James 3:1-12 | Taming the Tongue
1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 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. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.
How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
This is God’s word.
INTRODUCTION
Here’s a problem we all face: we talk a lot. We never shut up. If you have young kids, you know this without me even proving it. But let me try to prove it anyway. Some research reports the average American speaks 700 times a day. 700! Even if we think that’s way too high, let’s just say it’s 100. What else do you do 100 times a day? Other research says we spend about one-fifth of our life talking. If we wrote down all your words just from today, it would be about a 50-page book. Just one day!
No wonder the Word of God has something to say about our words. Our passage today isn’t the first time James mentions the subject. In 1:19, he exhorted us to be slow to speak. In 1:26, he said our use of the tongue is one indicator of true religion. In chapter 2, it’s our tongue that reveals our partiality and proclaims our faith. James isn’t done talking about our talking either. He’ll bring it up again, as we will see in the weeks to come.
All this shows that God cares a lot about how we speak. The Bible tells us God is a speaking God. Unlike idols, God opens his mouth. One of the names of Jesus is literally “The Word of God.” Hebrews says he upholds the universe by his powerful word. God spoke the world into existence. God created us in his image with his words, and part of that image is the ability to communicate through speech. So it makes sense that God would care deeply about how we use our words in his world. Words have immense power. We can use words to create a culture of safety and trust and love, to nurture and build a radiant culture, or we can use words to burn it all down.
One of the greatest tragedies is how we abuse our tongues. In the fall, Adam blamed Eve (Gen. 3:12). The Psalms refer to those whose throat is an open grave, whose tongues deceive, and whose mouths are full of curses and bitterness (Ps. 5:9, 10:7, 140:3; Rom. 3:13-14). Isaiah sensed the weight of words when he saw a vision of God’s throne room and responded with woe over his unclean lips (Is. 6:5). Proverbs 18:21 tells us death and life are in the power of the tongue and Proverbs 12:18 says words are like sword thrusts. Jesus says in Matthew 12:36 that we will give account for every careless word. Our tongue is one of the most important things about us.
You know the saying, “Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I have no idea who came up with that. It’s simply not true at all. No one stays in a hospital with a broken bone forever, but the couches of counselors are dented by those who sit week after week searching for healing from harmful words. Some of the things you hate about yourself most are things others have said to you, probably when you were young and didn’t know how to handle them. Words can damage the soul. Or how about this saying, “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” Another lie. Words don’t only stick to us, they bury themselves deep in our hearts. Commentator Derek Kidner wrote, “What is done to you is of little account beside what is done in you.” Words go deep, and they shape our lives.
Our speaking God wants us to understand the proper use of the tongue he gave us. This passage is his gracious gift to us, to help us build the gospel culture he wants us to have here at Refuge, where we take seriously the way we speak, with awareness that our words deeply matter.
We’re going to see three things God wants us to understand about our tongues:
The Tongue is Powerful (1-5a)
The Tongue is Dangerous (5b-6)
The Tongue is Untamable (7-12)
THE TONGUE IS POWERFUL (1-5a)
One way to think of the book of James is as the Proverbs of the New Testament. It’s filled with wisdom. There are about 90 proverbs about speech, which is more than it says about money or sex or family or anything else. Isn’t that fascinating? Apparently to live wisely and well requires we learn a lot about the power of the tongue, more so than the power of any other bodily desire or function. When Paul said to glorify God in your bodies, James says that starts with your tongue [1].
It gets uncomfortable right from the start for me. In verse 1, James directs attention to those who teach. So here I am, standing in front of you to teach, and by reading this passage I’m inviting judgment on myself. Teachers must be careful with their words. Because they say more and talk to more people, it’s vital they use thoughtful and intentional words, with life and conviction and purpose. By nature of the position, teachers hold a lot of power to do a lot of good or a lot of bad. And while James is primarily talking about those who teach in the church, we can expand that even to our parenting. We parents teach all the time, don’t we? We must be careful when doing so. Our words hold immense weight. How we use them shapes our children. We can build up or tear down, announce forgiveness or bring condemnation, proclaim the gospel that saves or the law that kills. God is listening.
But you don’t have to be a teacher to fall into sins of speech. James opens is up in verse 2, saying we all stumble with our tongue. No one is exempt, teacher or not. James says, “If anyone doesn’t stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” So let me ask: do we have any perfect people among us today? Is there anyone who is so in control of their tongue that they have no regrets, have caused no past wounds, have no words they want to take back? We all stumble, don’t we? As one teacher (Rabbi Joseph Telushkin) put it, “If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without drinking liquor, you are addicted to alcohol. If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without smoking, you are addicted to nicotine. Similarly, if you cannot go for twenty-four hours without saying unkind words about others, then you have lost control over your tongue.”
The problem with an uncontrolled tongue is the immense power it holds. It has the ability to move our entire lives in one direction or another. James uses some illustrations to help us get the point. The tongue is really small but incredibly powerful. A bit in a horse’s mouth moves the massive animal wherever it wills. A rudder on a ship beats out the winds and waves. Likewise, the tongue is small, but it boasts of great things.
