Our Wellspring of Words
When your heart is transformed by the gospel, your lips follow. Before God mercifully regenerated you and gave you a new heart, your speech was not sanctified. The problem was not only on the surface, but deep within your heart. Jesus uses the metaphor of a tree to describe it: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33). Indeed, as Jesus asked, "How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). Our lips reveal our hearts.
You do not have to be full of profanity to profane God, by the way. Certainly the Pharisees were not known for being "vulgar" in Israel (except by Christ!). We can speak about any manner of things irreverently as well as about God. We can even speak to people in ways that deny their fundamental identity as people made in the image of God. This sin is far easier for many Christians than slipping into blasphemy or using foul language.
James, the brother of Jesus, took these words of Christ's to heart (where they must do their soul-cleansing work!) as he penned his letter to the church. The book of James famously echoes and applies many of Jesus' teachings:
With it [our mouth] 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" (James 3:9-11).
The wellspring of the new man, his new heart, is never supposed to produce from the same mouth "blessing and cursing." To be blunt, worshipping God one moment then cursing your fellow man the next is evil. That double standard only comes from a tongue which "is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell" (James 3:5-6). No man can tame the tongue; that work is reserved for the Holy Spirit who regenerates us and gives us new life in Christ (James 3:8; Titus 3:1-8; Galatians 5:25).
The Spirit-given and never-changing status of sanctification we receive at conversion must continue to do its ever-increasing and practical cleansing work throughout our conversation (to use a play on words from King James English). "That ye put off concerning the former conversation [a word for all of your conduct] the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:22-24).
Are you speaking in a way that reflects the new man that God in his grace has created in you, a new man which reflects the image of God in the world as intended? Are you speaking to sinful men in a way that respects the fact that they are made in God's image?
May God send coals from his alter to cleanse our unclean lips! God does this through inner transformation by his Spirit through the gospel of his beloved Son. The gospel is the only antidote to transform the tree, to purify the spring, to cleanse the heart. What we say about God must be reflected in how we speak about everything and to everyone. To do anything less is to pervert the gospel. Case closed.
I am thoroughly convinced, and I pray that you will be too, that our world needs to hear from Christians who are not double-tongued, double-hearted, double-minded, double-watered springs, two-fruited trees (see Psalm 12:2; 119:113; 1 Tim 3:8; James 1:8; 4:8). I pray that our sin-sick yet desperate world will hear the true heart of Christianity, the heart that is a spring of life flowing with words of healing. I pray that people around us will get the chance to hear the actual gospel with the heart and tone and content that demands attention because it is full of the heart of God himself, the biblical God, the true and living God. I am afraid that the overwhelming majority of those in our city have never heard the gospel from lips transformed by the gospel springing up from hearts regenerated by the gospel. May we never rest until our hearts overflow with springs of grace. May we never rest until all hear.
I suppose I continue to write on this subject because I, like James, have been gripped by what Christ taught about the words I say as I have been preaching through Matthew. Additionally, I had the opportunity to preach a lengthy section of Ephesians to nearly 200 youth at a summer camp this July. It stood out to me how much Paul said about what we say—the sins we say. Sins we often ignore in order to focus on more ignominious varieties (You should read Ephesians 4 and 5 right now!). Did I really want to be more like Jesus, transformed and renewed in every way so that the wellspring of my life reflected the Christ I preached? Would I constantly bring my mouth before the Lord for the gospel to cleanse it so that my neighbor might not hear me but God?
May you all "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:29-30).
