Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.
James 2 is the standard passage for pressing home the power and danger of the tongue, but God didn’t wait till the New Testament’s latter half to give us that knowledge. In the Garden, God’s tongue brought life and the potential of death (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23, 7:7-10). In the Garden, Adam ordered the world with his tongue (Gen. 2:19). Then, in the Garden Adam and Eve waged war of the tongue with the serpent and became traitors to God (Gen. 3). Proverbs continues reminding us that in our tongues and in the tongues of those around us is life and death, in the physical and spiritual sense, and that we should take what we love, remembering that fact.
The tongue’s mundane power should be clear to us, when we consider our lives. We live and breathe in context of relationships. The tongue, our capacity to communicate, is formative to those relationships. By my tongue, I can form the relationships which get me food and rest and clothing and companionship. By my tongue, alternately, I can find the nearest unstable fellow and persuade him to shank me. I could also play the long game, building a relationship and betraying it, forming a long marriage and then talking my way into an affair. Thus, I’d kill the relationship and, with certain temperaments, get myself killed physically to boot. In a very blunt and physical senses, my tongue can decide whether I live or die, short term or long term, intentionally or unintentionally.
But there’s more.
Those who love life will eat its fruit; those who love death, they too will eat its fruit (Is. 3:10-11). We enter the image and participation of that which we love. If we love death, we participate in it; if we love life, we participate in it. Moreover, as per Romans 13:8-10, because Biblical love is a course of life, not merely an emotion, these relationships serve as a definition of what it means to love life or death. He who loves life does the deeds of life and bears its fruit; he who loves death does the deeds of death and bears death’s fruit, even eternal damnation. (He who loves the tongue for itself is an idolater and therein a lover of death; he who loves the tongue as a means for God is being sanctified and therefore ever more a lover of life.)
What, then, does it look like to love death? What does it look like to love death with the tongue? Our starting point is simple: he who hates God “loves death” (Prov. 8:36). Loving death is hating God. When I disobey Him, I write a love sonnet to death, a declaration that I want that wage of sin which is death (Rom. 6:23). Loving death with my tongue, then, means misusing my speech. It is silence when I should speak the truth or should comfort. It is gossip; it is slander; it is petty argument. My tongue is a powerful tool to build relationship, and therefore it is also a powerful tool to break those relationships, to declare hatred of my fellow man (made in His image). At its summit, my tongue, whether literally or metaphorically as referencing my capacity to witness, is an integral part of blasphemy, which at its worst is that sin Christ calls ‘unforgiveable’ (Matt. 12:31).
The other course which lies before us is to love life, with heart, body, soul, and strength, even with our tongues. Death and life are in the tongue’s power, we are told, and here that power is to love God, who gives us life (Gen. 2:7). By the tongue, by communicating in word and action with others, we can praise and rejoice in Him, can build lasting relationships of mutual growth. We can live according to His law, live to the life which His law brings.
The Lord’s promise is this: “Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out” (John 6:37b). He gives His people a love of life (Ps. 119:149,159), and gives us that life, eternal life. He gives us life more full in this world, the foretaste of the eternity He has worked for us. The tongue, then, is the means by which we declare His good gospel to the nations (Matt. 28:18-20). We declare it in our actions, first, by our relationship with each other (John 13:34-35) and with the rest of Creation (Gen. 9:1-7). We declare it, second and integral to all salvation, with our words, communicating the fundamental knowledge which He turns to saving faith, to the faith which is reliance upon and love for Him above all else.
In this way too the tongue has the power of life within it.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Colson Potter writes copious fiction and nonfiction, including a weekly Proverbs post and his blog at Creational Story.
