Did Jesus speak in tongues?

Speaking in other languages (tongues) without having learned these languages does not occur in the Old Testament. Only one prophecy in reference to it (Isa.28:ll-13) is found, and if this were not cited in 1 Corinthians 14:21 with express reference to speaking in tongues we would in all likelihood not even have connected it therewith. The sense of the passage becomes clear from its context. Because the priests and prophets in Israel no longer were open to true knowledge and the divine report (v. 7-10), God would speak to them through people with unintelligible speech and strange tongue. These are their enemies who would bring judgment upon them. And the Holy Spirit uses this passage in order to make clear in 1 Corinthians 14 that tongues are a sign to unbelievers and not to believers (v. 21, 22).

We do not find speaking in tongues in the Gospels either other than in the prophecy of the Lord Jesus in Mark 16:17. But since this verse out of Mark is so frequently cited as proof I must dwell upon it a bit. In verse 14 the Lord comes to the eleven and reproaches their unbelief and hardness of heart. Then in verse 15 He gives them the commission to preach the gospel to all the creation. and in verse 16 He says what its consequences would be to the hearers. In verse 17 He then says to them (that is. to the eleven in connection with His reproach of their unbelief in verse 14) that signs would follow those who would believe. In verse 20 they go forth and the Lord fulfills His promise and confirms the Word by the signs following upon it.

The Gospels contain but one reference to tongues. Mark 16:17, says, speaking of signs that should accompany the preaching of the gospel, they shall “speak with new tongues.”

a. Speaking in tongues is announced only in Mark 16, being given as a confirmation of the spoken word of the gospel, and is only applied to the preaching of the apostles.

(1) Mark records the Lord's promise that this gift of tongues should be bestowed after His ascension;

Mark records the Lord's promise of the gift of new tongues, and the evangelist associates this gift with His command to the apostles, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15-18). Luke in the Acts records the fulfilment of the promise of tongues, and he there associates that fulfilment with the descent of the Holy Spirit. We find, therefore, from the latter account that, in accordance with the promise of the Father, the Lord Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit upon His followers at Pentecost, and as a consequence, “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4).

In order to dispel any such fears, the servants of Christ, we read, were encouraged to go forward in their future service fortified by the assurance that the power attending their labours would in no wise be diminished by the Lord's own absence. In His words of assurance which Mark records, the Lord declared that exhibitions of power which accompanied their preaching at the first when He was with them would be renewed and amplified when He had Himself gone on high. Formerly, their words were associated with the gifts of healing and exorcism, but after the ascension of Christ, these signs would be granted with greater fulness and variety. The Lord said, “These signs shall follow them that believe: (1) in My name shall they cast out demons; (2) they shall speak with new tongues; (3) they shall take up serpents; (4) and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; (5) they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

