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More than ever before, our society is characterized by movement and pixels. For one, we are a nomadic people. Prior generations would have been unacquainted with our conventions of vacationing, commuting, and relocating. It wasn’t uncommon for a man to be baptized, married, and buried in the church down the street from his lifelong home—the same church that awarded him a lapel pin for his perfect Sabbath school attendance for 936 consecutive Sundays. My grandfather, for instance, was baptized, married, and buried in the same church. (He may have missed a Sunday school class or two.) In modern America, on the other hand, the average person moves nearly twelve times in his or her lifetime, commutes a total of nearly an hour per day, and vacations three times a year.
Additionally, we are a pixelated people. We’re accustomed to technological advances that would appear to our grandparents like gadgets in an episode of The Jetsons. On our vacations and commutes, we can be constantly entertained by a number of different devices. We can watch this morning’s sermon from our living room couch. We can buy a new house across the country without ever seeing it in person. The devices in our pockets are deliberately designed to keep our eye fixed, our thumb scrolling, and our hearts wanting. While we’re on the move and more connected than ever, we’re discontent and unfulfilled. Cartoons, television shows, and movies have plots that move forward quickly with short camera shots to accommodate shrinking attention spans. The young business professional who walks at a high speed with his eyes glued to his phone passes hundreds of people, but his eyes lock only with the pixels on his screen. While his heart longs for communion—with God and with others—he can scarcely hold a face-to-face conversation. We have more friends than ever on social media but fewer friends than ever who really know us. We have ubiquitous security cameras, but we’re more fearful than ever. We have more knowledge but less joy. We could go on about the ways in which our media-tethered lives have altered our communication patterns, proficiencies, and proclivities. Nevertheless, no matter the era and no matter the medium, this one incontrovertible fact remains: everyone’s a communicator. The question is this: Are you a faithful communicator?
When God spoke in human language to Adam and Eve, communion between the two parties was established. God created Adam and Eve in such a way that they could receive and comprehend speech, decipher its meaning, and reciprocate appropriately. Made in a communicative God’s image, mankind could likewise communicate—with God and with other human beings. Our language capacities are derived from God and reflect God. God speaks to humans about Himself, and He does so through different forms, but always through language that is analogical so that we can know Him truly, yet not exhaustively. And since every human is made in the image of God, every human is therefore a communicator—able to convey meaning through language and commune with others. It is a fundamental part of our identity.
Talk isn’t cheap. It’s wonderfully valuable. It’s what sets us apart from the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. It’s a gift from the Lord, derived from Him, reflective of Him, and intended to draw us into communion with Him. And while our speech capacities are a tremendous gift, it should come as no surprise that the fall has warped this gift. Sin has poisoned the well of this most precious image-bearing capacity. This reality is what Jesus’ brother describes:
How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. 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. 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. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. (James 3:5b–10a)
James is drawing a picture: the gift of blessed communion has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction. Sin has negatively affected our ability to communicate. Our image-bearing linguistic capacities have gone awry—the same instrument that we were given to praise God we now use to curse Him and His image bearers. We’ve taken His gift and turned it against Him.
Communion has given way to hostility, sharing to isolation, blessing to cursing. As James concludes, “These things ought not to be so” (James 3:10). With Paul we exclaim: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). Paul’s hope, and ours, is found in God’s final Word to His people—the Word of God who took on flesh and dwelled among those with venomous lips (John 1:14; Rom. 3:13). In His sin-bearing death on that tree, He suffered the curse of sin for His people. From His first words as a man to His last right before His death, Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for His people, whose tongues are filled with deadly poison. In His resurrection, He empowers His people to abstain from the “corrupting talk” that tends to flow from our mouths (Eph. 4:29a), and He enables us to once more use our image-bearing linguistic capacity to build up by giving “grace to those who hear” (v. 29b). The Spirit of God, who dwells in and with us, is gradually drawing out the poison from our tongues as He conforms us to the Son. In the new heaven and new earth, we will all with glorified tongues speak only wholesome words. What was once an instrument of poison and unrighteousness will be the instrument by which God’s praises are proclaimed forevermore.
This eschatological promise does two important things for the Christian communicator. On the one hand, it heightens the importance of our words and the need to speak honorably, for we all “will give account for every careless word [we] speak, for by [our] words [we] will be justified, and by [our] words [we] will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36–37). Our days and our words are numbered. We seek to make each one count. On the other hand, it tempers our expectations for our speech, for the full and final restoration of our tongues awaits glorification. We know that our purest attempts to wield our tongues for good are but a glimpse of the perfected tongues that we’ll put on when that Word returns for us. We will never again utter an idle or corrupt word. Our mouths will have been restored to the original purpose for which God made them—to glorify God and enjoy Him forever (WSC 1).
Dear Christian, He who began a good work in you is faithful to bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). He is renovating your heart and speech so that they reflect the beauty of our triune God. The words of life have taken residence in our hearts. Now we set our hearts and minds on Christ so as to be like Him in communicating grace to others. As we abide in Christ and He in us, may our speech evermore imitate our Lord, until we hear the blessed words from His lips: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:23). In the meantime, speak fitting words.