If chapter 13 was the hinge, chapter 14 is the door swinging open into an actual Sunday gathering in Corinth, and it is louder in there than you think. People are speaking in tongues over each other. Several want the floor at once. Someone is having an ecstatic experience in the corner, and the visitors near the back are edging toward the exit. Into that room Paul writes the longest sustained treatment of a worship service in the New Testament, and he opens it with a sentence that holds the whole chapter: “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy” (14:1).
Read that verse twice, because two camps of the modern church each want to amputate half of it. Follow the way of love, and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit. Zēloute, the Greek imperative, is strong: be zealous for, burn for. This is a command, not a permission slip. The cessationist instinct, gifts were for then, quiets a verse that could not be less quiet. But the enthusiast instinct fares no better, because the whole chapter is Paul regulating, ordering, and ranking the gifts by one unsentimental standard. Garden Church calls itself a word and Spirit church, and this chapter is why the two words have to stay together. Word without Spirit dries out. Spirit without word blows up. Paul is about to show us the plumbing that keeps fire and order in the same room.
Why does Paul prefer prophecy over tongues in the assembly? He gives the reason immediately. “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. But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort” (14:2-3). There is the key word of the entire chapter: oikodomē, building up, edification. It is construction language; oikos is a house.
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