What is this baptism with the Holy Ghost? May we not receive some instruction as to it from the descent of the Spirit on our Lord Himself? He is never said, indeed, to have been baptised with the Holy Ghost, but He is said to have been "anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power" (Acts 10:38). Again, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," etc. (Luke 4:18). So characteristic is this anointing of the place which Jesus had been ordained to fill, that this is what the very name "Christ" denotes. "The anointed," "Messiah," and "Christ," are but one and the same title of this blessed One, to whom all glory belongs. Evidently it was as man that He received this anointing. But as man He was already perfect; as to His nature He was so from the first; "conceived of the Holy Ghost," His nature, as man, was essentially holy. The meat-offering under the law — emblem of Christ in the perfectness of His life on earth — was compounded with oil, as well as anointed therewith. He did not need the anointing to make Him what He already was, pure, holy, perfect; but He received it as the broad seal, visibly set upon Him, of the ineffable satisfaction with which God His Father viewed Him in the place He had stooped to occupy. "Him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6:27). And seeing that the place to which He had thus stooped was none other than the subject, dependent, creature-place, it behoved Him that all He did, and said, and suffered, should be manifestly, not by any power inherent in Him as man, perfectly holy as He was, but by the power of the Holy Ghost. "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil: for God was with him." Accordingly, from the moment the Spirit descended like a dove lighting upon Him, we find everything attributed to the Spirit, as the power in which Christ fulfilled His mission. He was "led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Matt. 4:1). "He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee'" (Luke 4:14). "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God," said He, "then the kingdom of God is come unto you " (Matt. 12:28). "Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God " (Heb. 9:14). Even after His resurrection it is said of Him, "until the day in which He was taken up, after that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen" (Acts 1:2). Not only was this blessed One "God over all," — "God manifest in the flesh;" not only was He perfect man, holy and without spot; but because He was so, He was the vessel of the full power of the Holy Ghost, with which He was anointed, and in the power of which His whole work was accomplished. But, until His ascension, He was the alone vessel in which the Spirit thus dwelt and wrought. The disciples were, no doubt, quickened by His divine power as the Son, and the subjects thus, as all saints had ever been, of the regenerating operation of the Spirit. From their Master they had received power also to heal the sick and cast out devils, just as prophets of former days had received such power from God for special ends to be answered by their ministry. For such ends there had been individuals even "filled with the Holy Ghost;" as, for instance, Elizabeth (Luke 1:41), Zacharias (Luke 1:67), and John the Baptist (Luke 1:15). The two former seem to have been so filled for the particular occasion, the latter habitually. But all this is distinct from that of which Jesus was the first and the only perfect example; we mean, the being sealed or anointed with the Holy Ghost, in such sort as to become the temple of His presence, the vessel of His power, so that everything said and done was the expression of His holiness, and by the working of His power. "The Church," by being baptised with the Holy Ghost, is brought, derivatively and subordinately, into a similarly blessed place. In Christ there was no opposing will or power; while in us alas! there is. He received the anointing, moreover, as the seal of what He was intrinsically, while it is only "in Him," by virtue of His person and work and of our union with Him, that we are "anointed," or "sealed." But, giving full place to these and all other essential differences between the saints and Him who "in all things" must "have the pre-eminence," it still remains true, that by the baptism with the Holy Ghost, saints are now so incorporated with Christ, so one with Him, as to form the vessel of the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. A passage, one verse of which has been already quoted, declares this in the most emphatic terms. Both verses are as follows: "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, SO ALSO IS CHRIST.

"When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place." God introduced this new thing in a manner suitable to His own wisdom. Suddenly there came a sound from above, for it was the Holy Ghost coming down from heaven, and God was pleased to vouchsafe an outward sign accompanying this unprecedented fact — "a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." It is true that the Holy Ghost had descended before, but this was to dwell in one man — the man Christ Jesus. In His case there was no preparatory work; but the very manner of the descent of the Spirit, as well as of that appearance which He chose to assume in descending on the Lord Jesus, attested the immense difference between Him, in whom was no sin, and us, however blest and delivered. But we are delivered from our sins and sin; and this mighty work of God's grace is through the suffering unto death under judgment of Him who had no sin, and through the power of His resurrection.

Now this was a wholly new thing: the saints of God had never experienced the like before. From the very beginning there have been those who through grace have been born of the Spirit; but the gift of the Spirit, sealing individual believers and baptising all into one body, is an entirely new order of blessing, founded on redemption. That mighty work being now accomplished by which God has been vindicated and glorified, and the divine sin-purger having taken His seat on high, God is able in a righteous way to lavish every gift upon all who believe in His beloved Son. And, as one may say, Jesus received the Holy Spirit twice; first at Jordan for Himself, then on His return to glory for His saints. At Jordan the Father expressed the delight of His heart in Him as the perfect man on earth, "and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him" (Luke 3:22); so that He could afterwards say of Himself, "Him has God the Father sealed" (John 6:27). But when risen and ascended, Peter could declare, "therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He has shed forth this which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2:33).

But our Gospel is bringing us into the truth of Christ's person, as applied to whatever the Holy Ghost traces it here. He was not baptised by the Spirit, but He baptised others by the Holy Spirit. "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit," etc. There was an entirely special glory in our Lord's case. The Spirit was as the dove, not, as on the day of Pentecost, the rushing wind, or the tongue of fire.