"With it [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water."
Consistency is one of the hardest spiritual disciplines to learn, because our flesh is constantly at war with the Spirit who dwells within us. The flesh seeks to please self often at the expense of others, which explains why cursing comes so naturally. Our ancestry also plays a role as we are descendants of Adam, prone to sin at will. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that blessing is counter-intuitive as we struggle to outweigh our frequency to curse others by means of edification. In this passage, James finishes his exhaustive argument on the perils of the tongue by giving a realistic picture concerning the application of how we use it and with what frequency. Do we bless more than we curse? Do our words more often build up or tear down? Yes, these are simple questions, but their conviction provides a springboard into the depths of our hearts where true intention lies.
To bless someone is to convey sentiments of affirmation, encouragement or praise. Blessing elicits positive energy, for it seeks the happiness/prosperity of others and edifies/strengthens their countenance. Conversely, cursing seeks to injure, harm, harass or torment others with evil intentions. Cursing another is self-serving because it only pleases our interest at the expense of the other person's feelings. Bottom-line, blessing builds up while cursing tears down. Yet at our core, do we recognize the emotional impact that our tongues impart on the psyche of others when we curse them? Can we easily quantify how often we bless others, proving how truly infrequent we are in our application? What spiritual investment are we making through blessing into the lives of others for the the glory of God? According to James, our tongue provides the answers to these questions.
What we must understand is that consistency in either direction, blessing or cursing, gauges our personal, spiritual temperature. It measures how far we have come in our faith walk, and in truth, how far we have yet to climb. However, is consistency limited to a definition of merely frequency? Absolutely not. Consistency reveals deeper roots. It magnifies the source from which our mouths flow. Therefore, if we profess ourselves as Christ-followers, we must acknowledge that what we say either testifies to the consistent gospel message of Jesus Christ, or opposes it in prideful self-interest. Our message must be consistent with the teachings of God's Word though, otherwise we are no different than the world we live in and our foundation of faith is diminished. For when our message of blessing is unified with frequency, our intentions are clearly defined for the glory of God. But when we consistently curse, we undermine the faith we profess and convey hypocrisy as our identity to the world around us.
Make no mistake, there are times when we feel justified to curse despite our sincere desire not to. But when we are unjustly accused, attacked, stereotyped, misunderstood, offended, demeaned, insulted, criticized, etc., we are presented with a decision: Choose to bless or choose to curse. And what we choose defines our character. For it is much easier to bless when life is good, but when calamity strikes and adversity arises, how we react (cursing) or respond (blessing) defines to whom we are enslaved or indebted to (self or God). That is why James spent 12-verses unpacking the fleshly core of our tongue and its spiritual impact, for we cannot willingly/intentionally live in sin and boldly profess ourselves as followers of Christ. Our calling is higher, and consistency plays a vital role in witnessing to those around us the true freedom that comes from complete surrender to Jesus Christ, obedience to the Word of God, and sanctification through the Holy Spirit.
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