For no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ.

If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

Don’t we have the right to be accompanied by a Christian wife like the other apostles, the Lord’s brothers, and Cephas?

If others have this right to receive benefits from you, don’t we even more?

However, we have not made use of this right; instead we endure everything so that we will not hinder the gospel of Christ.

Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

No one should seek his own good, but the good of the other person.

I do not mean your own conscience, but the other person’s. For why is my freedom judged by another person’s conscience?

But if anyone wants to argue about this, we have no other custom, nor do the churches of God.

For at the meal, each one eats his own supper ahead of others. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk!

If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you gather together you will not come under judgment. And I will give instructions about the other matters whenever I come.

so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other.

I wish all of you spoke in other languages, but even more that you prophesied. The person who prophesies is greater than the person who speaks in languages, unless he interprets so that the church may be built up.

But now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in other languages, how will I benefit you unless I speak to you with a revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

For you may very well be giving thanks, but the other person is not being built up.

I thank God that I speak in other languages more than all of you;

yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, in order to teach others also, than 10,000 words in another language.

It is written in the law:

I will speak to these people
by people of other languages
and by the lips of foreigners,
and even then, they will not listen to Me,

says the Lord.

It follows that speaking in other languages is intended as a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers. But prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers.

Therefore, if the whole church assembles together and all are speaking in other languages and people who are uninformed or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should evaluate.

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in other languages.