Having just completed one four week intensive course at ILE, I am struck by the complexity of language, and the difficulty we have as humans in learning new languages as adults.  Why doesn’t foreign language learning come as easily as it does in our mother tongue?  The answer to this question resides in man’s pride.

The Bible teaches that we were not designed to experience this difficulty.  In fact, it wasn’t until the tower of Babel that God purposely divided and confused the language of man.  If you’ll recall from Genesis 11, because of the sin of pride, God confused the language of the people and then dispersed them over the face of the earth.  

But you may ask, doesn’t this language confusion throw a gigantic barrier in front of those who desire to see the gospel go out to the ends of the earth?  From our human perspective, indeed it does.  However, this is precisely why we see in Acts 2 along with the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the miracle of the followers of Christ speaking in tongues not their own.  The gospel was and is meant to go to all the nations; salvation by the merit of Christ’s life and his death is not for the Jew only, but also for the gentile. So instead of a gigantic, impassable barrier, what we see is that the gospel will indeed go out to every nation in the tongue of every nation.

In light of this marvelous revelation, the missionary engaged in cross-cultural language learning is to be encouraged for in our language weakness, the power of the Holy Spirit will be poured forth in us that we may be His instruments, mouthpieces for the spread of the gospel of Christ to the uttermost part of the earth.