The Untamable Beast

James 3:7-12

Throughout the letter of James, we’ve been considering one test of faith after another. We’ve seen the test of suffering, temptation, response to the Word, impartial love, righteous works, and now we’re still considering the test of the tongue. In chapter three, James personifies the tongue as representative of human depravity and sinfulness. In this, James is echoing what Jesus Himself said about the tongue. The tongue is an indicator of the heart. What flows from your mouth is whatever is in your heart. This reflects the corrupt content of the human heart.

Then James starts talking about the dangers of the corrupt tongue. It’s a fire that sets the whole course of nature on fire and is set on fire by hell itself! Now, he says the tongue is humanly untamable. So why preach about it?! Well, he’s not giving us an “out”—we’re still responsible as we’ll see. James 3:7-12. In honor of God and His Word, let’s stand for the reading of these verses. After telling us that the tongue is a fire which defiles the whole body and is set on fire by hell itself, he then says in verse 7…

7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. [NKJV]

[Prayer] So why does James challenge us for 12 verses about the dangers of the corrupt tongue only to end up saying, the tongue is untamable and uncontrollable? Is he saying that responsible speech is forever beyond our grasp? I don’t think so. Remember, the letter of James is about the purpose of God through various trials in the lives of His faith-filled people. Needing to control your speech is a timely trial – especially when emotions are high and adrenaline is surging. Some people are in that kind of situation every day of their lives. But the Christian has something that the natural man doesn’t have. The Christian has the restraining and sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit within him. But James is presenting this as if faith has no influence over the tongue. This is a test for our faith. You and I need this wisdom from James to honor God with our tongue before we get back onto the battlefield. Let’s begin by considering the natural state of the unconverted tongue in verses 7-8.

7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

I.          The tongue is innately uncontrollable and untamable (7-8).

Verse seven is a litany of human success in training every kind of animal on the face of the earth. There are relatively few animals incapable of being trained. It might be hard to train something like a slug – unless you want it to just stay. And I’m told that sheep are hard to train… and the longer I preach the more I think it’s true! But James is making the point that all these natural animals with no moral inclination whatsoever are still capable of being trained and domesticated by mankind. Humanity has a litany of great success in training every kind of beast. So verse seven is a positive statement to demonstrate the lengths to which we’ll strive to train animals for our amusement or service.

This positive statement in verse seven is then contrasted with the negative comparison in verse eight. “But” [a strong adversative conjunction] “no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”

Is this an overstatement? Is James going too far? He says, “no man can tame the tongue”. This would not mean that a person (even an unbeliever) cannot restrain their tongue if they see a clear and powerful advantage for doing so. We’ve known of unbelievers, even wicked men and women, who have shrewdly held their tongue to win a greater advantage in the future. So James is not saying that the tongue cannot be held for personal advantage or to deceive. He seems to be contrasting the ability of man with the power of God. Man can’t tame the tongue, but God alone can actually do this through the Holy Spirit. It hinges on the word “tame”.

To restrain the tongue is one thing, but to tame the tongue is quite another. Taming is a prolonged pattern of restraint and useful control. No one tames their dog to bark all the time. Taming has to do with restraining the natural inclination. If a dog’s natural inclination is to bark all the time, then taming it restrains that natural inclination. If your natural inclination is to curse other drivers when you’re alone in the car, then taming your tongue would mean you’re more aware of the presence of God than what other people are doing around you. Now if an unbeliever has a passenger in the car who thinks highly of him and someone cuts him off or stops short in front of him, then he may well restrain his tongue for the sake of impressing his passenger, but taming goes much further. Taming doesn’t just change the behavior; it changes the thinking that produces the behavior. The Word of God changes the way we think and our thinking changes the way we live. This goes back to the power of God’s Word to change our lives.

