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5 Ways to Tame your Tongue

• By Kegan Mosier
• | Cornerstone Staff

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“The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use” -Washington Irving

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue” –Proverbs 18:21

TAME Your tongue – the Power of words

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” C.S. Lewis

Sticks and stones may break my bones,but words are powerful weapons that can inspire or destroy someone.I have been reflecting on this scripture from Proverbs 18:21 this week as it was used by our pastor on Sunday, and it has come up in several other places in my daily interactions; the Lord is always speaking, we just have to pay attention.

Last night, I saw the movie “Tomorrowland” with a group of friends. The movie was great and had a hope-focused message that I found very inspirational. One scene in particular really stuck with me. There is an interaction between father and daughter where the girl reminds her dad of a story he has told her her entire life. She says: “There are two wolves who are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. The question is… which wolf wins?” The father responds,“The one you feed.”This is an old Cherokee Parable that has been passed down, through story, for generations. The film resurrected this concept that I know I have heard in the past.

What does this have to do with my words?

We always have a choice when we speak. God has given us the incredible freedom tochoose our words.Some words bring darkness and despair, and are rooted in fear. Some words bring light and hope, and are rooted in love. We have words that are never released, and words that should never have been released. We have words that build up, and ones that tear down.

I believe that when we speak something out of a place of fear, fear is “manifested” into our environment–that is, fear is spoken into existence. The same goes with love, when we speak life and love… these things are made manifest. Scripture has a lot to say about our words!

“Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity” -Prov 21:23

“No human being can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty spring” -James 3:8-12

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit…For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” -Matt 12:33-34

“The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” -Prov 12:18

“Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips” -Psalm 141:3

I hope these scriptures are as convicting to you as they are for me! Conviction is a declaration of guilt for behaving in a way that doesn’t align with God’s commands. It is followed by immediate forgiveness, by way of receiving His grace, and then turned into action to prevent that behavior from being repeated in the future.

What about the James 3 scripture… it says that“No human being can tame the tongue?”What’s the point of trying if it can’t be done? Matthew 19:26 says that“Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”The way to tame your tongue is by partnering with the Holy Spirit; these problems cannot be solved or transformed by mere willpower.

I have personally been learning so much about this, even in the past 24 hours. I have felt conviction about my words and have been seeking the Lord about what to do in order to speak in a way that brings light and life. I want to starve the “dark wolf” and nourish the “wolf of light.” So how do I do this?

1. Dedicate your heart, mind, and tongue to the Lord, daily

Seek holistic purity. Pray that God would protect your mind from thoughts that lead to words of destruction. Offer all the words of the day ahead to Him with praise. Hebrews 13:5 says, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.” When we choose praise, we “sacrifice” slander, gossip, fear-based words, and the language of hell.  Luke 6:45 says that, “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of!” What are you filling your heart and mind with?

2. Pray that God would give you an awareness/consciousness of your words

Someone once said, “Taste your words before you spit them out!” Acknowledge your need for discernment and God’s grace to help you remain conscious of your words. Be intentional.

If you’re supposed to speak up, do it with boldness. If you are supposed to remain silent, do it with boldness.

Psalm 19:14- “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength.” Take responsibility for the words that come out of your mouth. 

3. Surrender up your “right” to complain

You and I are not entitled to the act of complaining, especially not in front of your friends, coworkers, and strangers. No one enjoys hearing it, and the people that seem to don’t have your best interests in mind. If people don’t engage you or agree with you when you complain about yourself and others, it is because you are making them uncomfortable.

My wife and I have safe space and time where we allow each other to “vent” and to process through difficulties of the day…but there is a “time-limit” that we put on this and we try to practice not “venting” in the presence of others. We vent, we pray, we change the subject. Sitting in negative words is suffocating and causes death to the environment that you’re in.

4. Ask for forgiveness for any unloving words or attitudes

“Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way” James 3:2. Spend some time with the Lord repenting and asking for forgiveness regarding language or words that you have spoken that are offensive. Commit to working on changing the way you speak in order to demonstrate His love to the world.

5. Practice speaking words that will encourage, comfort, edify, and inspire

Ask God to guide you to speak words that will honor Him and accomplish His purposes. The goal is to SPEAK LIFE. This means that you try practicing Ephesians 4:29 which says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

To encourage means to give support, confidence, or hope. To comfort means to soothe, console, or bring freedom from pain.  To edify means to cultivate, develop, and build up. And to inspire means to motivate, excite, energize, and to “breathe into.”

If you are reading this, you probably have the ability to speak or communicate. We are so incredibly blessed to be able to use our words to affect the world. How will you use that gift today? Which wolf will you feed?

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September 26, 2008

The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An Exposition of James 3:1–12

Desiring God 2008 National Conference

The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

• Message by Sinclair Ferguson
• Scripture: James 3:1–12    Topic: Speech

OUR FOCUS IN THIS STUDY is the teaching of James 3:1–12:

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 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. 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. 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! 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. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it 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. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 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 3:1–12 contains the single most sustained discussion in the New Testament on the use of the tongue. I take the author of this little book to have been James, the half-brother of our Lord Jesus. It is clear that he is steeped in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament Scriptures and also in the teaching of the Lord Jesus, to which his own teaching has many parallels. Both the book of Proverbs and our Lord Jesus spoke with searching clarity about the nature and use of the tongue. James walks in their footprints. Much of what he says is a powerful exposé of the sin and failure that mar our speech.

In this way James’s words exemplify the central purposes of the teaching and preaching of God’s Word. The resulting effect will be to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” (2 Timothy 4:2). But James’s message also exemplifies what Paul calls the profitability or usefulness of sacred Scripture: “teaching . . . correction . . . [child-]training.”

In a word, the immediate focus of James’s teaching — one might say the same of all apostolic teaching — is to bring Christian believers to maturity. Here, as well as in other places, he is completely in harmony with the way the apostle Paul employed all his God-given powers: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:28–29).

In fact, this is one of James’s burdens also. His five chapters constitute an extended piece of pastoral preaching, laced as it is with words of wisdom and warning. All along his goal is to lead his readers and hearers — men and women who were possibly once under his direct pastoral care but are now widely scattered — to full spiritual maturity, so that their whole being, without reservation, should be wholly Christ’s.

We find that this motif runs through the entire book. As we come upon it in chapter 3, he has already shown (1) how spiritual maturity develops through response to suffering, and (2) how spiritual maturity is enhanced by response to the Word. Now he goes on to show that (3) spiritual maturity is evidenced by the use of the tongue. The mastery of it is one of the clearest marks of a whole person, a true Christian. Tongue-mastery is the fruit of self-mastery.

We will examine this teaching in order to accomplish three goals: (1) to “walk” through James 3:1–12 in order to feel the weight of its appeal; (2) to set this teaching in context of the whole book of James to discover that it is, in effect, only the tip of the iceberg of what he has to say about our speech; (3) to place these words in the broader gospel context that lies behind the book of James.

James 3:1–12 and Its Teaching on the Tongue

As we make our way into James 3:1–12, we notice it has a variety of basic driving principles.

