Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. That’s may be a very old saying, but it is also the biggest load of rubbish you will ever hear. Words do hurt, what people say to us does have the power to hurt us. What we say to other people does have the power to hurt them. I can tell you now there are words that people said to me twenty years ago that echo in my head today. Have people said words to you that wound. Has someone told you that your rubbish has someone told you that you are can’t do something? Well the good news is that these things are not true, but that didn’t stop them hurting did it? James tells us in this passage that the tongue is a very powerful weapon both for good and for bad. James says if you consider yourself a Jesus follower but don’t watch what you say to people then you have missed the point. So in the same way that we can be hurt by what people say we too can hurt others. If we get angry quickly and says things to hurt other people; then we are doing to them what others have done to us and that is not how we Jesus followers should be. Wow sometimes it’s hard to be a Christian, but James reminded us early in this chapter that ultimately we would be rewarded for living the Christian life, for doing the right thing not just speaking the right words.
