James 3

1-12 Taming the Tongue

• Be cautious about teaching, for it subjects you to stricter judgment, and we all make mistakes.
• Anyone who doesn’t make mistakes in speech is perfect.
• The tongue is a small but powerful instrument, like a bit that controls the horse and a rudder that controls a ship.
• It can also be a deadly fire, harder to tame than wild beasts.
• It can be poisonous, used both to bless and curse; but this is not as it should be.
• In nature, you don’t get fresh and bitter water from the same spring, nor do fruit trees bear strange fruit.

13-18 Two Kinds of Wisdom

• Wisdom and understanding are shown through good works, not through boasting, which comes from envy and selfish ambition.
• That’s not heavenly wisdom, and it causes all kinds of disorder and wickedness.
• Wisdom from above is

first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Note: I include the exact quote above because of the beauty of its sentiments, its emphasis on peace among believers. How often do we see people who are so confident in their “rightness” and “wisdom” that they’re willing to create all kinds of disorder among their family members or spiritual brothers and sisters? That’s not using wisdom from above, which is full of mercy, which shows no partiality. When we form political cliques within churches, we are showing partiality. We treat those in our “clique” with understanding; those outside our clique deserve no grace.

This also speaks to those who might envy the attention received by others for their good work, a la Ananias and Sapphira of Acts 5. They boasted falsely of their gift, and look at the havoc it caused in the church.