The Difficulty of Taming the Tongue

James issues a special word of wise counsel to those who aspire to be teachers: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (verse 1).

Why should this be? Teachers should be conscious of the weight and potential influence of what they say because words lie at the heart of the teaching ministry. To have an unreliable tongue is likely to pro- vide a destructive model for those who are taught. The potential for multiplication of influence requires a canon of judgment that takes the measure of both responsibility and opportunity into account.

But James does not write as one who has “arrived.” He is conscious of his own shortcomings: “For we all stumble in many ways” (verse 2). He has no false perfectionism. Perhaps he remembers how he misspoke about Jesus, demeaning him during the days of his ministry. Was James among those who said, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21)? Was this one reason why our Lord visited him, in particular (as he did Simon Peter), after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7)?

But James’s words are applicable far beyond those who are called to teach. We all use our tongues. If the mastery of the tongue is a sign of maturity, it is so for all Christians. So James 3:1–12 has general as well as specific application. How we use our tongues provides clear evidence of where we are spiritually.

“Spiritual maturity is evidenced by the use of the tongue… Tongue-mastery is the fruit of self-mastery.”

When I was a child, our family physician used to ask us to stick out our tongues. (That was the only circumstance in which I was ever permitted to do that!) He seemed to be able to tell a great deal about our health by looking into our mouths. That is a parable of spiritual reality. What comes out of our mouths is usually an accurate index of the health of our hearts. Jesus said: “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). So here, as a spiritual physician, James engages in a rigorous tongue analysis. James 3:1–12 is a veritable pathology laboratory in which analysis and diagnosis take place.

Notice James’s axiom: the mature person is able to “bridle” his tongue. The person who can do this is master of the whole body (note that some scholars take “body” here to refer to the church. For a judicious assessment, see Dan G. McCartney, James, BECNT [Baker Academic, 2009] on 3:1–12). The spiritual masters of the past understood this to have a double reference. The control of the tongue has both negative and positive aspects. It involves the ability to restrain the tongue in silence. But it also means being able to control it in gracious speech when that is required.

Sanctification in any area of our lives always expresses this double dimension — a putting off and a putting on, as it were. Speech and silence, appropriately expressed, are together the mark of the mature (compare with one of the clearest illustrations of this in Colossians 3:1–17). Nor is this James’s first reference to speech. He had already noted that for a professing Christian to fail to bridle the tongue is to be guilty of self-deception (1:22–25) and the hallmark of a person whose religion is worthless (1:26). One might think here of the ease of speech but emptiness of weighty words in the life of John Bunyan’s Mr. Talkative. He was all talk but no control, all words but without weight.

But with all of this said, James is forced into a confession. Nobody — Jesus excepted — has succeeded in mastering the tongue! Our only hope as we pursue the discipline of self that leads to mastery of the tongue is that we are Christ’s and that we are being made increasingly like him. But this battle for vocal holiness is a long-running one, and it needs to be waged incessantly, daily, hourly.

Are we fighting it? We must seek to do so for a very important reason.

The Disproportionate Power of the Tongue

In James 3:3–5, James uses two commonplace but very vivid illustrations. The tongue is like the bit in the mouth of a horse. This tiny appliance controls the enormous power and energy of the horse and is used to give it direction. James may well have been familiar with this picture from common experience in daily life. He had seen powerful Roman military horses and had probably heard stories of chariot races. The point, however, is the extraordinary power and influence concentrated in one small object. So it is with the tongue.

The tongue is also like the rudder in a boat. Large ships were not unknown in the ancient world. The ship that originally was to transport Paul across the Mediterranean en route to Rome held 276 people (Acts 27:37). We know that a large ship like the Isis could carry one thousand people. Yet such a capacious and heavy vessel was directed simply by a turn of the rudder!

So it is with the tongue. The tongue is small. But its power, both for good and for ill, is out of all proportion to its size. “A fool’s tongue,” Bruce Waltke wryly notes, “is long enough to cut his own throat” (Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, NICOT [Eerdmans, 2004], 102).

Why does James speak this way? Presumably out of both biblical knowledge and personal experience. The tongue carries into the world the breath that issues from the heart.

Alas, we do not realize how powerful for evil the tongue is because we are so accustomed to its polluting influence. En route to give this address, I rode the hotel elevator with several others. On one floor the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and a woman entered the confined space. The doors closed, and I suspect everyone in the elevator almost instantaneously had the same thought: “She has been smoking!” In this confined “smoke-free” environment her breath could not be disguised.

So, says Jesus, the tongue projects the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It is from within, “out of the heart,” that the mouth speaks (compare with Matthew 12:34; 15:18–19). But like the smoker, so accustomed to the odor, the atmosphere in which they live, the person with polluted speech has little or no sense of it — no sense that they exhale bad breath every time they speak.

Yet there is another side to this, a wonderfully encouraging side. Scripture teaches us that the breath by which we express our deepest desires, instincts, and opinions may produce helpful and pleasing fruit. Writes the wise man of Proverbs 15:4:

A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

So James sees that the tongue is an instrument of extraordinary power, out of all proportion to its size. Whatever its anatomical connections, its most significant connection is to the heart — whether hardened by sin or recreated by grace.

At this stage James is chiefly concerned that we should have a sense of the convicting power of his teaching. For this reason he began by addressing the difficulty of taming the tongue. It is a word spoken primarily to bring conviction of sin. For the tongue is difficult, indeed impossible, to tame naturally, because, as we have also seen, it exercises power out of all proportion to its size.

The Destruction Caused by the Tongue

Now, third, a series of vivid pictures flashes rapidly across James’s mind as he thinks about the power of the tongue.

A Fire (verse 6). A small fire can destroy an entire forest; all it takes is an uncontrolled spark. So it is with the tongue. A sharp word, a loose sentence, a callous aside can cause a conflagration that cannot be extinguished. Words can consume and destroy a life.

James is very specific about the energy source for such destruction. The tongue that sets on fire is set on fire itself by hell. James uses the biblical term Gehenna — the background reference being to the Valley of Hinnom on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. It served as the city dump — hence the reference to fire — which presumably constantly burned there to destroy garbage (Dr. McCartney reports that it continued to be thus used through 1996 and beyond).

“Vocal holiness” includes both gracious speech and silence.

Was this the place to which our Lord’s body would have been taken were it not for the thoughtfulness of Joseph of Arimathaea? If so, it is difficult not to share with James a sense of disgust. It is from such a hell that destructive words arise. Remember that imagery whenever similar words seek to force their way out of your mouth.

A World (verse 6). The tongue is “a world of unrighteousness.” I remember reading a picture quiz in an in-flight magazine many years ago. Various things photographed from unusual angles were presented, and the challenge was to guess what the objects actually were. One seemed to be a striking photograph of the moon with all its craters — a dark world of death. Turning to check the answers I was astonished to find it was in fact a photograph of a human tongue! How appropriate that, when photographically magnified, it would appear like an entire world of death and darkness, full of dangerous craters.

