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Do You Recognize How Destructive Your Words Can Be?
Three Cautions from the Book of James
James chapter 3 is very like the book of Proverbs, because James loves graphic illustrations about our mouths, our words, and, in particular, our tongues. So, here we will see three things James is saying about the tongue: it is small; it is a fire; it is a fountain.
The Tongue Is Small—It Has Power out of All Proportion to Its Size
“For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well” (James 3:2–3).
The tongue is tiny, but it’s as if James is saying that it’s the control room for the whole person, and yet it’s the hardest part to control. Being self-controlled in what we say is one of the most difficult of disciplines, but if we can get that right, well, it will lead to a kind of integration and wholeness in the rest of life. James says tongue control makes “a perfect man” (James 3:2). If you can keep control of your tongue, then you can take control of the whole body. You think you’ve got wandering eyes or violent hands? Remarkably, James is actually encouraging us to change the kinds of things going on inside us that lead to the words we speak, and then we’ll find the rest of our bodies falling in line behind. A very small thing controls a very big thing. James gives three illustrations: a tiny piece of equipment can guide the whole body of a mighty horse; a tiny rudder can guide a whole battleship; a tiny spark can set a great forest ablaze.
The Undivided Life
David Gibson
David Gibson’s expository study on the book of James analyzes its painful but essential message on double-mindedness, helping readers experience healing and wholeness in their relationship with God and others.
I think that James is also alerting us to how something so small in the body affects all the other ways in which the body works. We can see this by considering verbs from the rest of the Bible that make plain what the tongue can do. The tongue and its words can steal, conceal, store up, lift up, invite, cheer, crush, stir, spread, nourish, pierce, heal, endure, snare, satisfy, rebuke, harm, wound, hit, shoot, lie, flatter, boast, insult, divide, and slander. Just think of the extraordinary ways in which recipients of any of these actions from the tongue are affected by them. So, if you want to chart a path through life full of wholeness for you and for those you meet along the way, then the success of that journey is dependent on what you do with your tongue.
You possess a piece of flesh that is very small, but, out of all proportion to its size, its power is enormous.
The Tongue Is a Fire—It Can Destroy out of All Proportion to Its Size
“How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness” (James 3:5–6). You are sitting reading this article with a weapon of mass destruction in your body.
Notice the details. The tongue is “a world of unrighteousness.” This means that the tongue has its own ecosystem, which is devoted to everything that is wrong. It is the bodily representation of your inner dividedness. It is not just that the tongue is evil, but “it is a restless evil” (James 3:8). It can’t sit still or be quiet. The tongue simply can’t help itself, and inside it is poison. Like nicotine that stains the teeth, the tongue stains the whole body (James 3:6), and like venom in the nervous system, it permeates the whole body and can wound and maim as it shuts someone down, maybe irreversibly.
The tongue may be small, but just as a fire erupts from a spark, so the tongue can destroy out of all proportion to its size. It’s like bacteria, or the Ebola or COVID-19 viruses; its damage can just spread and spread, and it cannot be tamed. The picture is so comprehensive. Beast and bird, reptile and mammal, land and sea, you name them: someone somewhere has taught a cobra to swing to music, and a lion to let his tamer stick his head in his jaws, and killer whales to carry children, and raptors to land on your out- stretched hand. But no one, not even Solomon himself, not one single person, has ever learned how to get to the end of a single day and lay his head on his pillow without having reason to think: “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that earlier. I probably should have expressed myself differently.” No one dies without having thought that. Why not? Because you cannot tame the tongue.
I once saw someone split the top of her finger wide open with an axe. The pain and the damage were immense, and it was just her finger, a small part of the body. I’ve also seen people figuratively cut in two because of lies told about them. Reputations destroyed, careers ended, marriages traumatized because of untruthful words. I’ve watched whole churches engulfed in controversy because of one person’s uncontrolled tongue, and all the calming words in the world couldn’t seem to undo the angry words.
The imagery of taming here is so apt for the tongue because what is untamed is wild and dangerous and destructive. The tongue has the power to tear and pierce and paralyze and poison, like an axe separating a limb from the body, a sword separating flesh from the bone, or an intravenous drip of battery acid into the soul.
Think about some of the things we do with our tongues. Take gossip. It is an “acceptable” sin. James is dealing here with the effect of the tongue on the whole body and the way the tongue is motivated.
