In the town where I grew up there was a woman named Juanita, who owned a restaurant and hotel. Juanita had a very unsavory reputation: she was widely rumored to be in charge of a prostitution ring; when her hotel burned to the ground in the late-70's, many thought she had done it herself to get the insurance money; and she was reportedly a very difficult person to be around. I had friends who worked for her who never got paid. They’d worked for several weeks, or even longer in some cases, and she always promised to pay them the next week. Finally, when they pushed her for a paycheck, she’d fire them.
Shortly after I became a Christian in 1974, I read an interview with her in the local paper. She said something like: “I’m a Christian; but Jesus says that if we think something in our hearts it’s as bad as doing it, so I go ahead and do whatever I’m thinking; I say whatever is on my mind. I’m just not as hypocritical as most Christians.” She was a Christian believer, she claimed, but she was a better Christian than most, because she was honest. As I remember, the paper presented her in a very positive light.
We saw, in the last passage, that James is concerned about counterfeit faith. He’s concerned about those who claim to believe the gospel but who don’t make any effort to follow Jesus Christ in their daily lives. They reason that since salvation comes by faith, it doesn’t matter what they do. They admit that they’re not exemplary Christians; they have no interest in knowing God or obeying Him, but they’ve accepted Jesus as their personal savior, so they believe they’re guaranteed a place in heaven when they die. They believe the gospel is true, but this belief has no influence over the way they live. James is saying that this kind of faith is a counterfeit, that it won’t save anyone. He’s saying the same thing that Martin Luther said in his preface to the book of Romans: “O it is a living, busy active mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good things incessantly.... Whoever does not do such works, however is an unbeliever” (quoted by Douglas J. Moo, James, p. 117). That’s exactly the point James is making: “whoever does not do such works... is an unbeliever.” That was his point at the end of chapter two: “faith without works is dead.”
Genuine faith transforms our lives. And it not only transforms the things we do; it transforms the things we say. That’s his point in chapter three: genuine faith transforms our speech. It would be easy to misunderstand James’ message. We could say to ourselves: “well, I know I’m often unkind in my speech; I may be abusive to others at times, and I know I engage in idle gossip and backbiting. But the really important thing is what I do. I engage in all sorts of good works: I help the poor; I help in my community; I give money for missions; I serve in the church. But people get on my nerves (people like my spouse, my kids, my boss, others in the church), and I can’t help myself; that’s just the way I am.” James wants us to know that this kind of reasoning is false. The good works that always accompany genuine faith include the things we say. Our words are part of our works. Jesus said: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36-37). The tongue has immense power for good or evil; our words have eternal consequences. We’re going to have to give an account for how we’ve made use of the gift of speech, so it’s important that we learn to bring our tongues under control.
The first thing to notice in this passage is that our speech sets the direction of our lives: “Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.” Our words are far more important than we might expect. This gift of speech is not a trivial thing. Listen to what Eugene Peterson says in his introduction to John’s gospel in The Message: “In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God is presented as speaking the creation into existence. God speaks the word and it happens.... In deliberate parallel to the opening words of Genesis, John presents God as speaking salvation into existence. This time God’s word takes on human form and enters history in the person of Jesus. Jesus speaks the word and it happens.... Jesus, in this account, not only speaks the word of God; he is the Word of God. Keeping company with these words, we begin to realize that our words are more important than we ever supposed. Saying ‘I believe,’ for instance, marks the difference between life and death. Our words accrue dignity and gravity in conversations with Jesus.”
“Our words are more important than we ever supposed.” One of the hazards of idle gossip is that it corrupts us. It harms those we’re talking about, but it also harms us spiritually. When we say mean-spirited things about others, we corrupt ourselves. We poison our own spirits. When we say abusive, demeaning things to others, we’re affecting the direction of our own lives. Our words are at work, killing us spiritually. Corrupt speech destroys us.
James illustrates this idea in verses 3 & 4: “A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skillful captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything – or destroy it!” (The Message). The tongue is a small part of our body, and words often seem so insignificant. But the tongue has power over the direction of our lives far out of proportion to its size: “It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell” (The Message).
The second thing is that our speech reveals the condition of our hearts. Our words not only set the direction of our lives, they also tell something about our spiritual condition. James says if we bless God with our tongues, and then turn around and curse people, who are made in His image, there’s something seriously wrong: “With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! My friends, this can’t go on” (The Message).
The Pharisees and scribes were intensely concerned about obedience to the law, and they had built up a whole body of tradition for this purpose; they not only wanted to obey the law, they also wanted to keep a safe distance from the possibility of disobedience. They were often offended when Jesus didn’t seem as concerned as they were about observing these traditions. So they came to Him one day and asked: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat” (Matthew 15:2). Jesus responded that they had everything backwards. They were so obsessed about the things they put into their bodies, that they were overlooking something much more urgent: the things that come out of their mouths: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles” (Matthew 15:18).
Our words reveal the condition of our hearts. Jesus says, in another place: “each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:43-45). James is saying the same thing: “A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?” (The Message).
