OUR SINS OF SPEECH
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 3:1. Masters.—Teachers. In the sixteenth century “master” meant “schoolmaster.” Do not get into the way of being teachers. Do not set yourselves up as teachers (Matthew 23:8-10). The title of Doctor of the Law was highly coveted among the Jews. Greater condemnation, judgment, than those who are not judged by the standard for teachers. To assert ourselves as teachers is to bring upon ourselves the responsibilities of teachers.
James 3:2. Offend.—Or, “stumble.” Perfect man.—In the sense of holding himself in complete moral restraint. Control of speech is named, not as in itself constituting perfection, but as a crucial test indicating whether the man has or has not attained unto it.
James 3:3. Behold.—Better, εἰ δέ, “if now.”
James 3:4. Governor.—Read, “the impulse of the steersman willeth, or may wish.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 3:1-4
Masterfulness in Speech.—Our Lord in His teaching reproved the pride of the Rabbis, or teachers, of his time: “They love the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutations in the market-places, and to be called of men, Rabbi.” And He gives the counsel which St. James does but repeat in this passage: “But be not ye [My disciples] called Rabbi; for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.” In the tabernacle and temple services everything was kept in the control of the priesthood. There was no attempt at public religious instruction. When the school of the prophets was founded, authorised and systematic religious instruction may be said to have begun. These trained prophets went to and fro through the country using every opportunity for teaching the Scriptures, and the will of God as revealed in them, to the people. After the return from the Captivity synagogues were founded, and the services held in them included both worship and instruction. Persons held in good esteem, or claiming to be Rabbis, were at liberty to give expositions or exhortations, and in this practice is found the beginning of the modern sermon, as a part of Christian worship. But while there was much that was valuable and helpful in this custom, it opened the way to a possible serious evil. It proved difficult to keep unsuitable persons from giving these exhortations, and difficult to put the exhortations into any wise limitations. In every age, and in every society, there are men who love to hear themselves talk, and who push themselves in at every opportunity. In every age, and in every society, there are men who love to be masters, who must lord it over others. And they are often by no means the best persons for the positions they force themselves into. The masterful men and the talkers were a grave anxiety in the synagogue life of the Jews. And when synagogues of Christian Jews were established, the same evil cropped up; it even became more serious because Christianity encouraged the use of special gifts for mutual edification. St. James dealt with a serious and growing evil, when he thus warned the Jewish Christian disciples against too readily setting up to be “masters,” or “teachers.” In the Christian Church, as in the Jewish, there was the peril of self-appointed Rabbiship. The idea that he can teach often comes to a Christian disciple as a temptation from the evil one, which needs to be steadily resisted.
I. The disposition to put everybody else right.—This is not the spirit of the real teacher, but it is the spirit of the would-be teacher, whose masterfulness finds expression in that desire to teach. It is a characteristic of natural disposition, and is close kin with the energy that overmasters difficulties. But it is a perilous characteristic, and needs to be early placed in forcible restraints, and afterwards kept in wise control by the man himself. Unrestrained it makes a man positive, heedless of the opinions of others, and unlovely in his relations with others. It may even make him a heresy-monger, keen to observe any failures from the standard of what he happens to think to be truth. Morally the disposition to set everybody else right is altogether reprehensible: it involves an assumption of superiority which is essentially un-Christian. The man who appoints himself as teacher, whether other people recognise his teaching gifts or not, “thinks of himself more highly than he ought to think”; and consequently does himself as much moral mischief as he does others. St. James puts one thing upon the consideration of those who are so ready to make themselves teachers. They seriously increase their personal responsibility. The judgment of a teacher must necessarily be a more searching and severe thing than the judgment of a private Christian. Instead of wanting to be a teacher, the gifted teacher always shrinks back from the responsibility, saying, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2:6). “The test of all ministry must come at last in the day of trial, and fiery inquisition of God.”