The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels;
they go down into the inner parts of the body. (Prov. 18:8)
That delicious little titbit of news that we just keep warm under the tongue for later. We love being in the know about something we don’t really have a right to know but which gives us power. Few feelings match that kind of delight. Gossip is essentially inappropriate reports given to inappropriate people at inappropriate times. What is being said may actually be true—in fact, it’s usually because we know it’s true that we want to share it or receive it. Sometimes, though, we know it’s not true. We spread rumors, a negative report about other people, or things based on uncertain evidence.
James says that, each and every time, the words that leave our mouths are setting things on fire.
Did you know that listening to gossip—not just speaking it—is a moral issue?
An evildoer listens to wicked lips,
and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue. (Prov. 17:4)
It has been put like this: “Perhaps you don’t have a problem with gossip yourself. But maybe you have that kind of welcoming face that attracts gossip to it.” Others usually know whether gossip will get much airtime with us or not. The Bible says that if you pay close attention to slander, it makes you a liar too. The tongue has power to dehumanize not just the speaker but also the listener.
All of this has a positive counterpart. For James is saying that you can change the world today.
Our words reveal our hearts. If the words aren’t fresh, then the heart is not healthy. Our speech is a window into our souls; it shines a light on what is going on beneath the surface.
I used to watch our children make objects out of modeling clay. With their fingers, they would mold a formless blob into different shapes. They would cut and stick and press, and something new was born. We do that to each other with our words. We each go through life with the capacity to be molded or misshapen by the words of others that land on our ears. All the time we are being pressed or pulled, and harmed or healed, because of the penetrating power of words.
It is possible for someone to reach the end of this day in a far worse condition because of the words you send that person’s way. It is also possible today to leave someone in significantly better shape because of something you might say to him or her.
The Tongue Is a Fountain—What It Produces Is in Perfect Harmony with Its Source
“With [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing” (James 3:9–10).
Morning worship for our Trinity Church family is usually over by 11:45 a.m. each Sunday. Most of us are back home an hour or so later. James knows that it’s perfectly possible within the space of that hour to disown the faith we have just confessed. Maybe it happens even quicker than that; maybe it takes a little longer. It is possible to open our mouths to bless God in the closing song, shut them, smile, and go on our way, but then open the same mouths to utter words that castigate and criticize and tear down. Have you ever done that? Would people be amazed at the Sunday-afternoon you compared with the Sunday-morning you?
Look at James’s logic. We’re capable of speaking well of God one minute, but then, the next minute, saying things that destroy the very worth and dignity of people made in God’s image.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but in one of the pandemic lockdowns the biggest argument between my wife and me occurred at home one Sunday during our online church service. Yes, during it—you read that right. Straight after saying the confession of sin together as a family, we actually started arguing over whether the person leading was saying the prayer too fast or too slow. Of course, we weren’t really arguing over that: something trivial ignited underlying tensions, and whoosh, out it all came. Right in front of our kids. It is so embarrassing to recall that morning, though it gave our children a lot of amusement when we both had to say “sorry” to them later on for what they had witnessed. It was truly awful. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing” (James 3:10).
As always, James’s words here cut so very deep. For he is not just saying that one mouth can produce two opposite sets of words; more than this, it’s that the two opposite kinds of speech reveal a corruption at the source. What comes out of our mouths is in perfect harmony with what lies beneath, at the bottom of the well. “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water” (James 3:11–12). Our words reveal our hearts. If the words aren’t fresh, then the heart is not healthy. Our speech is a window into our souls; it shines a light on what is going on beneath the surface.
Craig Troxel says that the eyes and ears are the gatekeepers of our hearts, and our tongues are our hearts’ ambassadors. What we have laid up in our hearts cannot stay in there. “All of it comes gushing out. Whatever is stored there, whether good treasure or bad, will be published by our mouth.”1 That is a powerful image: the tongue is the heart’s publisher. The Lord Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). What’s inside me cannot be kept inside me.
If I have a big heart, then you will hear patient words.
If I have a bruised heart, you’ll hear hurting and hurtful words.
If I have an empty heart, you’ll hear loud but hollow words.
If I have a wise heart, you will hear sound words.
James knows that if our hearts are divided, the words that come out are divided. A wonderful way to picture it (though not original to me) is like this: Your tongue is the hinge on which the door of your heart swings. When you speak, you open your heart wide to the world.
Don’t ever think that you’ve got “the real you” deep inside, somehow kept invisible and separate from all the words you are speaking. Who we are as people is much more visible to others than we may realize, and it is all displayed in the kinds of words we speak.
Notes:
- A. Craig Troxel, With All Your Heart: Orienting Your Mind, Desires, and Will toward Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 181.
This article is adapted from The Undivided Life: A Guide to Wholehearted Faith from the Book of James by David Gibson.
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