<p>3:9 <i>With this we bless the Lord and the Father, and with this we curse men, even though they are made after the likeness of God</i>- James warns his converts of the need to restrain our tongue; and yet he admits that &ldquo;we&rdquo;, himself included, use the tongue to bless God and curse men; whereas in other parts of his letter he addresses his readers as &ldquo;you&rdquo; when he criticizes their behaviour. But in this matter of the tongue, he holds himself, their teacher, to be afflicted with the same failures as them (James 3:9 cp. 4:15,16).</p><p>James himself appeals in his letter for us to bridle the tongue. But here he seems to say that the tongue is uncontrollable, and &ldquo;we&rdquo;- he includes himself- use it to both bless God and curse men. And he goes on to say that this shouldn&rsquo;t be so, because a good tree brings forth good fruit, i.e. words. Inappropriate words from our mouths indicate that there is something fundamentally wrong with our spirituality. What is the reconciliation of this? I suggest that James, despite being a leading brother, is showing a chink in his own armour, and thereby empowering his message all the more. He is saying that he himself has to admit that &ldquo;we&rdquo;, including himself, do sometimes say inappropriate things. The tongue can be bridled, it can be as Peter puts it &lsquo;refrained&rsquo;. But in practice, no man seems able to totally tame the tongue. And this is why James also says in this very context that we shouldn&rsquo;t be eager to be teachers, because it is almost inevitable that we will use words wrongly and thereby offend our brother, with all the Biblical implications this carries: &ldquo;For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man&rdquo; (3:2). James, a teacher in the ecclesia, a Master in Israel, says that &ldquo;we&rdquo;, himself included, at times offend others; because &ldquo;the tongue can no man tame&rdquo;. And yet it <i>can</i> be bridled, refrained, tamed, just as a horse can be tamed by use of a bridle. Surely what James is saying is this: &lsquo;This matter of the tongue worries me no end. I know I, and all of us, could tame our tongues. It&rsquo;s vital we do. But inappropriate words do still come out of me, and you. And it worries me, because a good tree doesn&rsquo;t bear such bad fruit. It seems no man among us can tame his tongue as he ought. Oh wretched men that we are. Me especially, because I&rsquo;m your teacher, James the brother of Jesus Himself. Yes, let us strive the more earnestly in this matter of bridling the tongue. But who in the end shall deliver us from this bondage of corruption, this seeming inability to live and speak and do and be as we ought to? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord and His saving grace&rsquo;.</p><p>God as creator created man in His own image; and therefore we shouldn't curse men (James 3:9). By reason of the image they bear, we are to act to all men as we would to God Himself; we are not to treat some men as we would animals, who are not in the image of God. Because we are made in God's image, we should therefore not kill other humans (Gen. 9:6). James says the same, in essence, in teaching that because we are in God's image, we shouldn't curse others. To curse a man is to kill him. That's the point of James' allusion to Genesis and to God as creator. Quite simply, respect for the person of others is inculcated by sustained reflection on the way that they too are created in God's image.</p><p>The fact that they did use their tongues to praise God tempted James' readers to think that this meant that they had their tongues and therefore their thinking too in control. Again, the warning against semi-spirituality and a 'feel good religion' comes over. We have seen that the rich, proud speaking members of the ecclesia are the target of much of what James is saying. Our previous notes on 2:6,16 have shown that this group were quite aggressive to the lower ranks of believers. The men &quot;made after the similitude of God&quot; may well refer to the creative power of the word making them in God's image. As with Daniel, Nehemiah and other faithful spiritual leaders of the Jews, James totally associates himself with his brethren- <i>we </i>curse men, he says. It is noteworthy that as a faithful shepherd James does not disassociate himself from this wayward flock. However, elsewhere in the letter he repeatedly addresses them as &quot;ye&quot;- e.g. v.14 is in the same passage concerning control of the tongue: &quot;<i>Ye </i>have bitter envying and strife in your hearts&quot;. The only other places where James associates himself with the readers are in 3:1,2 and 6, again in this same passage about the tongue- it is &quot;among <i>our</i> members&quot;. There seem two possibilities to explain this. It may be that James personally felt guilty of misusing his tongue- &quot;If any man offend not in word the same is a perfect man&quot; (3:2). No doubt James had spoken wrongly at some time and was conscious of this, and therefore felt he could not phrase this criticism of them as he does all the others- he could not write 'You both bless God and curse men with your tongue' when he too was guilty. However, James' 'cursing' and thereby offending (&quot;we offend all&quot;, 3:2), was no doubt a temporary slip-up, compared to his readers whose generally unbridled tongue was because &quot;<i>You</i> (not James) have bitter envying and strife in your hearts&quot; (v.14). This envying and strife within the ecclesia caused the &quot;fightings among you&quot; (4:1), and this again suggests that the cursing of men which they were guilty of related to their words to their brethren. The other possible explanation of why James personally associates himself with the 'cursing' done by the tongue is that &quot;the tongue&quot; may indirectly refer to a certain group within the ecclesial body. They were part of the body of Christ, as was James, therefore the tongue was &quot;among our members&quot; (3:6), and its cursing of men therefore implicated the rest of the ecclesia.</p><p>We have seen that James often bases his reasoning on the sermon on the mount. The ideas of blessing, cursing and men in God's similitude are found in Mt. 5:44-48: &quot;Bless them that curse you... that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven (i.e. showing His spiritual characteristics)... be you therefore perfect&quot; (cp. James 3:2 &quot;If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man&quot;). This again suggests that the men in the similitude of God who were being cursed were those of the ecclesia who blessed these rich brethren who cursed them, and thus became the children of God due to their being born of the word, which makes a man &quot;perfect&quot;. &quot;Similitude&quot; is from a word meaning 'to assimilate', implying a likeness that has been taken on. The &quot;men&quot; like this are those who have developed the likeness of God, &quot;men having become according to likeness of God&quot; (Marshall's Interlinear). The frequent references to Peter's letters also makes an interesting point. The parallel there is in 1 Pet. 3:8-11: &quot;Be ye all of one mind... not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing... refrain (your) tongue from evil... the Lord is against them that do evil&quot;. The &quot;evil&quot; spoken of here is therefore that of bitter speaking within the ecclesia which must not be responded to. This type of evil is far harder to resist than being taken to law unfairly, which is how we tend to read this passage. However, the context in Peter is also of physical persecution by the Romans, influenced by Jewish criticism of the Christians. There seems a hint that this group of evil speakers within the ecclesia were associated with the Roman and Jewish authorities.</p>