A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul.
What makes a man a fool? The psalmist declared to God, “When I told of my ways, You answered me; teach me Your statutes!” (Ps. 119:26). The fool is the one who, when he declares his ways before God, refuses the answer and despises His statutes. To this man, all power is a ruin, because he uses that power only for sin. The power of the tongue, therefore, the “fire” and the “rudder” of man’s heart (James 3:4,6), that power is for the fool a sure damnation, a “snare to his soul.”
The power of the tongue works outwards and inwards. It works outwards because my tongue is an instrument to harm or mislead others. I can use my tongue to insult and belittle another. I can use my tongue to gather others against my neighbor to destroy him. I can use my tongue to lull him into complacency in his sin, whether from malice or to protect my self-delusion (Rom. 1:18).
When I speak to somebody else made in God’s image, I can choose either to tear him (/her) down or build him up. Or I can do as many do, foolishly, and forget both possibilities. When I so abdicate, I leave the outcome to my own instincts and character. When I do not act intentionally in love, I cannot exert care to build up rather than harm. If I were sinless, such abdication would be mere dereliction, liable to harm only by ignorance, but I am not sinless (1 John 1:10). Because I am sinful, I set a snare for my brother when I do not seek to love him. My instincts and my uncontrolled desires are rotten, and so their fruit is rotten as well (Job 14:4).
The power of the tongue also works inward. For first, when I harm another with my tongue, I sin against God, bringing ruin upon myself. If I harm by temptation, Christ tells us that, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him… to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). If I harm by insult, by mockery, by bringing grief and pain which need not be, not only do I harm the relationship between me and the one I harm, but I also “sit in the seat of scoffers,” an act Psalm 1:1 speaks of as incompatible with loving His law.
My tongue’s power against myself is not merely reflexive.
Perhaps the most constant use men make of their metaphorical ‘tongues’ is the arguments we level towards ourselves. Whether vast webs of subtlety or brute denials, we build worldviews for ourselves which justify lies. The fool says to himself, “There is no God” (Ps. 53:1), but he sees God before him, “in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). Sinful man, who hates God, can only justify his denial of God’s authority by lying to himself. Therefore, Paul says, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” (Rom. 1:21-22).
The foolish Christian, such as we all are in part (1 John 1:10), is aided and empowered in foolishness by the tongue. He does not say, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1), not right out, but he knows that what he wants is sin. He knows that what he wants can be right only if there is no God. If God rules, we know, then we are bound by the law of God given in Scripture and graven on our hearts (2 Tim. 3:16:17; Jer. 31:33). We want to sin, though, being still in this flesh (Rom. 7:23-24).
The foolish Christian does not accept the full lie; it is antithetical to his nature as a Christian. However, I know from experience that much evil can be justified by denial, by avoidance, by self-deception. In this, one of sin’s prime tools is the faculty of language, of thought and communication, including communication to the self (which is self-understanding). Do I wish to have pleasure when I should work? I can find a reason. It will not be a good reason, as a rule, but I have already reached the conclusion. I merely need the excuse which the tongue provides to step into the snare. So the trap is set to match the bait.
The greatest danger of the tongue, though, is in how we use it towards God. All our words are before God and in a sense towards Him. A tongue which strays against God paints damnation for the wielder of that tongue. It testifies to a heart dark with sin (Ez. 36:26). Likely the greatest sins condemned in the Old and New Testament respectively were both sins of the tongue: proselytizing in secret on behalf of false gods, for which even a man’s closest family were to turn their hands against him in execution (Deut. 13:6-11) and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which Christ dubbed unforgivable (Matt. 12:31-32).
The tongue, however, is also a powerful tool of good given by God. Only because it has such potential for righteousness is it so dangerous in sin (Luk. 12:48). The tongue is the tool by which we fulfil that last great command given by Christ upon this earth before His Ascension, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). In witnessing to Him, directly and indirectly, in outright evangelism and in faithful living (1 Pet. 2:13-17), in building relationship as only the tongue can, our tongues can be to men means of the eternal blessing which Christ bought upon the Cross.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
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.
