Every Christian is tempted and sin each and every day, and we all must admit that “we all stumble in many ways” (v. 2). It seems that the sins of the tongue head the list of struggles. The person who is able to discipline their tongue gives evidence that they can control their whole body. They prove that they are a mature person.
Is James making a mistake by connecting sins of the tongue with sins committed by “the whole body”? No, because words usually lead to deeds. During World War II, there were posters that read “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!” But loose lips also wreck lives. A person makes an unguarded statement and suddenly finds oneself involved in a fight, conflict, or argument. Their tongue has forced the rest of their body to defend themselves.
Never underestimate the guidance you give by the words you speak or do not speak. Jesus spoke to a woman at a well, and her life and the lives of her neighbors experienced a miraculous change (John 4). Peter preached at Pentecost and 3,000 souls came to salvation through faith in Christ (Acts 2).
Our words can start fires. “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife” (Prov. 26:20–21, ESV). In some churches, there are members or pastors who cannot control their tongues, and the result is destruction. We are all aware of these stories of pastors or preachers causing harm to the church because of their verbal abuse, spiritual abuse, or the things they have said that is not spoken of in the Spirit of God. But once the pastors are removed or the slanderous congregants leave (or are forced to leave), a beautiful spirit of harmony and love takes over.
6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. 8 But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; 10 from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way. 11 Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh. (NASB)
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- In seeking to control our tongues we must admit to God our weakness, seek His help, and place relentless guard on our tongues. God’s grace can enable us to use our tongues and our words for blessing and encouraging others.
- James taught that the original stamp of the likeness of God in the human creature is still present. It is to be respected and blessed, not made the object of curse.
- To use the gift of speech to praise the Giver of every good and perfect gift (1:17) and to extol the God who befriends us (2:23) is the proper use of the tongue.
CLOSER LOOK
Verse 6: The tongue is not only powerful; it is also perverse. It is small and influential but, worse by far, it can be satanic and infectious. The tongue is a fire (cf. Prov. 16:27; 26:18–22), “the very world of iniquity (evil).” An uncontrolled tongue can defile the whole body, or the whole person. The tongue sets (kathistatai) itself up among the members, or part of one’s anatomy, corrupting, spotting, or defiling (staining from spilousa)[1] the entire body and inflaming the whole course of our life (literally, “the wheel of existence” or “wheel of birth,” ton trochon tēs geneseōs). The tongue can damage all of a person and all of their life. Think of it is as though the tongue is at the center or hub of a wheel and the wheel is set on fire at the center. The more it burns, the faster it revolves until the whole wheel spins in a blaze, spitting fire in all directions. But the tongue is only the fuse; the source of the deadly fire is hell itself (literally, “Gehenna,” a place in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem where human sacrifice had been offered [Jer. 7:31] and where continuous burning of rubbish made it a fit illustration of the lake of fire).[2] Moreover, “by hell” indicates that Satan can put words in the believer’s mouth through temptation (Mk 8:33; Acts 5:3).
The tongue is “the world of evil.” In the ancient way of thinking, this is not a difficult phrase. The body was the microcosm of the universe. In all its complexity, the human being was a small, self-contained universe, thus the term “microcosmos.”[3] There is a double sense of microcosm here: not only the body in relation to the universe of nature but also the tongue in relation to the universe of wickedness.[4] Thus, contained within the tongue or speech are all the representations of wickedness in the world. Is a representation of evil, in words that is, the same as the evil itself? Obviously not, but the power of verbal representation is not slight; this James knew full well. Words have the power to elicit action; indeed, the activity of speech itself interprets every other human action. There is no evil act that the tongue cannot tell, let alone initiate.
Three causative relations are laid out here: corrupt speech spawns corruption of the body; the corrupted body sets in motion the evil course of an entire life; the destructiveness of evil speech is derived from the destructiveness of hell. Since the tongue is the world of evil, the person of perverse speech fails to distinguish between confessing faith and hypocrisy, respect and flattery, blessing and cursing (cf. v. 10).
Verse 7: The tongue is not only like an uncontrolled fire, but it is also like an untamed beast. Every kind of species, or all nature (physis), of wild beasts—birds of the air, reptiles on land, and creatures of the sea—all are being “tamed” and have been tamed by the human race (literally, “human nature,” physis; thus “beastly nature” is tamed by “human nature”).[5] But no human is able to tame the tongue!
Like a fire, the tongue can “heat things up.” David wrote: “I said, ‘I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue;’ … My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue” (Ps. 39:1, 3). Have you ever had that experience? Of course you have! A hot head and a hot heart can lead to burning words that later we will regret. Fire burns and hurts, and our words can burn and hurt. One of the sorrows Jesus had to bear when He was here on earth was the way His enemies talked about Him. They called Him a glutton and a drunk (Matt. 11:19) because He graciously accepted invitations to dine with people the Pharisees did not like. When He performed miracles, they said He was in association with Satan. Even when He was dying on the cross, His enemies threw vicious speech and taunts onto Him.
