With it 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 3:9-12
What is it to curse people? What ideas of “cursing” come to mind when you read this passage? Perhaps you think of saying mean things, conjuring negative spiritual assaults, or using choice “adult” language.
While each of those ideas are worth discussing, in the ancient world (the time in history that God impressed upon James to pen these words), cursing meant something else significant that we must not ignore as the sentiment which James intended is the one that God chose to speak through.
In the ancient world, cursing someone meant calling on God to permanently remove a person from any possibility of blessing.* Effectively, cursing someone was asking God to send a person to hell.*
While cursing someone to hell is definitely something to abstain from, James highlights the incompatibility of cursing someone to hell and blessing God.* James argues that people are made in God’s image and likeness.* To desire to consign someone to hell is desiring to permanently separate God from a reflection of who He is.* While humans do not always reflect God’s heart, character, and actions, all humans were created in His image nonetheless.*
According to James, when one person’s mouth both blesses God and then request that His likeness be sent to hell, that person is living in an unnatural state that cannot be.* Naturally speaking, fresh and bitter water cannot come from the same spring.* In ancient Palestine, most towns existed near fresh water as they were necessary for life.* People gathered around fresh, life-giving water.
What is coming out of your mouth? Are you gathering people around you for life? Are you attempting to sustain an impossible duality of blessing God and cursing those made in His image?
What comes out of our mouths says something about what is in our hearts.*
As David Nystrom asks,
How can worshipers consciously mistreat their fellows and then expect to worship God in purity?
Today, take a step.
Maybe today the one step God wants you to take is to return to purity in worship. Perhaps today God would have you repent for hating your brother or sister. Maybe today God wants you to speak life over others. Perhaps God wants you to allow Him to show you what is in your heart and heal it.
Whatever the step, ask God to direct it. Take a moment to take that step. Invite Him to speak. He will.
Life is a long road. Walk it with Jesus.
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*Blomberg, C. L., & Kamell, M. J. (2008). James (Vol. 16, pp. 160–162). Zondervan.
Guthrie, G. H. (2006). James. In T. Longman III & D. E. Garland (Eds.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation (Revised Edition) (Vol. 13, pp. 247–248). Zondervan.
Stulac, G. M. (1993). James (Jas 3:9–12). IVP Academic.
Moo, D. J. (2021). The Letter of James (D. A. Carson, Ed.; Second Edition, pp. 202–208). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Nystrom, D. P. (1997). James (pp. 180–182). Zondervan Publishing House.