Tiago 3

Tiago 3

Henry - How absurd is it that those who use their tongues in prayer and praise should ever use them in cursing, slandering, and the like! If we bless God as our Father, it should teach us to speak well of, and kindly to, all who bear his image. That tongue which addresses with reverence the divine Being cannot, without the greatest inconsistency, turn upon fellow-creatures with reviling brawling language. It is said of the seraphim that praise God, they dare not bring a railing accusation. And for men to reproach those who have not only the image of God in their natural faculties, but are renewed after the image of God by the grace of the gospel: this is a most shameful contradiction to all their pretensions of honouring the great Original. These things ought not so to be; and, if such considerations were always at hand, surely they would not be. Piety is disgraced in all the shows of it, if there be not charity. That tongue confutes itself (proves itself to be false) which one while pretends to adore the perfections of God, and to refer all things to him, and another while will condemn even good men if they do not just come up to the same words or expressions used by it. These things ought (chre) not to be this way - Vine says literally "it is not befitting, these things so to be." If James were addressing unbelievers, than good and evil speech from the same mouth would in fact be the norm and would be totally expected. But as noted with my brethren James is clearly addressing believers among whom it is not fitting or right for their tongue to exhibit such untamed speech. James is emphatic that such "dichotomous dialogue" is completely unnatural for those who are new creatures in Christ, and among whom old things have passed away (good and evil speech natural from same mouth) and new things have come (holy speech) (cf 2 Cor 5:17+). Jesus alluded to this principle in His Sermon on the Mount when he said “But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil. (Mt 5:37+) Comment - Jesus' point is that both our yes and our no should be an honest reply. We are to not to say "yes" and then out of the same mouth say "no." This is what unregenerate people do, not those who have been born again and are called to live a like of truth and righteousness. A T