In his hit song, “My Way,” Frank Sinatra crooned, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”1 Personally, I cannot relate. If anything, I’ve had more regrets than I care to remember, many of them anchored in my actions and probably even more wielded through my words. Perhaps this is your experience, as well. Now, it would be easy to excoriate ourselves, as if by kicking our shins hard enough and often enough we’d either alter our sin nature or atone for it. But shin-kicking accomplishes neither. It is as fruitless as it is misguided. (And it looks silly.) So, in today’s post, let’s begin to examine our words, or “the tongue.”
Never one to hold back, the plainspoken apostle James wrote, “the tongue . . . is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”2 Like the California wildfires of this past month — widespread, uncontrolled, and devastating —such are our words in the hands of the flesh, our sin nature. James adds a note of finality: “No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”3 Then we do well to understand and accept the fact that our untamable tongue exposes our reprobate nature. Such understanding is good, for it turns us from fearful denial and toward liberating confession; it redirects us from self-flagellation and to reliance on the atonement of Christ.
Then what do we as believers do? How do we match our talk with our walk? I think we begin by acclimating ourselves with what is true. First, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”4 Christ lives in us, we live in Him, and we are new. It follows that “when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin”5 — we, our tongues included, now have choices. Then not only are we empowered to follow the Spirit’s lead, God is actually at work in us to give us the desire and the power to do what pleases him.6 Ours is to give ourselves over to Him in every way and to follow His lead. For only in Christ does “my way” give way to His way.
“Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.” — 1 Peter 3:10-11 ESV
Father, fill us with Your Spirit, so that, hearing His voice, we would use our voice to build up others and glorify You. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 Sinatra, Frank. “My Way.” On Sinatra at the Sands, recorded December 30, 1968, Reprise Records, 1969.
2 James 3:6 NIV
3 James 3:8 NIV
4 2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
5 Romans 6:7 NLT
6 Philippians 2:13 NLT
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Paul Nordman—Author 