No man can tame the tongue. Only God can do that. Apart from true faith in the living God, the tongue is innately uncontrollable and untamable. So, one of the characteristic marks of a person without genuine faith is an uncontrolled or untamed tongue. Second…

II.        The tongue is prone to moral extremes in order to get its own advantage (9-10).

9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.

In verses 9-10, James strikes much closer to home. Now he’s talking about people in the church who bless our God and Father and then go out and curse men made in His image. This group would include both false believers who fake it, as well as true believers who genuinely yearn to please God, but still battle sins of the mouth. Everyone one of us has battled these sins of the mouth. But just because we have slipped in the past doesn’t mean we therefore choose to live on the ground wallowing in the dirt.

The true believer hates his sin and strives to repent. We know that Peter loved Jesus and even confessed that “He was the Christ, the Son of the living God”. But after three years of walking with Jesus on the night of His arrest and trial, Peter swore around a charcoal fire that he didn’t know the Man. When they insisted that he knew Jesus and even his Galilean accent gave him away, Peter resorted to his old fisherman vocabulary. He cursed to distance himself from his association with Jesus. He knew that people who love Jesus didn’t talk that way – so he cursed. (Isn’t that interesting? When Peter wanted to make people think he wasn’t a follower of Jesus, he instinctively knew the quickest way to distance himself from Jesus was to use profanity.) But then he saw Jesus and the cock crowed. Then it dawned on Peter that he had just fulfilled what Jesus said would happen. He went out and wept bitterly. That’s the response of a true believer to sin. Peter hated what he’d done. The tongue is prone to moral extremes to get its own advantage.

When verse 9 says, “With it we bless our God and Father…” James is referring to the blessings prayed to God in the traditional Jewish worship. The Jews to whom James wrote were accustomed to pronouncing blessings to God at the end of each of the eighteen eulogies, or benedictions, they prayed three times a day, saying, “Blessed be Thou, O God.” For the unsaved, natural man, we shouldn’t expect a tamed tongue; the natural tongue is untamable by man. But James’s point is that for the true believer, there will be a taming of the tongue because God is controlling every aspect of his new nature. When a Christian fails, he confesses it as sin and repents. That is, he breaks the pattern before it becomes a pattern.

In verse 10 James says, “Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.” Notice: James is here declaring that duplicity of speech is not a characteristic of true believers. In Colossians 3:8, Paul lists sins of the mouth among those vices Christians are commanded to put off… “But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him…” The command of God through Paul is this: “Put these off!” And James says when blessing and cursing flow from the same mouth, these things ought not to be so. Only Christ can tame your tongue. If He hasn’t tamed it, then you should take that as an indicator that you may not truly be His follower. “Ought not” is a strong negative used only here in the entire NT. Then notice the third point in verses 11-12…

III.       The tongue is an unstable spring and an unnatural tree, yielding contrary products from the same source (11-12).

“11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.”

In these verses, James is pointing out that the tongue operates contrary to the laws of nature. In nature, a spring would never send forth both fresh water and bitter water from the same opening! In nature, a fig tree would never bear olives or a grapevine bear figs! But the tongue has the ability to bear contrary fruit depending on the orientation of the heart. The definition of “good” goes beyond mere external appearances. The definition of “good” is God Himself. Bad hearts can mouth good sounding words, but those words are far from good in the sight of God. God is not mocked. Jesus said: “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19 “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 “So then, you will know them by their fruits” [Mt. 7:18-20, NASB].

Jesus changes this duplicitous scenario in the lives of His ransomed worshippers. True faith transforms us internally which always produces an external effect. So apart from faith in Christ, the tongue is an unstable spring and an unnatural tree, yielding contrary products from the same source. James is saying, if you’re a genuine believer, this will not be true of you. Certainly, this will not be habitually or characteristically true of a genuine Christian.

Your tongue is untamable by you. But Jesus tames the whole nature as we yield our lives to His control. He is the Master and when we live under His control and influence, it will show up in the way we speak and live.

Let’s pray…



(c) Charles Kevin Grant 

March 10, 2006