Proverbs 12:18 “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

If you’ve lived very long at all you’ve experienced the first part of this verse.. We’ve all encountered those who have said very hurtful things to us, and we may have been guilty of doing the same to someone else. During a Bible study I came across several verses that made me think about how dangerous a weapon our tongue can be. Our words can hurt deeply when we aren’t careful how we use them, and words spoken when we are angry or frustrated don’t usually bring healing. In fact they do just the opposite. They can deeply hurt another person. Sometimes we may not even know we have hurt them. We are instructed by our Lord in Matthew 22:37-38 to love our neighbor as our self, and in John 15:17 Jesus says “This I command you, to love one another.” Words we speak in anger are not words of love. They are words of selfishness because we are only concerned about how we feel, and not about how we will hurt the person to whom we are speaking. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said this:

“Therefore putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil….Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Our words are to impart grace to those who hear them. We are not commanded in the scripture to speak words that wound, insult, belittle, condemn, or degrade. We are not told to use words to defile someone’s character or integrity. We don’t need to tell others how great we are, or how much we know, then tell them how they don’t measure up to all that we are. Proverbs 11:12 says “He who belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent.”

What we are to do is speak words of kindness and love, and words of encouragement seasoned with grace. We are not to speak deceitful words, but words of truth, and words that edify a brother or sister. Words that are kind and spoken with a heart tender toward the hearer will be received with gladness. Words spoken from a heart filled with love for the hearer will be sweet to the soul. Words spoken in anger are words that wound a spirit. Proverbs 15:4 says “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.”

God has a lot to say about our tongue, and our manner of speech. I’ve come to understand that anger and our tongue can be tightly knit. We must knit in a good deal of self-control so that our tongue does not lead us into trouble, or wound another. Sometimes that self-control means not responding to someone who speaks to us in anger, and overlooking the offense. Proverbs 19:11 says “Good sense makes a man slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Often we want to defend ourselves, but that is not always the best course of action. How we use our tongue is a choice we make, and we can hold no other person responsible for what we choose to speak or how we choose to say it. Proverbs 21:23 says “He who keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.” So, we must learn to think before we speak so that we will make wise choices about the words we use.

Finally, when we look at the woman of Proverbs 31 we find in verse 26 that “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” My prayer is that we would guard our tongues from speaking in anger, and allow only words of love, kindness, encouragement, and truth to be spoken. We are teaching our children how to speak to others and how to respond to anger or frustration by how we speak to them and to others we encounter. Let’s choose to open our mouth with wisdom as we lead our children.