James 3:1-12
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. 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.
All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
Years ago a man came to see me in my office. As I recall he was having trouble in his marriage and as we began to unpack his story he began to talk about growing up with a very demanding and critical father. He said he excelled in school and in sports but his father routinely said he was worthless and good for nothing, and that he would never amount to anything in life. The man went on to tell me that although he had become a nuclear engineer with a measured I.Q. of over 175 and could read 1,000 pages of technical material a day, he still felt worthless in the eyes of his own father.
James has compared the power of the tongue to the power of a bit to control a horse; the power of a rudder to control a ship; and the power of a spark to ignite a blaze. Now he compares the negative power of the tongue to “deadly poison.”
All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
Here James is making a veiled reference to Satan himself. In referring to a tongue that is poisonous, or venomous, he is making a natural connection to a snake or a serpent, and it was in the form of a serpent that Satan approaches Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). The tongue that is poisonous is the tongue that deceives; the tongue that lies; the tongue that slanders; the tongue that destroys and kills.
Almost whenever I think of poison I think of a scene in the goofy movie, “The Princess Bride.” The hero, Westley, describes “Iocane powder” as “odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.”
I’m pretty sure that nuclear engineer’s father didn’t think of his words as being “one of the more deadly poisons known to man” – but they were. His words spoken in anger, frustration and bitterness were like venom injected directly into his son’s mind and heart. There the toxins did their deadly work, eating away at esteem, corroding self-confidence, and corrupting both the joy of being loved in the present and the hope of being loved in the future.
Poisonous. Toxic. Deadly.
One of the great blessings of my life, a blessing of which I am most often quite unaware, is that I didn’t live a single day of my life without knowing I was loved and that God had wonderful things in mind for my life. My parents made absolutely sure that my brothers and I grew up knowing those things.
But not everyone shares that blessing. I have heard way too many stories from people who, like that man in my office long ago, were subjected to poisonous words and toxic emotions very early in life and have struggled, by God’s grace, to experience his unconditional love and affection.
It’s difficult to know what specific issue James was reacting to when he wrote these words. Maybe he was thinking about the way some parents spoke to their children; maybe he was reacting to how people in the church talked about those outside the church; or maybe he was thinking about how some Christians talked about each other. Whatever the case, he was warning us that the words we speak not only have power, but can be deadly as well.
Brian Coffey
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