A Stain (verse 6). The tongue is “set among our members, staining the whole body.” How careful you are as you put on a dress for a wedding, especially if it is your own. How nervous about that new silk tie during dinner. The spot need only be a small one, but it ruins everything. So it is with the tongue and its words. No matter what graces you may have developed, if you have not gained tongue mas tery, you can besmirch them all by an unguarded and ill-disciplined comment. Graces are fragile; therefore guard your tongue lest it destroy them.

A Restless Evil (verse 8). The unregenerate tongue roams the wilds, quick to defend itself, swift to attack others, anxious to subdue them, always marked by evil. It mimics Satan in this respect, who, having rebelled against the God of peace, can never settle. He goes to and fro throughout the earth (as in Job 1:7; 2:2), like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). The tongue that is under his lordship always shares that tendency. It has an inbuilt need to guard its own territory, to destroy rivals to itself, to be the king of the beasts.

A Deadly Poison (verse 8). James shares the perspective of Paul and, in turn, of the psalmist. The “venom of asps” is under the lips of sinners, “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive” (Romans 3:13; Psalm 5:9). Whether suddenly or slowly, life is eaten away and destroyed. Perhaps here there is an echo of Genesis 3 and the deadly deceit of Eve by the serpent — with all its deadly and hellish consequences.

James, however unbelieving he might have been during Jesus’ early ministry, has clearly absorbed his half brother’s teaching and has been led by it to the multitude of Old Testament word pictures about the power and destructive ability of the tongue. If the pen is mightier than the sword, it is equally true that we can kill a man as easily with the words we use as with a physical weapon (Matthew 5:21–22).

Of course, all this is naturally true of the unregenerate man. The tragedy is — and it is this tragedy that surely concerns James here — that the same destructive powers may be released within the believing community.

I sometimes wonder if this is a distinctively evangelical sin. Of course it is by no means exclusively so. But how commonplace it seems to be to hear a fellow Christian’s name mentioned in some context or other, and the first words of response demean his reputation, belittle him, and distance him from acceptance into the fellowship, although this is a brother for whom Christ died!

The saintly Robert Murray M’Cheyne was surely nearer the mark when he resolved that when a fellow Christian’s name was mentioned in company, if he could not say anything good about him, he would refrain from all speech about him. Better that, surely, than to be careless with fire and “destroy a brother for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:15; 1 Corinthians 8:11).

The young Jonathan Edwards penned a number of his Resolutions around this theme. They are worth noting:

1. Resolved, Never to say anything at all against anybody, but when it is perfectly agreeable to the highest degree of Christian honor, and of love to mankind, agreeable to the lowest humility, and sense of my own faults and failings, and agreeable to the golden rule; often, when I have said anything against any one, to bring it to, and try it strictly by, the test of this Resolution.
2. Resolved, In narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple verity.
3. Resolved, Never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call to it.
4. Let there be something of benevolence in all that I speak. (Cited from Sereno E. Dwight’s Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1834 [reprinted by Banner of Truth, 1974], 1:xxi-xxii)

How easily the failure to master the tongue can destroy the effect of every grace that had taken years to build into our lives! Introduce poison here and we endanger everything.

A seminary colleague once told me how, because of flight delays, he arrived late and very weary at a hotel where he had booked a room. The young desk clerk could find no reservation under his name. My weary friend, who had had a miserable day, lost some self-control and started a small verbal blaze around the unfortunate employee, as if the problem were of the young man’s making.

“A fool’s tongue is long enough to cut his own throat.” –Bruce Waltke

Having found him a room the clerk invited him to fill in the guest form. My colleague included the name of the theological seminary at which we both taught. As the clerk looked at the form he gasped: “Are you from the Westminster Seminary?” he asked, and then said excitedly, “This is amazing. I have just recently become a Christian. I have heard about your seminary! How amazing, and marvelous to meet you! Wow, are you really from Westminster Seminary?”

The story could so easily have ended on a different note: a stain inflicted on a young man by a mature believer — a stain that might have proved impossible to wash out. We have all seen or caused moments like this. The tongue can be the most powerful, destructive member in the entire body.

In this connection it is salutary to remember the thrust of Paul’s most basic and powerful presentation of our need for the gospel. “Whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped” (Romans 3:19).

I still recall the shivers that went down my spine on first reading, in 1970, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s exposition of these words:

Paul now points out . . . that when you realize what the Law is truly saying to you the result is that “every mouth shall be stopped.” You are rendered speechless. You are not a Christian unless you have been made speechless! How do you know whether you are a Christian or not? It is that you “stop talking.” The trouble with the non-Christian is that he goes on talking. . . .

How do you know whether a man is a Christian? The answer is that his mouth is “shut.” I like this forthrightness of the Gospel. People need to have their mouths shut, “stopped.” . . . You do not begin to be a Christian until your mouth is shut, is stopped, and you are speechless and have nothing to say. (D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapters 3:20–4:25, Atonement and Justification, [Banner of Truth, 1970], 19)

There is a “something” — almost indefinable — about the person who has clearly been converted to Christ. Dr. Lloyd-Jones surely put his finger on the essence of it — the humbling of the proud, self-sufficient heart, the breaking of our native arrogance. Our tongues are so often the most obvious index of that ungodly drive at the center of our being.

But the slaying of inner pride and the illumination of our minds in regeneration create a new disposition and affection. The true convert will have a Jacob-like limp in his speech as well as in his walk — because in spiritual anatomy (as distinct from physical anatomy), the heart and the tongue are directly connected to each other. The subduing of the heart leads to the silencing of the tongue; humility within leads to humility expressed. Only when we have been thus silenced are we in any position to begin to speak. And when we do, by God’s grace, we speak as those who have first been silenced.

The Deadly Inconsistency That Plagues the Tongue

James is not yet finished with his devastating analysis of the tongue. He draws attention to a fourth characteristic as the analysis now rises to a crescendo of exposure:

No human being can tame the tongue. . . . With it 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. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 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 3:8–12)

I am reminded of the old cowboy-and-Indian movies my parents used to take me to when I was a child. There is only one line I recall an Indian ever speaking, but it was so frequently repeated it became engraved as one of my earliest memories of childhood: “White man speak with forked tongue.” It was meant as, and really was, a damning indictment.

James shared that perspective but brought to it a more profound analysis: “Forked tongue connected to forked heart.” Such speech is a mark of the “double-minded man” who is “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). It is not an amiable weakness. It expresses a damnable contradiction in our very being. It is an “ought not to be,” like a spring that spouts forth both fresh and salt water. It is more contradictory than anything we find in nature, like a fig tree bearing olives, a grapevine producing figs, a salt pond yielding fresh water.

Notice the power of James’s own words. Do not try to parry the blow. His words are intended to be a sharp two-edged sword “piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

We were created as the image of God to bless God. It is blatant hypocrisy, double-mindedness, and sin to bless God and then casually curse those who have been made as his very likeness. But the forked tongue of the double-minded person enslaves him or her. He or she thinks the unthinkable and speaks unspeakable contradictions. James is blood earnest as he rips up the consciences of his contemporary readers, many of whom were, perhaps, once members of his dear flock in Jerusalem before being scattered abroad.