If both blessing and cursing come out of our mouths, it’s the cursing that says the most about the condition of our hearts. It reveals that something is wrong. Bede was a commentator who lived in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Here’s something he says about this passage: “Not only is it impossible for sweet and bitter water to come out of one and the same fountain, but it is also true that if the two get mixed, it is the bitter which will affect the sweet, not the other way round. Put blessing and cursing together, and cursing will win out every time. Bad habits corrupt good manners, and wicked talk has the same effect” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Volume 11, p. 41). It’s our careless speech, the things we say in our homes, rather than the things we say in public, that reveals the most about the condition of our hearts. And if we habitually engage in corrupt speech, it will corrupt the whole of our lives. It will undermine our worship and prayer and drag us away from God. If we bless God and curse those made in His image, our speech reveals that there is something wrong at the very center of our being.
James, in this passage, is very pessimistic about the possibilities for proper use of the tongue. His whole emphasis is on the tongue as a “restless evil, full of deadly poison.” This leads to the third point, which is that the taming of the tongue is beyond our power: “For all of us make many mistakes;” because of this, teaching is a hazardous occupation. We shouldn’t become teachers lightly, because we all make many mistakes and teachers will be judged with greater strictness. He goes on to say “Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect,” but this doesn’t give much comfort, because he’s already said “all of us make many mistakes.”
We could maybe talk ourselves out of this pessimism, except that a little later in the passage he says “no one can tame the tongue.” We can tame every species of animal, but not the tongue, for it is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Taming the tongue is beyond us. It’s beyond our power. Our tongues reveal the condition of our hearts, and Jeremiah says this about our hearts: “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse – who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). We speak out of the abundance of our hearts, and our hearts are corrupt and deceptive.
It’s not that there’s no hope for taming our tongues. It’s that we don’t have the power within ourselves to do it. St. Augustine has some encouraging words on this point: “The horse does not tame itself, nor does a man do so. A man is needed in order to tame a horse, and in the same way, God is needed in order to tame a man” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, p. 38). The way to tame our tongues is to bring them under the power and authority of the Holy Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was given to the Church, enabling the early disciples to “speak about God’s deeds of power” in many different languages. We sometimes get so worked up in debating about the gift of tongues that we miss the connection between this event and the Tower of Babel. Corrupt speech is a result of the Fall. Because of sin, our tongues are no longer under our control. The Tower of Babel is a graphic demonstration of this; those who were seeking to build a great tower to demonstrate their glory found their purposes frustrated by the confusion of languages. Their speech was taken out of their control. The Day of Pentecost was a dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel, in anticipation of the day when that curse will be finally removed. The Holy Spirit brings the gift of speech back under our control, not to say whatever we feel like saying, but to use the gift of speech for God’s glory in obedience to His Word. The Holy Spirit restores and heals the gift of speech.
We tame our tongues, not by a massive exercise of restraint, but by cultivating the fruit of the Spirit. As the Spirit increasingly takes control of our lives, He makes these qualities appear: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” It’s beyond our power to bring this about, but as we walk with the Spirit over the course of a lifetime, these qualities become increasingly evident. They appear, like fruit on a tree. Our part is to cultivate this fruit. We begin by saying “no” to certain things. We don’t allow ourselves to say the thing that first comes into our minds. But we’re not just engaging in repression. We turn to the Lord and confess what is in our hearts and ask Him for grace to act and speak in ways that are pleasing to Him. We deny ourselves–we say “no” to our old, selfish way of life–and then we go on to walk with the Spirit: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
We walk in the Spirit by looking to Him, inviting Him into every area of our lives and seeking to live under His Lordship. Paul often uses a variety of images to say the same thing in an effort to help us understand. In Galatians 6, the chapter right after his discussion on the fruit of the Spirit, he uses the image of sowing seeds. Either we are sowing to the Spirit, or we are sowing to the flesh. Whether or not we reap the fruit of the Spirit depends on the kinds of seeds we’re sowing. We need to ask, “what sorts of seeds am I sowing?” “If I continue regularly in this activity for the next 10 or 20 years, what sort of person will I become?” “Will my life be characterized by the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) or the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)?” “Am I sowing to the flesh or to the Spirit?” “Am I cultivating the fruit of the Spirit, or am I allowing the works of the flesh to dominate my life?” He says that if we are sowing to the flesh, we will reap corruption, that is, we will experience a process of increasing moral and spiritual decay. The works of the flesh will be more and more prominent in our lives. Our speech will more and more be the kind of speech James is criticizing: “The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image.” If we are sowing to the Spirit, we will reap eternal life, that is, we will experience a growing fellowship with God. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). And the fruit of the Spirit will be increasingly evident as we walk with God over a lifetime. We cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, tame our tongues, by refusing to allow the weeds of the flesh to grow in our lives and by seeking to walk daily in active obedience to God’s Word, trusting in His power to transform us into the image of His Son.
No comments:
Post a Comment