Powerful to Destroy

October 8, 1871, would prove to be a date that the city of Chicago would never forget. At 9 o’clock p.m., as the popular retelling of the history goes, a cow in a barn belonging to the O’Leary family kicked over a small lantern, igniting a fire that would burn through the entire city. Whether a lantern and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow actually started the fire is open to debate, for historians have never officially determined the fire’s cause. The fire itself, however, is a historical reality. By the time that the flames stopped burning two days later, approximately four square miles of Chicago were destroyed, including roughly 17,500 buildings, and about three hundred people were dead. However the fire began, we know that it was but a small flame in comparison to the great conflagration that followed.

In today’s passage, James uses the image of a small flame that starts a great fire in order to convey the power of the tongue to destroy (James 3:5b). He wants to make the point that something so small—the tongue—can be tremendously destructive. Just a few words can cause incredible harm. The original Greek makes an even greater connection between the smallness of the tongue and the large size of the fire, for James uses the same Greek word twice in verse 3:5b, once to mean “small” and once to mean “great.”

What we say can obliterate many good things. A single sinful comment can turn friends into enemies. One unfounded rumor can crush another person’s positive reputation. The slightest misuse of the tongue can bring down something that took years to build, be it a church, a company, a marriage, or any other good thing. Thus, the Venerable Bede writes, “The tongue is a fire which can destroy a whole forest of good works just by saying things which are evil.”

James states also that the tongue is a “world of unrighteousness” that stains the whole body (3:6). Evil speech corrupts us, producing worldliness that makes us unable to practice the pure and undefiled religion that pleases God the Father (1:27). Jesus Himself makes a similar point when He teaches that the words that come out of our mouths, which reflect the true state of our hearts, defile a person (Matt. 15:10–20). Our wicked speech can burn down our own lives and even our own souls, for the evil use of the tongue is inspired by hell itself (James 3:6). The early church father Jerome comments, “The sword kills the body, but the tongue kills the soul.”