Verse 8: “No one can tame the tongue” because it is a “restless evil,” an unruly, unsteady, staggering, reeling evil (James used the same word in 1:8 that was translated “unstable”). Worse yet, the tongue is “full of deadly poison” (cf. Ps. 140:3; Rom 3:13). Like the poison of a serpent, the tongue is loaded with the venom of hate, slander, and death-dealing gossip. The instincts of animals can be subdued through conditioning and discipline, but the sinful nature that inspires evil words is beyond our control.[6] Only the work of the Holy Spirit within us, as Christians, can bring this destructive force under control.
There is no force within or beside the destructive force of the individual that can subdue his own greatest force, that is, the power of speech. The negativity of James’s description of the tongue is blatant here. James seems almost to have delayed this declaration until he could make a forceful enough argument for it. The tongue cannot be tamed. Every other creature can be tamed, except this one. The tongue, the power of speech, is great (v. 5a); its evil is like an unquenchable fire destroying an entire environment (v. 5b).
Verses 9–10: Similar to the forked tongue of a snake, man’s uncontrolled tongue both emits praise and spews out curses. “Bless,” “praise,” or “saying a good word” (eulogoumen) of our Lord and Father (this is the only place where the NT uses this title of God) is polluted by a “curse,” or “wishing evil” (katarōmetha) on people made in the likeness of God (cf. Gen. 1:27; 9:6; Col. 1:10). That both blessing and cursing should come from the same mouth is incompatible. When James discusses blessing our God, it may refer to the Jewish practice of saying “blessed be He” whenever God’s name was mentioned. James is pointing out the inconsistency of blessing God while cursing people who are created in His image.
One of the most important references to human nature in the New Testament is found here, for humans are in the imago Dei, created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–27). The “likeness of God” (homoiōsis theou; Strong’s 3669; 2316) in the Greek means “God’s likeness.” Although human beings have lost much of Godlikeness, there is still enough in our make-up to hint at what we once were like and what we can become again through the work of Christ. It is interesting how the ancient Alexandrian Christians understood Genesis 1:26, where man and woman are created in the “image” and “likeness” of God. The “image” was that Godlike part of us that we never lost in the Fall, while the “likeness” was that Godlike part of human being that we have yet to acquire. By “image” they meant a person’s physical and intellectual nature; by “likeness” they meant a person’s moral being. Interestingly, the New Testament usually makes reference to Christ Himself in this connection: He is the image of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; etc.). It is according to Him, who is the image of God incarnate, that we will be remade in the resurrection (Rom 8:29; 1 John 3:1–2; etc.). The human being was made for God, fashioned to know God and to reflect the attributes of God in a creaturely way. To dishonor any human being in some way dishonors God. Those who bless God out of one side of their mouths and curse their neighbors out of the other side are double-tongued in speech-acts, recalling the double-minded man in 1:6–8.
Verses 11–12: Again, James turned to the natural elements to illustrate his point. Anticipating a negative response, James asked, “Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh (literally, “sweet,” glyky) water and bitter (pikron) water?” “Can a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs?” Of course not. Neither does salt (halykon) make water sweet (glyky). The first usage of the image of the spring refers literally to “bitter” water, not salty. The qualifier “bitter” (v. 11) anticipates the “bitter envy” mentioned in v. 14. The word “salty” fits along with the examples of other producers from the natural order. But a “salt spring” could not produce fresh water.
The point is clear: a believer’s tongue should not be an instrument of inconsistency. “Small and influential, the tongue must be controlled; satanic and infectious, the tongue must be corralled; salty and inconsistent, the tongue must be cleansed.”[7] Pouring salt water into fresh produces salt water; and mixing bad fruit with good fruit produces a bushel of rotten fruit. Likewise mixing the contradictory speech of blessing and cursing will only produce negative results.
[1] cf. aspilon, “spotless,” in James 1:27
[2] J. Ronald Blue, “James,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 828.
[3] Kurt A. Richardson, “James,” in New American Commentary, (Nashville: New American Commentary, 1997), n.p.
[4] Cf. 4:4; Ps 63:9; Luke 16:8–9, 11; Rom 6:16; 1 John 5:19; Enoch 48.7; Herm. Man. 12.1; Vis 2.2
[5] J. Ronald Blue, “James,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 828.
[6] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, H. Wayne House, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), 1668.
[7] J. Ronald Blue, “James,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, eds. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 828.