James 3:1-12 Commentary

It’s not a little ironic that most of us who preach this Sunday on the potential dangers and blessings of the use of our tongues will do so with our tongues. So we do well to let the Spirit speak to us through James 3 before we even begin to preach. After all, it strongly suggests that those whom the Spirit graces with the courage to preach about it will want to prepare to do so with its themes whispering in our ears and nudging our hearts.

Those who preach about the appropriate use of Christians’ tongues want to ground such proclamation in the character of God. Since God is Spirit, God doesn’t literally have a tongue. Yet the Scriptures often use anthropomorphic imagery in reference to God. They, in fact, often refer to God speaking.

What, then, characterizes God’s use of God’s “tongue” and, by implication, humans’ use of our tongues? God’s tongue is mighty. We profess, after all, that God created everything that has been created by the power of God’s spoken word. After all, among Genesis 1’s repeated refrains is, “God said … and there was …”

James 3’s preachers might offer examples of their own boastfulness. When I was a middle school student, I ran on our school’s track team. Since I wasn’t particularly speedy, I thought I might mask my slowness by running and jumping over hurdles. In fact, I bragged that I could run them more quickly than anyone. So my classmate Carlos challenged me to a race. After he’d cleared three hurdles before I’d cleared even one, I stopped, claiming to have pulled a muscle. My tongue had rashly made “great boasts.” But I showed them that they were empty.

Our tongues sometimes reflect middle school arrogance. However, they also wield great power not just to blow adolescent “hot air,” but also to cause deep harm. In verse 6, in fact, James calls the tongue “a fire [pyr], a world of evil [adikias] among the parts of the body.” While fire can be a helpful element, the apostle here points to its potential destructiveness. So by comparing our tongues to raging forest fires, it’s almost as if he implies that the tongue has the power to be the most destructive of all our body parts.

Our tongue carries so much potential to cause such deep harm that James mysteriously asserts that it somehow “corrupts [opilousa] the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life [torchon tes geneseos] on fire, and is itself set on fire [phlogizomene] by hell [6].” Here the apostle suggests that while humans can’t control our tongues, Satan and his thugs have the power to both somehow poison our bodies and manipulate our tongues. As a result, our tongues don’t just have the capacity to profoundly harm others. When the evil one and his thugs light them, they give our tongues the power to also deeply hurt those who use them.

The Message, however, paraphrases verse 6 in such a way that it assumes that James is largely referring throughout it to the tongue’s power to harm others. It lyrically says, “By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony into chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.”

James doesn’t paint a very attractive picture of human tongues. He laments how they make huge boasts that put our arrogance on public display. Tongues are a fiery world of evil among our body parts. They’re naturally so poisonous that they don’t just have immense power to cause their users great misery. Our tongues, adds the apostle, can also do profound damage to the people and communities around us.

It’s no wonder, then, that the apostle begins this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with a stern warning against anyone casually entering any kind of teaching profession. In verse 1 he warns, “Not many of you should become [ginesthe] teachers [didaskaloi].” While the Greek noun didsaskalos generically refers to teachers, we sense that James is especially referring to teachers in the church. He insists that none of us should rush into teaching and — by extension – preaching unless we feel irresistibly called by God and equipped by the Spirit to do so.

Why? Because we know [eidotes] that “we who teach will be judged [lempsometha krima] more strictly.” This at least suggests that God will hold teachers and preachers to a higher standard than most others. We sense that’s because teachers’ main “tool” that is our tongue is so capable of causing great harm.

None of us is either perfect [teleios] or “perfectly qualified” (The Message). As we follow Jesus, each of us, in fact, “stumbles” [ptaiomen] in many ways. We don’t “keep our body in check [chalinagogesai].” Among the ways Jesus’ friends stumble is by sinning with our tongues. We literally fail to “bridle” [chalinagogesai] them. Even God’s dearly beloved people fail to completely control our bodies, including our tongues. James implies that teachers too fail to keep our tongues, the “tools of our trade,” under control. As The Message paraphrases verse 2, “We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths.”

Of course, as the apostle hurries to add in verses 9 and following, our tongues are also capable of such great good. “With the tongue,” he writes, “we praise [eulogomen] our Lord and Father [9].” What’s more, out of our mouths comes “praise” [eulogia] [10].” God’s adopted sons and daughters use our tongues to carry out one of the very things for which God created us – to praise God, to literally “speak well of” God. This too reflects God’s use of God’s tongue. Whenever God speaks, God’s speech speaks well of God. God never embarrasses himself. God’s speech always reflects well on God.

Human tongues, grieves James in verse 9, are entirely different. While they sometimes praise God, they also sometimes “curse [katarometha] human beings, who have been made [gegonotas] in God’s likeness [homoisosin Theou].” While our tongues may not directly curse God, they curse people whom God has graciously made to be very much like God.

In fact, the same mouths let loose streams of both praise and cursing [katara] [10].” This, insists the apostle, “should not [ou chre] be.” This, says Eugene Peterson, “can’t go on.” Praising and cursing with the same tongue just isn’t right. After all, as James asks rhetorically in verses 11 and 12, “Can both fresh [glyky] and salt [pikron] water flow from the same spring [opes]? … Can a fig tree [syke] bear olives [elaias], or a grapevine [ampelos] bear figs [syka]? Nor can a salt spring [halykon] produce fresh water [hydor].”

It might seem as if the apostle is overstating the obvious here. Of course, the same spring can’t produce both fresh and bitter water. Yet James also makes a subtle point about the absurdity of people praising God and cursing people with the same tongue: inanimate objects are more faithful to the purpose for which God created them than sinful human tongues. While fig trees “know” enough not to bear olives, humans don’t know enough not to use the same tongue to praise God and curse God’s image-bearers. While grapevines “know” enough not to produce figs, people God makes in God’s image don’t know enough not to use the same tongue to both praise and curse.

So where is gospel in James 3? To where do we turn for hope? Here preachers will want to let the Spirit help us employ some good theology from outside of the text. That use begins with its acknowledgement of the human need for God that’s so obvious in this text. It’s not just that our tongues are capable of sinning. James also reminds us that it’s impossible for us to control them. Preachers may suggest some strategies for turning down the heat on the fires that our tongues set. But we confess that no human being is even capable of taming our tongues by ourselves.

To control our tongues, Jesus’ friends must rely on the help and power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can equip us to be effective teachers. Only the Spirit can empower us to bridle our tongues. Only the Spirit can equip us to praise God rather than curse people. Only the Spirit can empower us to act as wisely as springs and vines.

This seems particularly pertinent to the season of elections that’s occurring in the United States right now. It’s not just that politicians sometimes use their tongues as tools of both destruction and flattery. It’s also that Jesus’ followers sometimes use our tongues with which we praise God on Sunday to speak harshly of our fellow Christians with whom we don’t politically agree throughout the rest of the week.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his remarkable book, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, Robert Caro notes that the American president was a mean man who abused reporters and ordered his wife around. He tongue-lashed reporters whom he judged not to have reported his successes with sufficient enthusiasm, and whenever they hinted at criticism of him. Caro laments how Johnson “even ridiculed them for no reason at all, displaying as he did so that keen insight into other men’s feelings that enabled him to wound them so deeply.”

He once ridiculed Dave Cheavens of the Associated Press, a sensitive, sweet-tempered guy who was fat and short. Once, when Johnson was moving across a plowed field, Cheavens was falling behind. Johnson to Cheavens: “C’mon Cheavens. Won’t those little fat legs of yours carry you any faster than that’?”