If such words could be spoken to professing Christians serious enough in their faith to experience persecution and suffer privation in a world that was becoming increasingly inhospitable to the followers of the Way — how much more devastating are they when addressed to pampered, often self-indulgent professors of Christianity in the early twenty-first century?

But now that our consciences have been, to use Puritan language, “ripped up,” a question arises. Why does James apparently give no practical counsel about how we are to deal with the tongue? Are we left to go to the local Christian bookstore, or attend a seminar or conference, in order to know how to sanctify the use of the tongue? Why is there no practical counsel?

“Words can consume and destroy a life.”

But in fact there is — if we will only stay with James long enough to hear it. Indeed, whenever there is such analysis in the New Testament letters there is ordinarily practical counsel written into the teaching itself. True, it may not be immediately evident, but if we keep our minds and spirits in the passage long enough and learn to wait patiently on the Lord in his Word, it will become clear.

Even where there are no obvious imperatives to tell us what to do next, they are almost invariably implied in the text, woven as it were into its very warp and woof, underlining for us that it is by the Word itself and not by ourselves that we are sanctified. Did not James’s brother pray “sanctify them in [or by] the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17)? In order to help us to grasp how James does this, it will be helpful, further, to consider how this teaching fits in with the rest of the book.

James 3:1–12 in the Context of the Entire Book

We are told in the sacred record that when Job felt himself to be under special pressure in his sufferings (and, unknown to him, under the specific assault of the Devil to destroy his enjoyment of God) he made “a covenant with [his] eyes” in order thus to bind on his heart the pattern of holiness he needed to develop (see Job 31:1). Guarding the eyes implied guarding eyes in the heart as well as in the head.

Temptation, and therefore spiritual compromise, often find their easiest access route to the heart via the eyes. By the same token, sin may find its easiest exit route from our hearts via the mouth. The exhortation of Proverbs to “keep your heart with all vigilance” is immediately followed by an exhortation to “put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you” (Proverbs 4:23–24). Guarding the heart involves guarding the tongue. To apply Job’s principle to our present subject, we need to learn to say, “I will make a covenant with my tongue.”

Rather wonderfully, this is what James helps us to do throughout his letter. Perhaps, in the context of a book coming from a Desiring God conference, we may be permitted to take a leaf out of Jonathan Edwards’s Resolutions and express the burden of the practical exhortations implicit in James in a similar fashion.

Here, then, are twenty resolutions on the use of the tongue to which the letter’s teaching gives rise:

1) Resolved: To ask God for wisdom to speak and to do so with a single mind.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. . . . in faith with no doubting. . . . For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything . . . he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:5–8).

2) Resolved: To boast only in my exaltation in Christ or my humiliation in the world.

“Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away” (James 1:9–10).

3) Resolved: To set a watch over my mouth.

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13).

4) Resolved: To be constantly quick to hear, slow to speak.

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19).

5) Resolved: To learn the gospel way of speaking to the poor and the rich.

“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:1–4).

6) Resolved: To speak in the consciousness of the final judgment.

“So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty” (James 2:12).

7) Resolved: To never stand on anyone’s face with words that demean, despise, or cause despair.

“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15–16).

8) Resolved: To never claim a reality I do not experience.

“If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth” (James 3:14).

9) Resolved: To resist quarrelsome words as marks of a bad heart.

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (James 4:1).

10) Resolved: To never speak evil of another.

“Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge” (James 4:11).

11) Resolved: To never boast in what I will accomplish.

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:13).

12) Resolved: To always speak as one who is subject to the providences of God.

“Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15).

13) Resolved: To never grumble, knowing that the Judge is at the door.

“Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:9).

14) Resolved: To never allow anything but total integrity in my speech.

“But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation” (James 5:12).

15) Resolved: To speak to God in prayer whenever I suffer.

“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray” (James 5:13).

16) Resolved: To sing praises to God whenever I am cheerful.

“Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise” (James 5:13).

17) Resolved: To ask for the prayers of others when I am sick.

“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14).

18) Resolved: To confess it whenever I have failed.

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16).

19) Resolved: To pray for one another when I am together with others in need.

“Pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

20) Resolved: To speak words of restoration when I see another wander.

“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19–20).

Will we so resolve?

Finally, we turn to consider this passage in the context of the gospel.

James 3:1–12 in the Context of the Whole Gospel

When we take one step back from James 3:1–12 and read it in the context of the entire letter, we discover that James’s searing analysis is surrounded by the most practical counsel to enable us to master the tongue and to speak well for God.

When we take another step back and view his words through the wide-angle lens of the biblical gospel, we are able all the more clearly to understand and appreciate what James is “doing” when he speaks as he does.

As is well known, in his early days as a reformer, Martin Luther thought that James was “an epistle full of straw”:

In sum the gospel and the first epistle of St. John, St. Paul’s epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians; and St. Peter’s first epistle, are the books that show Christ to you. They teach everything you need to know for your salvation, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or hear any other teaching. In comparison with these, the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical. (From Luther’s 1522 preface [to the New Testament], cited from Martin Luther, Selections from his Writings, [Doubleday, 1962], 19. Later experience with antinomianism would clarify his thinking on the importance and value of James’s perspective.)

He would later think better of it. For the truth is that James’s teaching cannot be rightly interpreted without realizing that it is rooted in the teaching of and energized by the grace of “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (James 2:1).

As temptation often comes in via the eyes, sin easily exits through the mouth.

In that light we can discern a profoundly gospel-centered pattern in what James is seeking to accomplish as a pastor of the souls of his readers. His gospel method is in three steps.

1) Realize That the Depth of Your Sin, the Pollution of Your Heart, and Your Need of Saving Grace Are All Evidenced in Your Use of the Tongue

This is the method of grace from beginning to end. It is nowhere more starkly illustrated than in the experience of Isaiah. There is no more powerful passage in the Old Testament than Isaiah 6; but it is often read as if it were detached from Isaiah 1–5. By reading it in isolation we inevitably miss a very clear pattern into which it fits.

Isaiah has been ripping up the consciences of his sinful contemporaries. He does so in a series of six woe pronouncements (Isaiah 5:8, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22). God’s holy anger burns against them (5:25). Like a shepherd whistling for his dogs to come to tend the sheep, Yahweh will call on the nations to come as his servants, with arrows sharp as flint, with horses’ hoofs like flint, with roaring like a lion.

Darkness and distress will ensue — the terrible judgment of the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 5:26–30). But for the sensitive Bible reader the appearance of six woes creates an expectation that a climactic seventh woe is about to be pronounced. Against whom will Isaiah pronounce the ultimate woe?

The answer follows in chapter six. The prophet meets with the exalted God whose majestic presence seems to flood the temple. Isaiah sees creatures who are perfectly and perpetually holy cover their faces before the glory of the One who is eternally, infinitely, inherently, uncreatedly holy. Everything around Isaiah seems to be disintegrating. Everything within him seems to come apart. He is “lost,” or “ruined” (Isaiah 6:5).

The language expresses the stunned silence felt in the presence of major disaster or death (See, J.A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah [InterVarsity, 1993], 77). This is Isaiah’s “twin towers” day, the 9/11 moment in his spiritual experience. From his assumed security he had pronounced six devastating maledictions. Now he realizes that the last and climactic woe must be pronounced against — himself! And why? “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).

