Over 20 years ago, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan starred in a movie called “You’ve Got Mail”. At one point, her character complained to his that there were times when she wanted to unleash her tongue on someone, but she never found the right words in time. He cautioned her that if that moment came, remorse would follow. Then the moment came, and this is how she summed it up:
I was able, for the first time in my life to say the exact thing I wanted to say at the exact moment I wanted to say it. And, of course, afterwards, I felt terrible, just as you said I would. I was cruel, and I'm never cruel.
She was going through a hard time, in which her whole livelihood was being destroyed and the person she let fly at was the cause of her grief. And so she let fly - and felt awful.
We’ve all had moments when we don’t engage our brains before our mouths get into their stride. Words are so powerful. Hateful words can really hurt and once they are spoken, there is no “unsaying” them. But according to James, to tame the tongue unfailingly is something that no human being can do in this world. Our tongues are by nature restless - they want to be active. And they are full of deadly poison. They can set the whole course of life on fire, being set on fire themselves by hell.
For this reason, James begins the chapter with a caution for those who would become teachers. Teaching, of course, is done to a large degree with the tongue, and to have an untamed tongue as a teacher of others necessarily incurs a stricter judgment. James’s warning, though, comes to everyone who has a tongue and I think in this day and age, to anyone with a Twitter account or a similar social media tool where we can type a quick note and hit “send” before really thinking about what we are saying.
Why are our tongues such a big problem? It is because they give expression to what is in our hearts:
Luke 6:45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
The only power that can tame the tongue is a power that can change the heart - God’s Holy Spirit. Before we come to know Christ, our tongues are untamed and untamable by us. They speak out of hearts that are full of hatred towards God and overflowing with love of self. When we are saved, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts and begins the work of making us more like Christ. He produces good things in our hearts that we can speak with our tongues, and He provides a restraint to hold back the wicked things we might otherwise have said (malicious, slanderous, hateful things, gossip, lies, character assassinations etc.). Our tongue is progressively tamed! Sadly, we sometimes push past His restraint and speak from our old nature, with potentially dire consequences.
It is worth taking James’s warning to heart, especially right now in the midst of a global crisis. We can be less guarded than we should be when we are under stress and experiencing difficulties in our lives. We become tired and irritable. Someone provokes us, or we provoke them. Before we know it, we are in a situation where restraint is abandoned and the air is thick with sinful words. At that point, we have handed the enemy of our souls a victory. We have used tongues that have been saved to utter the praise and worship of the most high God for the purpose of tearing down, defaming and insulting those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ. But whatever we do to them (seeing they, too, are joined to Christ and made in God’s image) we do to Him. But there is still good news in this situation:
- God has promised that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there is a path for wrongs to be righted.
- While no human being can tame their tongue, God changes the heart when they trust Jesus to save them from sin. Gradually, they’re more and more able to win this war!
And so this is a word of real encouragement to us, and not a mere warning. In Christ, believers can rise up and be victorious over all the sins that used to beset them. We do not have to fall into sin - Christ has delivered us from our bondage. While friends and family who do not know Christ are still enslaved to sin, we have power to live a new life that testifies to the truth of the gospel!
Let’s seek in the coming days, and by the power of God’s Spirit, to tame our tongues and to make sure that we give all the glory to Christ!
