James 3:1-18

(This week’s devotionals, originally published in January 2021, aligned with the sermon series “Disagree Deeply, Love Deeper Still: True Unity.” The writing team prays they will be an encouragement to you.)

Ever said anything you regret saying? Ever spoken too soon? Ever failed to speak up when you knew you should have? Ever had someone say something to you that broke your heart, your spirit? Ever said something like that to someone else?  “Sticks and stones may break my bones … Loose lips sink ships … Me and my big mouth!”

Welcome to James 3. This chapter is our entry text into our new sermon series: Disagree Deeply, Love Deeper Still: True Unity.

True unity doesn’t mean sameness, everyone exactly alike, no differences, no disagreements. It doesn’t mean excluding anyone who differs in some way. It doesn’t mean avoiding grappling with hard and contentious issues. It doesn’t mean censoring or suppressing disagreement in the name of “unity.”  

Unity isn’t an act of organization but of love. It’s why true unity is such hard, and continuing, work.

And our tongues - the ways we communicate with one another and the world around us - play an outsized role in this work of loving unity.

James 3 falls pretty neatly into two halves. The focus of the first half, verses 1-12, is “the tongue,” with “wisdom” the focus of the second. I like to think of the first half as diagnostic, the second half as prescriptive. In other words, the first half shows the many ways our tongues can make things go terribly wrong. The second half points the way to the healing of our communication.

The diagnosis is severe. While James uses several symbols, his main one is fire: “The tongue is a fire … It sets the whole course of life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (vs. 5-6). The tongue, misused, sets things on fire: families, neighborhoods, nations, lives.  We have seen a great deal of this the past few years. 

James concludes his diagnosis by pointing out the deep, underlying problem we have if we use our tongue to praise God during worship times and use that same tongue to condemn or curse others. He reminds us that those we curse “have been made in God’s likeness“ (v. 10). It’s an indication of a kind of disunity within your own person.

The prescription, the medicine that helps heal us for unity is wisdom.  The misuse of the tongue that James has just documented and diagnosed indicates that our tongues, and we who use them, have bought into a false wisdom, a supposed wisdom that is earthly, unspiritual, and of the devil (v. 15).  The medicine is the wisdom that comes from heaven. And remember that James has already reminded us that, if we lack wisdom, we should ask for it, and God will give it generously (1:5).

The wisdom from heaven is characterized as “first of all, pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (3:17).

What if the words that come from me and my big mouth are consistently pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere? What if these things also characterized the ways we speak with one another? How about the ways we speak with those with whom we deeply disagree?

Who wouldn’t want to be part of a church like that?

Consider your normal speech habits and patterns. Now run them through the pure-peaceable-considerate-submissive-full of mercy and good fruit-impartial-sincere diagnostic test.  How might you pray about what these “test results” indicate?