NOTES for Jam 3:1-2

In calling us to tame the tongue, the apostle James speaks of the fundamental human tendency to replace action with talk about it. In the preceding chapter the apostle writes that faith which does not find expression in a person’s actions and deeds is dead. In today’s text he continues this thought, saying that we easily mistake the desire to teach other people how to live for faith. In the Church of the apostolic age, teachers were Christians who explained the essence of the faith and the foundations of moral life to those preparing for baptism and to all members of the Church. In saying, “...not many of you should become teachers,” the apostle calls us first of all to take responsibility for practical witness, which finds honor and approval with the invisible God rather than with human beings. Like the apostle Paul, the apostle James regards instruction here as a special form of ministry to which not all Christians are called. This is its fundamental difference from living according to Christ’s commandments.

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.