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. But James’s message also exemplifies what Paul calls the profitability or usefulness of sacred Scripture: “teaching. The resulting effect will be to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” (2 Timothy 4:2). In this way James’s words exemplify the central purposes of the teaching and preaching of God’s Word. Much of what he says is a powerful exposé of the sin and failure that mar our speech. Both the book of Proverbs and our Lord Jesus spoke with searching clarity about the nature and use of the tongue. 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. I take the author of this little book to have been James, the half-brother of our Lord Jesus. James 3:1–12 contains the single most sustained discussion in the New Testament on the use of the tongue. 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. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
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It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 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. 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. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. 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.
If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 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. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. OUR FOCUS IN THIS STUDY is the teaching of James 3:1–12: This message appears as a chapter in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God.
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