In whimsical moments I think I can see Isaiah as he staggers into the house of his friend Benjamin later that day, ashen faced, shaken to the roots by his experience. He blurts out fragmentary details of his vision of the Holy One of Israel (the title that hereafter will be his preferred way of describing the Lord). He has discovered he is a “man of unclean lips.”

I think I can hear dear Benjamin reply sympathetically — worried that his friend of many years is becoming unstable: “Not you, Isaiah; you are the last person of whom that is true. You are our most prominent and most eloquent preacher.”

I think I hear Isaiah say in response, “You do not understand. I have seen the King. I have felt the pollution on my tongue. The light has exposed the darkness in its every crevice. Alas for me, it is in the very instrument God has called me to use, in the very area of my life in which others call me ‘gifted,’ that sin has most deeply entangled itself. I am a wretched man! Woe, woe, woe is me!”

We foolishly assume that our real struggles with sin are in the areas where we are “weak.” We do not well understand the depth of sin until we realize that it has made its home far more subtly where we are “strong,” and in our gifts rather than in our weaknesses and inadequacies. It is in the very giftedness God has given that sin has been at its most perverse and subtle!

But when we are brought to see this, stripped bare of our layers of self-deceit, and led to repentance, then God may make something of us.

Many — although I do not number myself among them — seem to find speech easy. Recent generations have, after all, been educated to be able to speak, to contribute to discussion and debate, to express themselves by the spoken word rather than by writing (as was true of my generation — at least in my native land of Scotland).

It rarely seems to strike us that it is precisely here, therefore, in our speech, that sin is most likely to abound.

Only when we have been brought to such a recognition do we realize how dangerous and destructive our tongues have been. Only then do we cry out to God in repentance and run to him with tears to seek forgiveness in the gospel.

Then we need to grasp a second principle.

2) Recognize That You Are a New Creation in Christ

At the beginning of his argument, James had urged his hearers, “You need to recognize that you have become a new creation in Christ Jesus, indeed a kind of firstfruits of his creation” (compare with 1:18). I may not yet be that mature man I want to be. But thank God that I am not the old man that I once was!

What a great way to think about an ordinary Christian life! We live in a created order marred by sin. That sin has twisted and polluted our speech. But God has begun his work of new creation and has inaugurated aspects of it that will be consummated when Jesus Christ returns. Then in the “regeneration” of all things (Matthew 19:28 NASB) every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (The translation “the new world” (ESV) is a rendering of the Greek palingenesis, which elsewhere is translated “regeneration.” The present renewal of regeneration is best seen as a present participation in the final, cosmic transformation that will take place at the return of Christ.)

But notice carefully how God regenerates us: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creation.” Regeneration is a sovereign work of God, yes; but it does not ordinarily take place in a vacuum. Since it involves having our eyes opened to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3), God ordinarily regenerates us in the context of the truth of the gospel illuminating our minds. Truth in the mind forms truth in the heart, the very thing for which David prayed (Psalm 51:10), and which he realized would lead in turn to transformed speech:

     Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
     Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation,
          and my tongue will sing aloud of your  righteousness.
     O Lord, open my lips,
          and my mouth will declare your praise. (Psalm 51:13–15)

How important for us to recognize the power of new birth to create new affections, which in turn come to expression in the new speech patterns of the gospel!

3) Continue in the Word

The work of the Word inaugurates the Christian life, but it also sustains its progress. My tongue is ongoingly cleansed and transformed by (if I may so express it) what comes from God’s tongue. As the heart hears with open ears the Word of God again and again, it is renewed and begins to produce a transformed tongue. The principle is this: what comes out of our mouths is more and more determined by what has come out of “the mouth of God.” The sanctification of the tongue is a work in us that is driven by the Word of God coming to us as we hear it and indwelling us as we receive it.

This was the “secret” of the Lord Jesus’ own use of his tongue. Matthew sees our Lord Jesus as fulfilling the prophecy of the first of the Servant Songs in the second half of the prophecy of Isaiah:

He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench. (Matthew 12:19–20, quoting Isaiah 42:2–3)

If we ask how this was true in his life, the answer is found in the third Servant Song:

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. (Isaiah 50:4–6)

The most important single aid to my ability to use my tongue for the glory of Jesus is allowing the Word of God to dwell in me so richly that I cannot speak with any other accent. When I do, the result is “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing. . . . And . . . in word or deed, do[ing] everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father” (Colossians 3:16–17).

That, incidentally (although it is not an incidental matter) is why it is so important to be under a ministry of the Word where the Scriptures are expounded with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. It is by this means — yes, with private study — that the Word of God begins to do its own spiritual work in us. As words that have been formed in God’s mouth are digested as the bread of life by us, they begin to form our thinking, affections, and volitions in a wonderful way.

Sin often thrives in our strengths more than in our weaknesses.

Too many Christians fall into the trap of believing that God gives regeneration and justification, but then we are essentially left to our own efforts to do the rest. We need to see that we live by every word that comes out of God’s mouth. God’s Word sanctifies us. The more I awake in the morning and feed myself with the Scriptures and the more I am saturated with the Word under a biblical ministry, the more the word of Christ will do the sanctifying work in me and on me, and consequently the more Christ will train my tongue as his Word molds and shapes me.

Yes, there needs to be rigorous activity — but it is in order to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” It is a receptive activity! In this, as Isaiah’s song teaches us, our Savior is our Exemplar. But he is not only, nor is he first of all, an exemplar. To be that, he needed first to become our Savior. All this is part of the grand vision of Isaiah’s Servant Songs (so influential in Jesus’ own reception of God’s Word). The Father opened the ear of his Son; the Son was not rebellious. He was willing to be “oppressed and afflicted.” As he experienced this in his trial and condemnation, “he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

Why was Jesus silent? Is there more to this than meets the eyes? Indeed there is! He was silent because of every word that has proceeded from your lips; because of every word that provides adequate reason for God to damn you for all eternity, because you have cursed him or his image.

The Lord Jesus came into the world to bear the judgment of God against the sin of our tongues. When he stood before the high priest and the judgment seat of Pontius Pilate, he accepted a sentence of guilt. But that was my guilt. He bore in his body on the tree the sins of my lips and my tongue.

Do you wish you could control your tongue better? Do you want to follow the example of Jesus? Then you need to understand that he is Savior first, and then he is Example. You need to come, conscious of the sin of your lips, and say:

God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I thank you that Jesus came and was silent in order that he might bear the penalty of all my misuse of my tongue.

And when you know that he has taken God’s judgment and wrath against your every sinful word, you cannot but come to him and say:

“O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.”

He is able to answer that prayer, and its companion petition:

“Be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power.”

All the guilt can be cleansed away! Christ can deliver you from the misuse of the tongue. And when you come to him conscious of that sin, you discover what a glorious Savior he is. Delivered, albeit not yet perfected and glorified, your tongue now shows forth his praises. Taken out of the pit and from the miry clay, on your lips is now a new song of praise to your God. Then people not only hear a different vocabulary, but they hear you speak with a different accent. That is what leaves the lasting impression of the power of Christ and the transformation of grace in your life.

