The Double-Minded Tongue

Since the tongue is restless (James 3:8), it thrashes about wildly, moving from uttering positive words to those that are harmful. To put it another way, the tongue is inconsistent. In today’s passage, James explores the wicked inconsistency of the tongue.

First, the tongue is capable of great good, for we can use it to “bless our Lord and Father” (v. 9). James here essentially repeats the biblical and Jewish tradition that blessing and praising God in public and in private constitute some of the most important and holy things that we can do with our speech. The idea of blessing God appears throughout the book of Psalms, and Psalm 103 is a well-known call for us to bless the Lord. Paul tells us in Romans 9:5 that God is “blessed forever.” We were made to praise God with our tongues.

If blessing God is one of the holiest acts, one of the worst would be to curse Him or anything especially associated with Him. Thus, James 3:8 says that with our tongues, we also curse “people who are made in the likeness of God.” Here the Apostle again makes reference to Genesis 1, where we read that God created man and woman in His own image (vv. 26–27). Because human beings are made in God’s image, we are more like Him than the other creatures and uniquely reflect Him to the created order. To curse God’s image is to curse that creature who reflects Him more than all else. It is really an indirect attack on God, much as people might deface the statue of a world leader to show contempt for that leader.

Our tongue can be used to bless God or to curse people, and in reality, all Christians have done both. This should not be, James 3:10 explains. How dare we use the same organ for holy and unholy purposes? Few actions are more inconsistent, and this double use of the tongue is yet another example of the double-mindedness that we are to avoid (1:5–8). We dare not curse God’s image, especially the image of God being renewed after the likeness of Christ. Matthew Henry notes: “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 honoring the great Original.”