2 For we all go wrong in a number of things. If a man never makes a slip in his talk, then he is a complete man and able to keep all his body in control.
If a man seems to have religion and has no control over his tongue but lets himself be tricked by what is false, this man's religion is of no value.
For by your words will your righteousness be seen, and by your words you will be judged.
Even so the tongue is a small part of the body, but it takes credit for great things. How much wood may be lighted by a very little fire! And the tongue is a fire; it is the power of evil placed in our bodies, making all the body unclean, putting the wheel of life on fire, and getting its fire from hell.
He who keeps a watch on his mouth keeps his life; but he whose lips are open wide will have destruction.
As it is said in the holy Writings, There is not one who does righteousness;
And there is no one who makes prayer to your name, or who is moved to keep true to you: for your face is veiled from us, and you have given us into the power of our sins.
Who is able to say, I have made my heart clean, I am free from my sin?
If they do wrong against you, (for no man is without sin,) and you are angry with them and give them up into the power of those who are fighting against them, so that they take them away as prisoners into a strange land, far off or near;
If we say that we have no sin, we are false to ourselves and there is nothing true in us. If we say openly that we have done wrong, he is upright and true to his word, giving us forgiveness of sins and making us clean from all evil. If we say that we have no sin, we make him false and his word is not in us.
So I see a law that, though I have a mind to do good, evil is present in me.
For anyone who keeps all the law, but makes a slip in one point, is judged to have gone against it all.
Make you full of every good work and ready to do all his desires, working in us whatever is pleasing in his eyes through Jesus Christ; and may the glory be given to him for ever and ever. So be it.
Whom we are preaching; guiding and teaching every man in all wisdom, so that every man may be complete in Christ;
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; because these are opposite the one to the other; so that you may not do the things which you have a mind to do.
Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from words of deceit.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on James 3
Commentary on James 3 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 3
The apostle here reproves ambition, and an arrogant magisterial tongue; and shows the duty and advantage of bridling it because of its power to do mischief. Those who profess religion ought especially to govern their tongues (v. 1-12). True wisdom makes men meek, and avoiders of strife and envy: and hereby it may easily be distinguished from a wisdom that is earthly and hypocritical (v. 13-18).
Jam 3:1-12
The foregoing chapter shows how unprofitable and dead faith is without works. It is plainly intimated by what this chapter first goes upon that such a faith is, however, apt to make men conceited and magisterial in their tempers and their talk. Those who set up faith in the manner the former chapter condemns are most apt to run into those sins of the tongue which this chapter condemns. And indeed the best need to be cautioned against a dictating, censorious, mischievous use of their tongues. We are therefore taught,
Jam 3:13-18
As the sins before condemned arise from an affectation of being thought more wise than others, and being endued with more knowledge than they, so the apostle in these verses shows the difference between men's pretending to be wise and their being really so, and between the wisdom which is from beneath (from earth or hell) and that which is from above.