My native land is Scotland. I have the privileged status of being a resident alien in the United States. I carry a green card. But people often remind me, “You have an accent.” (That said, it is one of the wonderful things about the presence and work of Christ’s Spirit in preaching that, fifteen minutes into the exposition, it is possible that others cease to notice the accent and hear only his accent.)

Being “afflicted,” therefore, with an “accent,” brief elevator rides — and the usual brief conversations that ensue there often give me a certain mischievous pleasure. As the doors open at my floor and I step out, someone will occasionally call, “You have an accent. Where do you come from?” As I watch the doors begin to close, I say with a smile, “Columbia, South Carolina,” and watch the puzzled faces whose expression says, “Come on! You’re not from around here . . . are you?” That is surely a parable of what it is possible for the people of God to become in the way we use our tongues, as by God’s grace we learn to speak with a Jesus-like accent.

At the end of the day, it may not be so much what people say to you when you are in a room that is the really telling thing about your speech as a Christian. Rather it may be the questions people ask when you leave the room. “Where does he come from?” “Do you know where she belongs?”

Do you speak like someone who “sounds” a little like Jesus because, born broken in your consciousness of your sinful tongue, you have found pardon and renewal in Christ, and now his Word dwells richly in you?

At the end of the day, that is what spiritual maturity looks like — or better, sounds like — because of the transformation of our use of the tongue.

May that be true of us more and more!Sinclair Ferguson is a Ligonier teaching fellow and Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary.Series: The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

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Shedding Light on the New TestamentActs—Revelation

Ray L. Huntington, Frank F. Judd Jr., and David M. Whitchurch, Editors

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“The Tongue Is a Fire”: The Symbolic Language of James 3

Charles Swift

Though the scriptures contain the revealed word of God, they are not just containers of the word. They are revealers of it through the Holy Spirit. Thus one of the ways in which the scriptures unfold the Lord’s word is through literary qualities that are not on the page to make it more eloquent but to make it all the more meaningful. To study the literary qualities of the Bible does not require us to read it “in the same way that one would look at any other book” and treat it “as a product of the human mind.”[1] We can appreciate how our understanding of literary tools enhances how we receive the meaning of the Bible without discounting its inspired nature in the least. In fact, the writers of scripture often convey God-given doctrine through literary means. When we are willing to accept the text and the message as one, the words become richer and the meaning more powerful. If we apply this principle of scriptural scholarship to the third chapter of the Epistle of James, particularly as seen through the lens of the Restoration, we will find there is much more to what he had to say about how we can and must master our words.

This chapter of James is rife with symbols and metaphorical language. Often we may consider a symbol to be more or less decorative—the symbol is not what the writer intended to say, but it is simply a more attractive way of saying it than merely stating the facts. Such a view is shortsighted and misses the power of the symbol. The noted literary critic Northrop Frye wrote, “Originally, a symbol was a token or counter, like the stub of a theater ticket which is not the performance, but will take us to where the performance is. It still retains the sense of something that may be of limited interest or value in itself, but points in the direction of something that can be approached directly only with its help.”[2] A symbol is not just a prettier way of saying something; it can be essential to understanding. Symbolic language can convey meaning in ways that direct language cannot.

We know from latter-day scriptures the importance of what we say. The Lord cautions us not to use our tongues in sinful ways when He commands us to “not speak evil of [our] neighbor, nor do him any harm” (D&C 42:27). But He also encourages us to use our tongues for righteous purposes: “Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men” (D&C 11:21). Significantly, latter-day scripture gives a name for the devil that is very much centered around the image of the tongue: “And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice” (Moses 4:4; emphasis added; see also 2 Nephi 2:18; 9:9; Ether 8:25).

James’s use of symbols in chapter 3 teaches us doctrine in ways too powerful for direct, expository language. He takes advantage of symbolic language to convey the importance of self-discipline in what we say. In fact, the idea that his writing “touches on many of the standard elements in the discussion of human speech by Greek moralists”[3] supports the concept that James was aware of the power of the symbolic language he was using and chose to write in a way that his readers might be familiar with and perhaps find even more persuasive. Instead of instructing us to “be careful of what you say,” in just a few short verses he compares the tongue to eight different things: a bit in a horse’s mouth, a helm of a ship, a fire, a world of iniquity, an evil, a fountain, a fig tree, and a vine. The result is a host of doctrines, principles, and practices that can touch our hearts because of the symbolic language used.

A Little Member

James speaks of the tongue being “a little member” that “boasteth great things” and observes “how great a matter a little fire kindleth” (James 3:5). He uses the imagery of a bit in a horse’s mouth, a ship’s helm, and a fire to illustrate the concept of a small thing bringing about great consequences. Before discussing these three images, however, it is helpful to understand that James’s reference to the idea of small actions causing large results is a doctrine that is clearly taught in latter-day scripture.

Alma wrote that “ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise. And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls” (Alma 37:6–7). In these last days the Lord proclaimed that the “weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones . . . that the fulness of [His] gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world, and before kings and rulers” (D&C 1:19, 23). The Lord also counseled His followers to “be not weary in well-doing” since they were “laying the foundation of a great work,” keeping in mind that “out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (D&C 64: 33).

There is a doctrine of simplicity in latter-day scriptures, teaching us that small things matter. James’s discussion of the tongue and our need to master it rests to a large degree on this doctrine.

A Bit in a Horse’s Mouth

James writes that “if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body” (James 3:2–3; emphasis added). We are the rider of the horse, that part of ourselves that thinks and feels and thereby makes decisions. Our bodies that do and say things are represented by the horse. And our tongues are symbolized by the bits in the horses’ mouths—the little members that make so much difference. In fact, Elder Russell M. Nelson has stated that this idea, that a person who does not offend in word is a perfect man, constitutes “a practical standard by which mortal perfection could be measured.”[4] In the Bible, the horse is often associated with battle, and its characteristics of “aggressiveness and stubbornness” are sometime alluded to in the wisdom and prophetic literature of the Old Testament.[5] Likewise, it is a battle for us to control ourselves and what we say, and if we are to exercise self-discipline, we must learn to reign in our tendencies to be aggressive and stubborn. As Alma told his son, “See that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love” (Alma 38:12).