II. The need every man has for putting himself right.—The true teacher feels how much he has to learn; the would-be teacher feels how much he knows. Humility is the pervading spirit of the true teacher; self-confidence is the spirit of the man who thinks he can teach. He is confident of being himself right, and is not in the least likely to admit, with St. James, that “in many things we offend all.” Our Lord taught, in a similar way, that the man who could easily find “motes” in his brother’s eyes was most likely to have a “beam” in his own, and he had better see to his own “beam” before he presumed to attend to other peoples’ “motes.” All men have work enough in the disciplining of their own characters; and if a man has a masterful disposition, let him exercise it well on his own faults and frailties. He would do well to exercise that masterful disposition in getting his own masterfulness into good control. We all offend in some things: so we all need to teach and train ourselves.
III. The control of ourselves should come before attempting to control others.—If the would-be teacher means to gain control of his entire self, he will have to begin with his tongue. If he is like a masterful horse, he will have to put a bit in his mouth. If he is like a wayward, tossed-about ship, he will have to put on a rudder, and take care to hold it firm, and move it wisely. If such a man “offend not in word,” he is a “perfect man,” in this sense, that he is able also to “bridle the whole body.” Who cannot recognise the practical wisdom of St. James’s counsel? Who has not earnestly said to himself, “If I could only master my speech, I could easily master myself”? Men talk when they have nothing to say. Men talk before they think. Men talk without criticising what they are going to say. And therefore they constantly “offend in word.” “The work of ruling this one rebel [the tongue] is so great, that a much less corresponding effort will keep the other powers in subjection.” “Control of speech is named, not as in itself constituting perfection, but as a crucial test indicating whether the man has, or has not, attained unto it.” The true spirit of the teacher, whom God calls forth to teach, may be partly seen in Moses, and more fully seen in Jeremiah. With something like unworthy hesitation Moses exclaimed, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue.” With the shrinking back of a sincere humility, Jeremiah said, “Ah! Lord God, behold I cannot speak; for I am a child.” The man who thinks he can God does not use. In his case it is all the man; there is no room for God. The man who fears he cannot God will use, because He can make His strength perfect in the man’s weakness.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 3:2. Control of Speech a Sign of Character.—“If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man.” Isaac Barrow says, “A constant governance of our speech, according to duty and reason, is a high instance and a special argument of a thoroughly sincere and solid goodness.” There are remarkable differences in natural disposition, which make the control of speech much easier for some men than for others. And, indeed, sometimes a naturally silent disposition is the real explanation of what seems to be a man’s self-control. And it also needs to be considered, that undue freedom of speech is allied to certain weaknesses of character. The self-assertive man is usually a great talker. So is the conceited man; so is the ambitious man; so is the man who has been a spoilt child. In public life the great talker often succeeds in making himself important. Character means that a man has got all the forces of his being into moderate limitations, and harmonious and mutual relations. His work in his speech gains prominence, because it is most difficult, but most influential when accomplished.
The Sense of Infirmity in Every Man.—“For in many things we all stumble.” This should prevent our showing any superiority, or masterfulness, in our dealing with others. “Were we to think more of our own mistakes and offences, we should be less apt to judge other people. While we are severe against what we count offensive in others, we do not consider how much there is in us which is justly offensive to them. Self-justifiers are commonly self-deceivers. We are all guilty before God; and those who vaunt it over the frailties and infirmities of others little think how many things they offend in themselves. Nay, perhaps, their magisterial deportment, and censorious tongues, may prove worse than any faults they condemn in others. Let us learn to be severe in judging ourselves, but charitable in our judgments of other people”.—Matthew Henry.
