The ministry of teacher in the earliest Christian Church was above all a ministry of the word. The teacher, or rabbi, in the church community took on the careful study of the Torah and the teaching of the Torah to others, primarily on the practical level. Of course, this practical teaching in the Church took place in the context of Christian interpretations of the Torah. And here the spiritual condition of the teacher himself became foundational. The ministry of a teacher-rabbi, like no other, easily and quickly exposed the gap between knowledge and even understanding of fundamental things connected with the Torah and with spiritual life in general, on the one hand, and awareness of those same things, on the other.

To learn and even understand what, for example, the inner Torah is, is much easier than becoming aware of its presence in one's own life and changing that life accordingly. Awareness presupposes inner changes in a person corresponding to what he knows theoretically. Then a person's whole life changes, not only his views and worldview.

The criterion of inner change is precisely speech. Here James is not original; he is merely reminding his readers of what should have been well known to them from the very popular collections of aphorisms of that time, included in the books we today call wisdom books. It is enough, for example, to open the Book of Proverbs to find there a whole series of aphorisms describing how a wise person guards his mouth and bridles his tongue, in contrast to a fool, who does not know how to do this. James merely reminds them of these obvious enough things. Indeed, for nothing of this sort to "slip out" from the tongue, a person must change seriously inwardly. The changes must touch his psyche so deeply that even the subconscious ceases to live a life of its own. Knowledge and understanding alone are not enough here; what is needed is that very awareness. And if it is absent, then it is better not to become a teacher, because the gap between knowledge and awareness is an extremely dangerous thing, spiritually destructive. And sometimes not only spiritually.

The apostle's discourse on the need to bridle the tongue is one of the most eloquent passages in his epistle. From antiquity there has come down to us a story about Aesop, whose master twice sent him to the market with orders to bring back the best and the worst thing in the world. Both times Aesop brought back a tongue—the instrument of both evil and good. But while Aesop merely bore witness to the actual state of affairs, James, acknowledging that reality when blessing and cursing come from the same mouth, concludes: my brothers, this should not be so.

These words of James seem to be contradicted by his own statement that no human being can tame the tongue. This thought might be called excessively pessimistic; yet it is not difficult to understand that James had grounds for such a claim, for he is speaking about purely human efforts. But if we rely not on them but on the wisdom that comes from above, much changes.

The words of the catholic Epistle of the Apostle James, that the same spring cannot pour forth both salt water and fresh, are unfortunately very convicting. The apostle says that if, while claiming to know the truth, you harbor bitter envy and contentiousness in your heart, then you are a liar. “Do not boast and lie against the truth,” says the apostle. The boasting in question is precisely the claim to the name of Christian made by a contentious person.

The Apostle James explains in detail what characterizes a person who lives by true divine wisdom. He says that this wisdom is pure, which means it is not directed toward one’s own exaltation. Heavenly wisdom is peaceable: it seeks peace above all else. It is gentle and open to reason, because it values peace more than one’s own human sense of being right. Heavenly wisdom is full of mercy and good fruits, because it seeks to fulfil the will of Christ. It is free from divisions (“impartial” in the Synodal text) and without hypocrisy, because it acknowledges that the divine law is one and the same for everyone.

The apostle’s words in the concluding part of today’s passage, “Where do wars and quarrels among you come from?” can be applied equally to individual Christians and to the large “divisions” of the Christian people. We display the contentiousness of which the Apostle James speaks when we grumble at Christians standing beside us and arrogantly lecture them, even though we ourselves are no different from them. And when we reproach others for dioceses opened on our territory (ours, not God’s), although we ourselves have plenty of dioceses in foreign lands, that is the same contentiousness. Alas.