The Book of James Chapter 3:9-14
3:9 “With it we bless our Lord and Father; and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God” “Bless”: To speak well of, praise, extol. “John Bunyan tells us of Talkative: ‘He is a saint abroad and a devil at home’. Many a man speaks with perfect courtesy to strangers and even preaches love and gentleness, and yet snaps with ungracious and impatient anger and irritability at his own family at home. It has not been unknown for a man to speak with piety on the Sunday, and to curse a squad of workmen on the Monday…It has not been unknown for a woman to speak with sweet graciousness at a religious meeting, and then to go outside to murder someone’s reputation with a malicious and a gossiping tongue” (Barclay p. 105). “We curse men”: “It is grossly inconsistent to pronounce blessings and praise upon God and then curse those who are patterned after His likeness” (Kent p. 123). “God despises inconsistency, and nowhere is our inconsistency more readily seen than in the use of our tongues. Some of the most graciously uttered prayers, some of the most skillfully delivered sermons have been spoken by people who later used their words to destroy someone” (Draper p. 104). “Who have been made in the likeness of God”: The Greek here echoes the exact wording of Genesis 1:26 in the Greek Old Testament.
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