All of us have said the wrong thing at one point or another. We’ve gossiped, shared inaccurate information (whether or not we knew it), and had to apologize for our mouths and the consequences of our words.

Today, we’re digging into some tangible secrets to keeping your tongue in check. And I tell you what James really means when he says, “Let not many of us become teachers.” (Hint: it might not be what you think!)

The Technicalities

Before we get to the Scripture-digging of James 3, I want to first go back to where we ended the last part of James 2, where I left you sitting inside the “What should I do?” prayer, asking God how He wants your faith to be expressed through your works. I have to acknowledge that the segue into this next chapter might seem contradictory to that—especially if you feel like God is calling you to teach the Bible.

Listen, God has called all of us to teach in one form or another. That’s part of making disciples that Jesus commissioned His disciples to do in Matthew 28:19. But the King James Version renders that word “disciples” there as “teach,” translating that part of the verse as, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” But that’s not the word that James uses here for “teachers” in James 3:1. This word is better translated as “masters” or what can be described as a “teacher of teachers” or a “master teacher.” It’s the title that many people used to address Jesus many times throughout the gospels, and it’s a word that describes people who draw very large crowds because of their incredible power as teachers (like Jesus did, or John the Baptist).

Not many of us should become that level of a master-teacher, teaching in large assemblies with the special assistance and gifting of the Holy Spirit. Sure, many people want to teach with that kind of Holy Spirit fire, but few actually do because of the massive amount of responsibility that comes with it. With that many ears listening, that many hearts chomping at the bit (pun intended) to know more of God’s Word, you cannot afford to get it wrong. That position is reserved for a select few who are under much more scrutiny, hold much more responsibility, and face a much greater and much more strict condemnation from God.

“Here’s why,” James says. “We all stumble in many different ways. But the one thing that we are all guaranteed to get wrong at one point or another? Our words.” If you’ve never said anything that was factually incorrect, something you wish you could take back, something you’ve had to apologize for later? Congratulations! You are officially perfect. You can consistently hold your tongue in check and always restrain your mind, your stomach, your hands, and every single part of your body –  every desire, craving, emotion, and reaction, always held back, always controlled, fully bridled. But that “bridle” word in James 3:2 holds a very telling story behind it. On the surface, it means “to lead, guide, or direct,” but if you dig one level deeper into the word’s etymology, you’ll see that it’s rooted in a word that means “to loosen or relax.” In other words, James is saying that you are in so much control of yourself that you don’t need to control yourself. You can let go of those reigns because your mouth isn’t going to go sideways on its own – it’s perfectly trained, perfectly restrained. (And, by the way, if that’s the case, you don’t need Jesus.)

James then jumps to two examples of how the tongue, though a small part of your body, yields a whole lot of power: a horse’s bit and a ship’s rudder. Both of these give a single person the power to steer something entirely separate from (and larger than) themselves.

First up: the bit in a horse’s mouth. The bit allows the rider to communicate their commands to the horse. They work by applying pressure on the horse’s mouth and encouraging the horse to respond to the rider’s cues, moving in the direction the rider wants the horse to go. And then there is the rudder of a ship – the primary control tool used to steer it. The person steering uses the ship’s wheel to turn the rudder, and as the rudder goes, so goes the stern, and the boat turns. But, here’s the thing with that: one half-inch turn of a rudder can send an ocean liner hundreds of miles off course. One false word, one misunderstood passage, and the person you teach is off and running in a direction that goes left very quickly.

“That’s the tongue,” James says, “a relatively small part of the body that can brag about the very big things it controls. And, those “big things?” The Greek word for that phrase describes it as bearing itself loftily in speech or action, exalting yourself, or carrying yourself. If you look at the two Old Testament references associated with these “big things” (Ezekiel 16:50 and Zephaniah 3:11), you’ll see one common theme: pride (shifting the reader of James’ letter from “don’t give preferential treatment” in James 2 to now “don’t seek it” in James 3).

The tiniest spark can set an entire forest ablaze. A single, misunderstood word can start a misguided fire or misplaced passion within an entire ministry or congregation. Your tongue pulls people. It steers them in a specific direction and impassions them along the way. When used carelessly or mindlessly, James says in James 3:6 it is an entire world of iniquities (or, as the Greek language describes, a general collection of sin, the sum of all of them) – its flames fed by hell itself.

But verse eight is where the Greek linguistics gets really interesting – when James says that humans have tamed every beast, bird, reptile, and sea creature, but no person can tame the tongue. Do you remember in the last passage, in James 2:14, where we looked at dynamai pistis, or the capable, strong, and powerful faith that can save you? Here, in James 3:8, when James says that no man can tame the tongue, the word he uses there for “can” is dynamai. There is not one person in this world who has the power to tame it, curb it, or restrain it. It’s an unruly evil. It’s a ship that will sail where it wants to sail (even if it’s running itself aground), a wild horse that will ride wherever it wants to ride (even if that’s off a cliff), and it’s teeming with deadly poison, like a snake ready to release its venom with just a single bite.

With that same tongue, we praise and celebrate God, and then absolutely whither a person who is made in His exact likeness. It shouldn’t be like this. Water springs don’t produce both fresh water and bitter water at the same time, nor does a fruit tree bear fruit that is different from its type.

You and I are fresh-water springs abundant with rivers of living water flowing from the Spirit of God Himself (John 7:38). Our water has been bitterness-healed (Exodus 15:25 style) by the cross that we have deliberately, intentionally, and willfully tossed into our hearts. We shouldn’t also be producing salty, bitter, damaging water in the very same breath. But we do. And that is the very reason that only a few of us dual-water springs should become master-teachers. Because, as we’ll see in the next passage, in James 3:17, the wisdom that is from God is pure. And master-teachers have got to be absolutely sure that the words that come off of their bit-and-rudder tongues are only ever pure without even a hint of misguided salinity.

