This morning I have been thinking about our speech and the importance of how we speak. As I was praying I felt led to turn to James 3, which is a chapter dealing with our tongue, and speech. Here are the verses - James 3:9-18 NIV:
[9] “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. [10] Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. [11] Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? [12] My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
[13] Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. [14] But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. [15] Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. [16] For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
[17] But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. [18] Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”
Without getting deeply into these verses, the theme that is rolling around in me is judging our speech by its fruit. James alludes to this in verses 12, 17 and 18. As we know what we sow is what we reap, in general, and if you plant grapes it won’t bear figs. We should look at the fruit of our speech and judge what we are sowing? Does it sound like we are sowing wisdom from Heaven? Is it pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, and good fruit?
When we speak of good fruit, I am reminded of Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23 NIV:
[22] “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
The interesting thing is that sometimes people believe that somehow sowing division, doubt, discord, accusations and disunity will result in righteousness, for they are exposing “sin”. People attack others, gossip and slander one another in the name of righteousness, and don’t see the disconnect in what is being sown.
The other day I was doing some research into gossip and slander and the base definition of both (in the Hebrew “rakil”) is a travelling tale-teller, or a traveling scandal-monger. In other words they take something they have heard, and spread it to those who have not heard. While the motivation might be to “uncover unrighteousness” this seems to me to be the exact opposite of our call to be evangelists, to share the gospel of Grace or the “Good news” with those who haven’t heard!
Our world is presently full of this type of behavior, people are sharing their offenses, that others might join them in being offended. We think nothing of speaking about people’s motivation without any conversation with the individual! It has become so bad that we now have fact-checkers, and fact-checkers checking fact-checkers, for we seem to have lost any sense of the truth. We have people building cases against people they have never met, or talked to, with scant evidence or hear-say. This is happening all around us, and the church is not immune.
The question is what can we do about it in our own life, as Christians?
First, we should consider our words and actions as compared to Jesus' command to us, to love one another the way He loves us (John 13:34). Are we loving one another as defined in Paul’s great passage on love found in 1 Cor13?
Secondly, I would say that we need to rein in our tongues, our speech, and consider what we are sowing. What will be the fruit of our speech? Paul provides us two lists in Galatians 5 and we can check which fruit is the likely outcome of our speech.
Thirdly, we should look to scripture for guidance on how to deal with sin and specifically those who sin against us. Jesus has some very clear direction recorded in Matt 18.
If we can learn to love one another the way Jesus loves us, we will be so different than the world that they will know that we follow Him! Oh, that we would sow peace!
Lord, help us to not get caught up in the flow of society that spews offense all day long! Let us operate from a place of humility. Help us to speak what is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, and good fruit!
Amen and amen!!