One commentator refers to the tongue as the master key of our bodies. It determines everything else, moving us either positively or negatively. Our tongue takes us places. But, of course, the tongue is only as good as the heart guiding it, just as the bit in a horse’s mouth is only as good as the rider, and the rudder on the ship is only as good as the pilot. In other words, when we talk about the tongue, we’re really talking about the heart. James does this a lot. He points to outward actions as revelations of inward reality. Who we are is what we say. We never truly speak out of character, we only reveal our true character. Our words show our cards. We might not say all we really think but, what we say, we really think. We can never truly say, “I didn’t mean it.” We always mean it, and usually, we mean much more than we actually say. Jesus said that out of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). That’s enough to condemn us all, isn’t it? That’s why though the tongue is small and maybe we’re small too, the weakest among us can still cause devastating harm. We’re all like Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility.
So that’s the first thing James wants us to understand: the power of the tongue. Next, he wants us to see the danger of that power.
THE TONGUE IS DANGEROUS (5b-6)
A friend once heard about a woman in LA who took her own life. Her suicide note read only this: “They said.” Don’t you feel the weight of that? Isn’t so much of our life determined by “They said”? Perhaps worse still, we have contributed to the “They said” moments of others.
No wonder James says in verse 5, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.” No wonder Proverbs 18:21 says, “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” The tongue can kill. All it takes is a spark: one bit of gossip, one explosion of anger, one biting remark, one lie, one word. A small fire sets a forest ablaze.
Our words don’t even have to be intentionally murderous to do great harm. All it takes is a little carelessness. Not too long ago, there was a wildfire raging through Southern California that burned 22,000 acres, eating up homes and businesses. How did it start? From a smoke bomb used in a gender reveal party. The party was held on September 5th. The flames were finally extinguished on November 16th.
Closer to home, maybe you remember the videos of the wildfire in Gatlinburg not long ago. I remember people driving down the mountain with fire raging on both sides of the street. It looked like hell. It was the deadliest wildfire in the state in 100 years. How did it start? Two kids were playing with matches on the Chimney Tops Trail. The fire killed 14 people and destroyed 2,400 buildings. Our words can be like that.
No wonder James says, “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.” The tongue holds continents of bad things. John Calvin said the tongue is “a slender portion of flesh [that] contains the whole world of iniquity.” Just take the Ten Commandments, for example, and see how we break them with our tongues. We worship other gods, we praise idols, we take the Lord’s name in vain, we profane the sabbath, we verbally dishonor our mother and father, we murder through angry speech, we commit adultery through lustful words, we steal the truth by our lies, we complain about things we don’t have but others do. That’s the character of our tongue.
The tongue also has immense influence not only communally but personally as well. Look at verse 6, “Staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life.” James said earlier that pure religion is unstained from the world, but the tongue pollutes the rest of our bodies, affecting the whole of our life, from beginning to end, and everything in between. So not only is the tongue a fire that sets ablaze the forest of others, it sets ablaze our own. How many times has our stupid mouth gotten us in trouble? Our tongues reveal how weak our flesh truly is.
But worse still, there is something underneath it all playing with our weakness of flesh. Maybe we think, like Billy Joel, that we didn’t start the fire. But someone did. Who? James tells us at the end of verse 6. It is set on fire by hell. The word he uses is Gehenna. The only other use of the word in the New Testament is from Jesus when he described the place of ultimate judgment and condemnation where Satan lives. Do you see what James is saying? He’s saying no less than Satan himself works with the evil of our tongues. He lit the fire. He is the Father of lies. He is walking to and fro with his torch of mischief, lighting our tongues like wicks of a bomb, watching and enjoying the explosions that result.
In our sinfulness, we comply all too easily. The tongue houses a universe of potential evil greater than Darth Vader and his stormtroopers, where planets of sin dance around the fires of hell, and sparks of lies and gossip and all kinds of unrighteousness burn down people and houses and companies and countries and churches. The tongue is a dangerous weapon, and we must know the power each one of us has that can be so easily used for evil. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words pierce the soul. Words stick like glue.
Unfortunately, the news doesn’t get much better yet. Not only is the tongue powerful and dangerous, but it is also untamable.
THE TONGUE IS UNTAMABLE (7-12)
Think back to the illustrations James used of a horse and a bit. A horse is wild and majestic, but it is tamable with a bit in its mouth. In fact, James says in verse 7, every kind of beast and bird and reptile and sea creature can be tamed. Siegfried and Roy tamed tigers (kind of). Eagles are trained to fly into a stadium on command during the National Anthem. Snake charmers tame aggressive and venomous snakes. Have you ever seen what they can do with sea lions or seals or dolphins? It’s amazing. Humans have the extraordinary ability to train and tame even the wildest of animals. I heard a story the other day from Buck Showalter, now the manager of the New York Mets, who said one of his teams once brought monkeys in from the zoo to throw batting practice!
Mankind can tame any kind of animal. But in verse 8 James says there is one thing no human being can tame: our tongue. Isn’t that an amazing statement? How can that be? Didn’t our mama raise us right? We say please and thank you. We have manners. But we cannot get out from under the gaze of Scripture. God knows us better than we know ourselves. We cannot tame the tongue. We can cage it a bit. But we can’t tame it. We can teach it some tricks, but we can’t take the wildness out. We can defang it, but we can’t remove the venom. “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” James says.