For James, the ability to control one’s words—in particular, to refrain from saying what should not be said because it is offensive—is a sign of ultimate self-discipline. If we can control our mouths, we can control our entire bodies. Just as we turn the horse’s body through careful use of the bit, we can control our bodies through careful use of our tongue. Obviously the image of controlling our bodies is not literal; we do not make our leg move by using our tongue to tell it to do so. To control our bodies means to control what they say and do and to control the passions, emotions, and decisions that lead us to speak and act as we do. The “whole body” refers to our “moral actions.”[6] Another interpretation of this image of the “whole body” is that it refers to a larger body, such as an organization. Since James is primarily concerned with teachers, we can learn from this verse how teachers have influence over the Church by their teachings or how leaders who are responsible for “the preaching may control the whole group of believers.”[7]

Modern-day prophets have also taught the importance and power of controlling what we say. Elder Dallin H. Oaks wrote: “Members of the Church, young or old, should never allow profane or vulgar words to pass their lips. The language we use projects the images of our hearts, and our hearts should be pure.”[8] There is a correlation between our words and our hearts; we cannot fool ourselves into believing that our hearts are pure when our language is not. Though intent is certainly important, it is not only intent that matters—it also matters what we actually say. Our words have power. “There is so much of argument in the homes of the people,” President Gordon B. Hinckley said. “It is so destructive. It is so corrosive. It leads only to bitterness, heartbreak, and tears. How well advised we would be, each of us, when there is tension, when there is friction, when there is affliction, to speak with consoling words in the spirit of meekness.”[9]

Latter-day scripture also teaches the truth of James’s words. King Benjamin taught in the Book of Mormon the necessity of being careful about the words we speak if we desire to not perish. “But this much I can tell you,” he said, “that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not” (Mosiah 4:30; emphasis added).

The Helm of a Ship

In his discussion of the tongue as a little member, James also utilizes the imagery of a ship’s helm. “Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth” (James 3:4). In this analogy, our minds can be seen as the governors (a more accurate translation from the Greek would be “helmsman” or “pilot”), our bodies as the ships, and our tongues as the helms.

This idea of seeing ourselves as ships is not simply a poetic way of talking about our need to control our tongue. The image of a journey is used in scripture as a symbol of our mortal journey towards the promised land of eternal life. For example, there are allusions to sailing by ship in Mormon’s commentary that “we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—and land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven” (Helaman 3:29–30; emphasis added). Along similar symbolic lines, the various journeys by boat in the Book of Mormon, such as when Lehi and his family crossed the ocean to their promised land (see 1 Nephi 18) and when the Jaredites crossed in unique ships to theirs (see Ether 6), can be seen as not only accounts of actual historical events but also as types of the voyage of mortality we must all take.

By contrast, we learn from the Book of Mormon what happens to a ship without a helm. Mormon teaches us that those who follow Satan are “as a vessel is tossed about upon the waves, without sail or anchor, or without anything wherewith to steer her” (Mormon 5:18; emphasis added). What is the fate of a ship without sail, anchor, or helm? Though it may have the appearance from a distance of complete freedom, there is no question that this ship will ultimately end in destruction. Such a vessel cannot be tossed about upon the waves for long without crashing against the rocks or taking on water and sinking. (The Jaredite barges were an exception. They made it to the promised land without sail, anchor, or helm because the Lord guided them through the winds and the waves to the promised land.) As the Prophet Joseph was inspired to write, “A very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves” (D&C 123:16).

In light of what we can learn from this symbolic language in the Book of Mormon, we can more fully appreciate what James has to teach about the tongue being the helm of our personal ship. This is not simply a matter of being careful of what we say, but what we say has much to do with how we fare on this mortal voyage. James is not writing of mere words, but of the power of what we say and its influence on our lives. How we use this power is not only a reflection of ourselves on an individual basis but also upon society in general. As Elder Oaks teaches, “The nature and extent of profanity and vulgarity in our society is a measure of its deterioration.”[10]

Another understanding of this ship imagery is achieved when considering the idea that “for the early Christians a vessel was a favorite symbol of the church. . . . The meaning of this passage becomes clear if it is recognized that the ship represents the church, and the rudder, which actually resembles a tongue, corresponds to the proclamation of the message within the congregation.”[11] Once again this works well with the two contexts of James’s chapter we have discussed: teachers in the Church and those seeking dominion. President Hinckley spoke of “the importance of keeping the doctrine of the Church pure, and seeing that it is taught in all of our meetings. . . . Small aberrations in doctrinal teaching can lead to large and evil falsehoods.”[12]

A Fire and a World of Iniquity

James writes about “how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell” (James 3:5–6). Perhaps it is helpful to read another translation of these same verses. “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (New International Version). The image of fire is an archetype—a symbol that is recurrent in a “wide variety of works of literature.”[13] Such symbols “are images of things common to all men, and therefore have a communicable power which is potentially unlimited.”[14]

Fire can serve as a positive archetype of illumination or purification and as a negative image of destruction and torture.[15] Latter-day scripture uses fire in each way. For example, the “brightness” of the “justice of God” is “like unto the brightness of a flaming fire, which ascendeth up unto God forever and ever, and hath no end” (1 Nephi 15:30). And frequently latter-day scriptures speak of the Holy Spirit in terms of fire (see for example, 2 Nephi 31:13–14, 17; D&C 19:31). However, the image of fire is also used in latter-day scriptures to indicate something negative, such as the eternal consequences of being wicked illustrated by the phrase “fire and brimstone” (see 2 Nephi 9:16, 26, 29; D&C 63:17), some expression of “unquenchable” and “everlasting” fire (see Mosiah 2:38; D&C 76:44), or the threat of being “cast into the fire” (see Alma 5:35, 56; D&C 97:7).

Though small, the tongue and its power for evil is so large that James calls it a “world of iniquity” that has power to change a person’s entire life for the worse. The fire of the tongue comes from hell, the dwelling place of the devil. As we take a closer look at James’s imagery in these verses of chapter three, we can gain a greater appreciation for what harm the tongue is capable of. The word “course” in verse six could also be translated as “wheel” and could “refer to any number of literally wheel-shaped things.”[16] One scholar understands this image to refer to the “‘wheel of being,’ which signifies existence. The strange expression calls to mind the cyclic theories of human existence commonly associated with Indian and other Oriental philosophies. But the author was probably more dependent on Stoic ideas concerning different aeons of the world and the destruction of the universe in fire. . . . Thus the tongue is regarded as the instrument by which the great world fire is kindled and spread.”[17] Whether James was inspired to write with imagery that was rooted in Stoic ideas is not the point here, nor does such a possibility lessen to any degree the role of inspiration in his writing. What it does indicate, however, is that James may have been using language in a literary way that would convey to readers, particularly of his day, the notion that the tongue is powerful enough to destroy the world itself.

An Evil

In leading up to his calling the tongue an “evil,” James draws on our feelings about and experiences with animals to help convey the difficulty involved in trying to tame our tongues. “For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:7–8). Like fire, animals as archetypes have both positive and negative connotations. Such images as a flock of sheep, a lamb, a dove, and any animal that is friendly to people make us feel good about the subject being written about, while images of beasts of prey, snakes, vultures, and any animal that is considered harmful to people bring up negative feelings.[18] Because James writes of how the animals he mentions are tamed, the images are more on the negative side of the archetypal interpretation because of the implication that the animals were wild in the first place and that people needed to gain some sort of control over them. By referring to such creatures as tamable and claiming that the tongue is not, James utilizes imagery that strengthens his argument. We can picture images of lions or snakes or whales and imagine how difficult it is to tame them, yet the author tells us it can be done. Unlike such wild creatures, however, the tongue cannot be tamed.

