You know, there are some passages of Scripture that I probably would just as soon avoid. Those passages that seem to put you in a corner . . . don’t leave any wiggle room . . . verses that you can’t just dismiss as being for someone else. They are those admonitions that just nail you. James’ teaching on the tongue in the third chapter of his letter is one such passage.

“For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.” – James 3:2

Busted! We all stumble . . . trip up . . . literally “descend from a higher place to a lower” . . . aka fall, fail, err, blow it. Uh, yeah, that would be me. Not liking this so far. And then James focuses on one particular “descent” . . . the “descent in word.” Only a perfect man never stumbles with his tongue . . . and, I’m no perfect man . . . I know what he’s talking about . . . been there, done that . . . way too often . . . way too recently . . . this is getting way to close for comfort.

The taming of the tongue is a hard undertaking. Massive horses can be controlled with a small piece of metal in their mouths . . . huge ships can be directed by a very small rudder (3:4) . . . but the tongue? . . . now that’s gonna take some help to master. It’s a spark that can set a great forest ablaze . . . it has the potential to be a world of iniquity defiling the whole body . . . an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. And James says, “No man can tame the tongue.” (3:5-6,8)

Heavy sigh.

This “little member”, which I so delight to direct to bless God . . . to speak words of honor to the Creator . . . to articulate thoughts of praise to the Father of Lights . . . it is same tongue that can get away from me and “curse men” . . . to utter desires of doom upon those who have been created by the God I bless . . . to invoke evil upon those for whom the blood of Jesus was shed. Talk about your two ends of the spectrum!

The best of lines . . . the worst of lines . . . both sourced from the same tongue. “Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.” (3:10-12)

So what do I do with this? First, I agree with God . . . these things ought not to be so. And while I can’t tame the tongue on my own, I know One who can . . . the Perfect Man . . . the One who never lost control of His speech . . . Who always picked His words carefully . . . Who, even when He did have harsh words, spoke them in truth and accuracy and without malice . . . desiring that even a “brood of vipers” would repent (Matt. 3:7-8). It is this Perfect Man, who had power over His own tongue, who has begun a good work in me through the new birth. A work of regeneration . . . of reformation . . . of transformation . . . that, in my life, He might increase and I might decrease . . . that, through the sanctifying work of His Spirit, I would take on more the characteristics of the Perfect Man and shed, more and more, the behaviors of my old man . . . that I use my tongue more like Him and less like the world around me.

Mastering the tongue will be an on-going battle . . . but my desire is that my words would increase as a source of fresh water and decrease as a dispenser of bitter salt water . . . that I might be known, more and more, as a conveyor of the best of lines and not the worst of lines . . . for His glory . . . amen.