James 3:4. Christian Ability.—Dropping the particular reference to the tongue, or the power of the tongue, take the text as illustrating the fact, that man turns about everything, handles all heaviest bulks, masters all hardest difficulties, in the same way—that is, by using a small power so as to get the operation of a power greater than his own. We have no power to handle ships at sea by their bulk. The soul is a magnitude more massive than any ship, and the storms it encounters are wilder than those of the sea. And yet there are small helms given to us, by which we are able always to steer it triumphantly on, to just the good we seek, and the highest we can even conceive. It is assumed that we have no ability in ourselves, more than simply to turn ourselves into the track of another more sufficient power, and so to have it upon us. Helms do not impel ships. Ours is only a steering power, though it is a very great power at that. For when we so use it as to hold ourselves fairly to God’s operation, as we hold a ship to the winds, that is sufficient, that will do everything, turning even our impossibilities themselves into victory. Glance at the analogies of our physical experience. Great, overwhelmingly great, as the forces and weights of nature are, what do we accomplish more easily than to turn about their whole body and bring them into manageable service? Doing it always by some adjustment, or mode of address, which acknowledges their superior force. (Winds, waters, gunpowder, steam, electricity, etc.) Prepared by such analogies, our dependence, in the matter of religion, ought to create no speculative difficulties; but we have as much difficulty as ever in making that practical adjustment of ourselves to God, which is necessary in any and every true act of dependence. Some take it upon themselves to do, by their own force, all they are responsible for. But we have no capacity, under the natural laws of the soul, as a self-governing creature, to govern successfully anything, except indirectly, that is by a process of steering. We can steer the mind off from its grudges, ambitions, bad thoughts, by getting it occupied with good and pure objects that work a diversion. If we could wholly govern ourselves, our self-government would not be the state of religion, or bring us any one of its blessed incidents. The soul, as a religious creature, is put in affiance, by a fixed necessity of its nature, with God. Having broken this bond in its sin, it comes back in religion to become what it inwardly longs for—restored to God, filled with God’s inspirations, made conscious of God. And this is its regeneration. All “impossibilities” we can easily and surely master, by only bringing ourselves into the range of God’s operations. The helm-power only is ours; the executive is God’s. What is wanted is the using of our small helms so as to make our appeal to God’s operation. And there must be a clearing of a thousand particular and even smallest things that will steer off the soul from God—a clearing of the helm for free action. The faith which is the condition of salvation is simply trusting ourselves over to God, and so bringing ourselves into the range of His Divine operation. The reason why so many fail is, that they undertake to do the work themselves, heaving away spasmodically to lift themselves over the unknown crisis by main strength—as if seizing tho ship by its mast, or the main bulk of its body, they were going to push it on through the voyage themselves! Whereas it is the work of God, and not in any other sense their own, than that, coming in to God by a total trust in Him, they are to have it in God’s working. In a similar way many miscarriages occur after conversion. Nothing was necessary to prevent them, but simply to carry a steady helm in life’s duties. Many disciples fall out of course by actually steering themselves out of God’s operation. And there is danger that the man who is tending the small helm of duty with great exactness may become painfully legal in it—a precisionist, a Pharisee. The word “operation” may be taken as referring only to the omnipotent working of His will or spiritual force. But there is a power of God which is not His omnipotence, and has a wholly different mode of working; I mean His moral power—that of His beauty, goodness, gentleness, truth, purity, suffering, compassion, in one word, His character. In this kind of power He works, not by what He wills, but by what He is. What is wanted, therefore, in the regeneration of souls, and their advancement toward perfection afterward, is to be somehow put in the range of this higher power and kept there. And here exactly is the sublime art and glory of the new Divine economy in Christ. For He is such, and so related to our want, that our mind gets a way open through Him to God’s Divine beauty and greatness, so that we may bring our heart up into the transforming, moulding efficacy of these, which we most especially need. This exactly is Christianity—that Christ in humanity is God humanised, Divine feeling and perfection let down into the modes of finite sentiment and apprehension. In His human person, and the revelation of His cross, He is the door, the interpreter to our hearts, of God Himself—so the moral power of God upon our hearts. Christ, as the Son of man, is that small helm put in the hand, so to speak, of our affections, to bring us in to God’s most interior beauty and perfection, and to put us in the power of His infinite, unseen character; thus to be moulded by it and fashioned to conformity with it.—Horace Bushnell, D.D.
Ships and Rudders.—The ships that were “so great” in former days were, in fact, scarcely more than cock-boats, or small coasters, scraping round the shores of the inland seas; whereas, now, what we call the great ships are big enough to store in their hold a whole armed fleet of the ancient time, vessels and men together; and these huge bulks strike out into the broad oceans, defying the storms, yet still turned about as before, whithersoever the helmsman will. There he stands at his post, a single man, scarcely more than a fly that has lighted on the immense bulk of the vessel, having a small city of people and their goods in the world of timber under him, and perhaps with only one hand, turning gently his lever of wood, or nicely gauging the motion of his wheel, he steers along its steady track the mountain mass of the ship, turning it always to its course, even as he would an arrow to its mark.—Horace Bushnell, D.D.