and the preposition “opposite of, as substitution for.” The idea of “take hold of” was used of helping or supporting someone because the root word carried the idea of “embracing” someone who needed help, “to partake with them in their hardship,” or “to take hold of a person or a situation in a fitting way, a way which matches the situation.”

This word means “to steer, to pilot, to guide.”

“families”: In English, Latin and Greek this word expresses “offspring, kinds, families, races, nations.” Our word “genus” used in biological classifications, comes from the same root, as does our word “generation”. The root word in view here means “to give birth to.”

The negative used in each of these sentences also serves as an interrogative; that is why all translators consider these questions, not statements. Greek of those days did not use any punctuation, so it was the choice of words that marked something as a question.  However, these questions sound different than our question in English. Here the question and the assumed negative answer are expressed together.