Though he implies that the tongue is another beast, he does not actually call it that in this passage. Instead, he gives it an unusual name by calling it an “unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” The image would be more straightforward if he were to call it an “unruly beast,” and there is certainly that implied meaning, but more important is the use of the word “evil.” Is the tongue simply an evil beast of some sort, one that is poisonous and therefore dangerous to humankind? Poison is certainly an archetype used throughout literature to convey negative meaning,[19] being undesirable and even dangerous. By not identifying which creature the tongue is being compared to, the image in our minds can be even more threatening, creating any kind of monster that we can think of that is both impossible to tame and dangerous—in fact, deadly. The image of an “unruly evil” intensifies, however, when we realize that it does not have to be any beast or fowl or serpent or fish at all. With this interpretation of the metaphor for the tongue, our imagination has no bounds. All we know is that the tongue is some sort of evil that is deadly. Whatever shape it may take in our minds, whatever characteristics it may manifest—even to the point of being invisible and unidentifiable, making it seem to be completely impossible to defend ourselves against—we know that there is nothing good about it and that it can kill us.

The image of deadly poison might be read as another example of hyperbole, but modern scripture helps us understand that it can also be taken quite literally. Poison is harmful for everyone—both the person who administers it and the one who might receive it. Similarly, harmful words can hurt not only those to whom they are directed but also the speaker as well. As President Hinckley has taught, “Foul talk defiles the man who speaks it.”[20] The tongue can kill us, especially if we think in terms of spiritual death. The Lord cautions us to beware how we take His name upon our lips (see D&C 63:61). Amalickiah used his tongue to “curse God, and also Moroni, swearing with an oath that he would drink his blood” (Alma 49:27). Those who joined secret combinations swore to keep their secrets, even “swearing by their everlasting Maker” (Helaman 1:11). Wicked Nephites cursed God and wished to die (see Mormon 2:14). In fact, the Lord warns the wicked that they “shall lift up their voices and curse God and die” (D&C 45:32).

A Fountain, Fig Tree, and Vine

James teaches us to avoid speaking evil, but only let good come from our mouths. We should not hypocritically bless God and then curse people—His children who were made in His image. “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Does a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh” (James 3:9–12).

“Fountain” as used in the Bible basically means a “source of water”; a number of Hebrew and Greek words that are often translated into “fountain” in English are also translated “well” or “spring.” “The word fountain, like well and especially spring, is associated with the general biblical image of water as life. Since the fountain more precisely indicates the source or origin of water, its figurative use often means source of life.”[21] As an archetype, the image of a fountain is usually considered to be positive, while negative images of water tend to be such things as the sea and “stagnant pools (including the Dead Sea and cisterns).”[22] One of the best examples of this potential for either a positive or negative meaning attached to the image of a fountain is found in the vision of the tree of life in the Book of Mormon. In that vision we find two different fountains.[23] On the negative side, Lehi sees that “many [people] were drowned in the depths of the fountain” (1 Nephi 8:32), and an angel explains to Nephi that the depths of “the fountain of filthy water” which Lehi saw, “even the river of which he spake,” represented “the depths of hell” (1 Nephi 12:16). Such filthy water as an archetype “traditionally belongs to a realm of existence below human life, the state of chaos or dissolution which follows ordinary death, or the reduction to the inorganic. Hence the soul frequently crosses water or sinks into it at death.”[24] However, on the positive side is a different fountain. Nephi understands that “the rod of iron . . . led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God” (1 Nephi 11:25). As an archetype, such water is symbolic of “purification, regeneration, and birth.”[25]

The image of the fountain can be found in a number of places in latter-day scripture. Nephi writes that when Lehi “saw that the waters of the river emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman, saying: O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!” (1 Nephi 2:9). Alma hides in a place called Mormon, in which there is “a fountain of pure water” and where he baptizes a number of people in “the waters of Mormon” (Mosiah 18:5, 8). The land of the Hill Cumorah is “a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains” (Mormon 6:4). And, most important, the Lord is referred to as “the fountain of all righteousness” (1 Nephi 2:9; Ether 8:26, 12:28).

Once again, James chooses an image with much more meaning than might first be considered. What we say is so connected to what life we live that we cannot say bad things and yet live a good life. Our tongue, like a fountain, can be seen as a source of life and a sign of what kind of life we live.

Both the fig tree and the vine are symbols “for God in covenant relation to his people.”[26] While James’s analogy certainly works on a literal level (fig trees do not produce olives and neither do vines bring forth figs), the analogies convey the deeper message through their symbolic meaning: just as God in His covenant relationship with His people does not bring forth anything that is evil, so should we, as the covenant people, not bring forth evil in what we say.

Of course, if we are to look at what James writes in a very literal fashion, we can say both good things and evil—James himself admits this in the tenth verse. He does not say that this cannot be, but that it ought not be. By using images that are impossible—a fig tree bearing olives, a vine bearing figs, and a fountain yielding both salt and fresh water—James strengthens his message about how our language should be. Disciples of Christ ought to be so committed to the Lord and His teachings that to speak in ways that are out of harmony with those teachings should be like things that are impossible. In fact, while it is possible for a man to speak both “blessing and cursing,” it is not possible for a disciple to do so. To speak such cursing is to no longer be a disciple in the fullest meaning of the word. We can turn to latter-day scripture for a clear interpretation of the imagery of the fountain: “For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a man being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ; and if he follow Christ he cannot be a servant of the devil” (Moroni 7:11).

Conclusion

Latter-day scriptures and teachings help us better understand James’s wise counsel concerning how we should speak as disciples of Christ. This latter-day knowledge, combined with a careful study and appreciation for the power of symbolic language, deepens our comprehension of these great words that can guide us away from the potential harm of that fire that is the tongue.

Notes

[1] John B. Gabel, Charles B. Wheeler, and Anthony D. York, The Bible as Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.

[2] Northrop Frye, Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), 109.

[3] James L. Mays, ed., Harper’s Bible Commentary (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988), 1275.

[4] Russell M. Nelson, “Perfection Pending,” Ensign, November 1995, 86.

[5] Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 400–401.

[6] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 256–57.

[7] Bo Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 37.

[8] Dallin H. Oaks, “Reverent and Clean,” Ensign, May 1986, 51; emphasis added.

[9] Gordon B. Hinckley, “‘If Thou Art Faithful’,” Ensign, November 1984, 91; emphasis added.

[10] Oaks, “Reverent and Clean,” 49.

[11] Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, 37–38.

[12] Gordon B. Hinckley, General Authority Training Meeting, October 1, 1996; quoted in Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 620

[13] M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 9th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009), 15.

[14] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 118.

[15] Leland Ryken, Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2000), 27–28.

[16] Johnson, The Letter of James, 260.

[17] Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, 38.

[18] Ryken, Words of Delight, 26, 27.

[19] Ryken, Words of Delight, 28.

[20] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Take Not the Name of God in Vain,” Ensign, November 1987, 47.

[21] Ryken, Wilhoit, and Longman, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 307.

[22] Ryken, Words of Delight, 26, 27.

[23] C. Wilfred Griggs, “The Book of Mormon as an Ancient Book,” in Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1982), 93.

[24] Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 146.

[25] Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs, and Their Meaning (London: Leonard Hill, 1960), 291.

[26] Ryken, Wilhoit, and Longman, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 283.

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