So, no, let’s not have many master-teachers. And the ones who are? Don’t give them preferential treatment or special titles. And if you’re in that level of master-teaching, don’t ask to be called Master or Teacher, Jesus said in Matthew 23:8, “for One is your capital-T-teacher – the Christ.” All the rest of us? We’re all just-as-equal brethren.

Making it Personal

I have a two-part application for this passage for two different audiences. The first is to the ones who are Bible teachers (or who want to be). Now, listen, I’m already treading extra carefully here because, by even addressing the Bible teachers, I’m essentially teaching the teachers and have crossed over into this territory of ground where I have to walk very carefully. However, the fact remains that the Greek word for master-teachers that James uses here in James 3:1 is the very same word in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and also in Ephesians 4:11 for the spiritual gift of teaching. For the ones whom God has appointed to have this next-level gift of Holy Spirit-inspired teaching, He has also appointed them to walk through a separate level of judgment in the end.

Take a look over at Ezekiel 3:17-18 to get an idea of this. God is speaking to Ezekiel, a prophet (not a teacher, although both prophets and teachers declare God’s will – teachers do it through expounding God’s written Word). But there, in Ezekiel 3, you can see the immense amount of responsibility that Ezekiel held in his position as a prophet.

“I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel,” God told Ezekiel. In other words, he is God’s mouthpiece. When he hears God speak, it is his job to then warn God’s people.

“If I say to the wicked, ‘You’re going to die,’ and you don’t warn them of the danger ahead, that they need to repent and save their lives, and they die in their sin? Their blood is on you, not them.

“But,” God said, “if you warn them and they refuse to repent and die in their sin, you’ve done everything you could. You are blameless.”

That’s a huge amount of responsibility on a prophet’s shoulders, and, James says, there is an even greater condemnation for the teacher that isn’t limited to what they get wrong. It’s also about what they skip over or leave out altogether. Listen, it’s easy to teach about God’s love, right? It’s not so easy to talk about His judgment on sin. Bible teachers have to teach the hard-to-stomach parts of the Bible as well as the sweet and pleasant parts. James 3:6 is the perfect example of that – I don’t want to talk about hell. It’s a very uncomfortable topic. But I have to. If I don’t, I am accountable for that. Hell-fire is real, and James uses it as a very real analogy for the kind of fire that the tongue is capable of spreading.

But Holy-Spirit-fire is real, too – tongues of fire, no less (you see it over in Acts 2:3). So the question is, which fire is going to be the one coming out of your teaching mouth? God forbid they are anything other than His.

Now, for the rest of us. I want to dig a little bit deeper into the deadly poison piece of James 3:8 because that part of the verse points over to a verse in Psalm 140 that describes evil men sharpening their tongues like a serpent with the poison of asps under their lips. I’ve often thought of this part of James and taming the tongue in the sense of a person spouting off with words when they boil over in anger or frustration – that the words come flying out of our mouths before they’ve thought any of them through. And, to a certain extent, yes, that is applicable here. But Psalm 140:3 indicates an intentional action of making something sharper than it was to begin with.

As I read that, I think of how many times I get lost in a daydream of imaginary conversation in which I’m saying everything I wish I had said to a person. It’s usually confrontational (and, if I’m being fully honest, in these kinds of conversations, I’m never wrong). The phrase that David uses there in Psalm 140:3 is the same idea of practicing a speech and rehearsing your words until they pack the most powerful punch in the fewest amount of words possible. The Hebrew language actually describes whetting (or sharpening) a knife and working to make something perfectly suitable for its purpose. But the wildest part about Psalm 140:3 is in the lips, which isn’t describing the literal lips on our face (or what the Hebrew describes as “the place of the horse’s bridle” – a touchback to James 3:2), but the figurative lips that are an edge or a boundary to something. In this case, the lips are the poison’s boundary that it cannot cross so long as they are closed. And you and I need to learn the art of restraining our lips so the poisonous words that we can sometimes rehearse inside of our imaginations don’t ever have a chance of coming out.

And the best way to do that is twofold: First, we need to busy our lips in prayer, starting with James 1:19 – God, help me to be swift to hear Your voice, slow to speak words that didn’t come from You. And, second? We need to sharpen our knowledge of God’s Word so that we can keep busying our lips by whispering them to ourselves and praying them back to God when we really just want to let our words fly.

Verses like Proverbs 10:19 (“In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise”). And parts of Ecclesiastes 5:2-3 (“Do not be rash with your mouth; let your words be few; a fool’s voice is known by his many words”).

And then, in your slowness to speak, stop to ask yourself: Which water is about to come out of my mouth? Living or deadly? Fresh or salty? Bitter or sweet? Are my words poison like a snake? Or cooing like a dove? And, possibly, the most important question of all: Does what I’m about to say sound more like the Galatians 5 works of my flesh? Or the fruit of His Spirit?

Even Isaiah knew the moment he saw the Lord sitting on His throne, high and lifted up, in his vision in Isaiah 6 – he was a man of unclean lips. But then came a seraphim – a majestic, angel-like creature with six wings (and the real mind-blower here is that the same Hebrew word is used in Numbers 21:6 to describe a specific species of venomous snake). And God, in His mercy, had a seraphim touch his unclean lips with a live coal still glowing red from the altar fire it had just been plucked from. And with that live coal, Isaiah’s sin was purged, his lips cleansed. It was only then that he could speak effectively on behalf of God. Because, with things like this, the only way you can fight that fire? It’s with fire that is straight out of His holy, holy, holy presence.

Thanks so much for listening!