If therefore. — Intended, as tongues were, for a “sign,” they cease to be thus useful if not properly employed. The report of the strange utterances which take place in the assembled Church may lead some unbeliever to come there: but if there be tongues alone, and they uninterpreted, the stranger will simply think those present are mad. (See Acts 2:13.) It is not meant here that all commence shouting out at the same time, neither is it in the next verse that all prophesy simultaneously; but the thought presented is the undue and exclusive cultivation of this gift by all in the Corinthian Church.
Related Commentaries of 1 Corinthians 14:23
1 Corinthians 14:23
23 If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?