Bible translator J.B. Phillips shows the word restless in verse 8 means “always liable to break out.” It’s in there, just biding its time until all hell breaks loose. One bad look from someone. One piece of gossip we can’t keep in. One tirade played out in a bit of weary frustration. One thoughtless word slipping through the filter. A single word and the fire rages, the lion is loose and hungry, the snake slithers into the garden with the lie, and the dragon opens its mouth to devour. It’s a restless evil. What we can do with wild beasts we cannot do with the little bitty tongue in our own mouth. We can’t tame it.
There’s a further problem. The same tongue with which we use bless our Lord and Father we can also use to curse people made in his image. “These things ought not to be so,” James says in verse 10. This is hypocrisy. Those who come on Sunday and sing praise to God then go out to lunch and share the latest gossip. Those who say their morning prayers and then go into their work with an agenda to get ahead by putting others down. Those who have their quiet time with the Lord and then hop on social media to like the post from the guys on “their side.” Blessing and cursing, all with the same tongue.
James asks how this can be. Look at the natural world. Can two different things come from the same source? Look at verses 11 and 12. A spring can’t produce both fresh water and saltwater. A fig tree only produces figs. An olive tree only produces olives. A grapevine only produces grapes. James is taking us back to a theme of his. He talks a lot about being double-minded. The spiritual person is single-minded. They do not bless God and curse his image-bearers at the same time. It should not be possible to bless God and curse his image-bearers with the same tongue. That is an anti-Christian thing. It is an evil thing. As it praises God it curses him for his people. How can that be?
And that’s all James says here. No follow-up with “Seven Ways to Tame Your Tongue.” Just the tension of needing to tame it and the inability to do so. The logic that two different things can’t come from the same source, but the reality that with us, that happens too often.
So we’re stuck with this great need to tame the tongue because it is our duty to do so as followers of Jesus. But at the same time, James says it’s impossible for us to tame it. We must tame it, but we can’t tame it.
CONCLUSION
So, to conclude, what do we do with this? How do we resolve the tension?
Look again at verse 8. James says no human being can tame the tongue. But he doesn’t say no one can. You can’t tame your tongue, but the one who made it can. My third point is only right from a certain perspective. The tongue isn’t ultimately untamable. It’s just untamable by us. We can’t tame the tongue, but Jesus can.
After all, it was Jesus who told us in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” He didn’t say the flesh is some help. He said it is no help at all. We cannot rely on ourselves. If we need living water, we need Jesus to provide it. If we need pure fruit, we need Jesus to grow it. If we need control of the tongue, we need Jesus to tame it. He is our only hope because the only way to transform the tongue is to change the heart, and the only one who can change the heart is the one who made it.
We cannot hope for self-improvement. We cannot act our way out of this. But the same tongue that we misuse, we can also use to repent. We can turn to Jesus with the empty hands of faith and trust him for help.
Why can we trust him? Because on the cross, Jesus did more than die a painful death. He died as a guilty man for sin he never committed. Jesus never said a wrong word to anyone. He was the only human to ever tame his tongue. But on the cross, he took upon himself all our wrong words as if they were his wrong words. He put himself in our place under the wrath of God.
And God accepted Jesus’s sacrifice. Because of the cross of Christ, God does not look down on us now and think, “You failures. You just can’t shut up, can you? You can’t figure out how to tame that little bitty tongue in your mouth. Well, this is the last you’ll hear from me.” God does not cut us out of his conversation. He still talks to us because on the cross he stopped talking to his Son.
We’ve said a lot of bad and wrong things, but Jesus spoke a better word by his blood. He took our words and gave back his Father’s. Our words condemn, but his word proclaims, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Jesus covered the cost of every wrong word we’ve ever said or will ever say. Every bit of gossip, every put-down, every curse, every lie, every complaint, every angry word. Every sinful thing we’ve ever uttered out of the darkness of our fallen heart stuck to Jesus like glue on the cross, and he died for those sins—our sins.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead. The Word of God rose again and conquered Satan’s torch that sets our tongues on fire. We have a new speechwriter now. We have fire from heaven. All he’s asking us to do is give ourselves over to him, to turn to him in repentance and faith, to let him renew us deep within.
If we just keep listening to the Word of God and his gospel, he will keep renewing our hearts and his word will go deeper and deeper into us. And like a spring of living waters bursting forth, our powerful tongue can be used by God’s grace to bring life instead of death, hope instead of despair, the beauty of heaven instead of the fire of hell. Jesus can change our hearts and tame our tongues, and all we need to do is ask him. We can ask him to not let anything come out of our mouths that isn’t of him. We can ask him that as we drive to work tomorrow morning, as we pick up the kids from school tomorrow afternoon, and as we come to church next week. As we go about our days, we can give ourselves fully to Jesus and let his words be ours. If we do that simple and humble thing, Jesus can use us to bring shalom to this broken and tired and hurting world. Will we let him?
Let’s pray.
[1] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works, ed. R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 132.
