The tongue
3
📚My brethren, let not many of you be teachers, knowing that we teachers 📖 will receive more severe judgment. 2 📚For all of us go wrong in many ways. If anyone does not go wrong 📖 in what he says 📖, that person is a complete man, able also to control the whole body.3 📚See, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, so that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. 4 📚See also the ships. Though they are so large, and are driven by fierce winds, yet they are turned about with a very small rudder, wherever the pilot desires. 5 📚Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things. See, what a great forest is set on fire by such a little flame!
3:3-5 The point is that small things can have great effects. The tongue has more power for good or ill than any other part of the body. It has amazing power. It can build or tear down, create or destroy. It can be a tree of life (Prov 15:4; 18:21), or the fang of a snake (Ps 140:3). It can be a murdering sword (Ps 57:4), or a healing medicine (Prov 12:18). It can promote trouble and evil (Ps 10:7), or justice and righteousness (Ps 37:30; 51:14).⚜
6 📚And the tongue is a flame 📖, a world of evil. Among our members the tongue is such that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.
3:6 James is speaking of the untamed tongue, the tongue as it is by nature. And by “tongue”, of course, he means the power to speak, to communicate what is in the mind and heart.⚜
7 All kinds of beasts and birds, and serpents, and creatures in the sea, are being tamed, and have been tamed, by man. 8 📚But the tongue no one can tame. It is an unruly 📖 evil, full of deadly poison 📖.
3:7-8 Has there been a single person in the whole of human history (apart from Christ) who always controlled his own tongue completely? Abraham did not – Gen 12:11-20; 20:2-9; 17:17-18. Moses did not – Num 20:10-12; Ps 106:33. Peter did not – Matt 26:69-74. Paul did not – Acts 23:2-5. James confesses he did not. This is not to say we should not try to control our tongues. We must. Far better to have some control over it than to have none at all (Ps 141:3; Prov 10:19; 11:12; 21:23). The best of all is to have our hearts and minds filled with God’s Word and then our tongues will speak good things – Matt 12:34-37; Col 3:16. Though alone we cannot control our tongues, God and His Word can.⚜
9 📚With it we praise God, the Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God 📖. 10 📚Out of the same mouth proceeds praising and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
3:9-10 This should not be so, need not be so, but often it is so. Some men are like saints in public, but like demons at home or in private.⚜
11 Does a spring send forth from the same place sweet and bitter water? 12 📚Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olives? Or a vine, figs? In the same way no spring can give both salt water and fresh.
3:11-12 In all creation it seems only man’s tongue has a double source and a double channel.⚜
Two kinds of wisdom
13 📚Who is a wise man and has understanding among you? Let him show it by good behaviour, by his deeds with the meekness produced by wisdom.
3:13 Only the good are wise. An evil man is a fool no matter how much intellect he has. Humility is one of the fruits of true wisdom. Those who have the wisdom that comes from God will not exalt themselves, will never think that they themselves are God or any similar wicked nonsense (Ps 14:1; 111:10; Prov 3:7; 8:1-8).⚜
14 📚But if you have bitter envy 📖 and strife in your hearts, do not boast 📖, and do not deny the truth. 15 📚This wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
3:15 Do many religious people (including some professing Christians) have the devil’s wisdom, and not God’s? Their actions, aims and ambitions lead us to think so. A lack of meekness, a spirit of envy and strife, boasting, denying truth – these do not reveal the wisdom God gives.⚜
16 📚For where envy and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work.
3:16 See the result of Satan’s wisdom working in the minds of men.⚜
17 📚But the wisdom that is from above 📖 is first pure 📖, then peaceable, gentle, readily obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18 📚And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
3:13-18 There are two kinds of wisdom in the world. One comes from Satan (v 15), and the other comes from God (v 17). The results which flow from the one are very different indeed from the results which flow from the other. We can tell whether a person is really wise by what we see in his life. No one has the wisdom which comes from God who is evil or proud or envious or selfish or worldly-minded or unspiritual. Such people may gain a reputation for wisdom with men. They may think they are wise. They may be very intellectual, very bright, very clever. But God sees where their so-called wisdom comes from. For another comparison between these two kinds of wisdom see 1 Cor 1:17—2:16.⚜
3:18 Righteousness grows when there are right relationships between God and men, and between men and men. Peace and righteousness go together and both flow from God’s wisdom – Ps 85:10; Prov 3:17; Isa 32:17. Therefore, with all our getting, let us get wisdom (Prov 2:3-6).⚜