Your Words Carry Life or Death (Part 2)

Watch your words: they can be either lethal, or they can be therapeutic.

July 28, 2019

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof."

Proverbs 18:21

Part 2

Yesterday:
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue:”
There is great power in words.  The ability to give life or to kill.

Today:
The “wonderful words of life” in the Gospel of Jesus Christ are a great divider of men.  Those who embrace it are given life.  Those who reject it are condemned.

The words of the Gospel save or condemn every time they are preached.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).

“For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them, that perish: To the one, we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life.  And who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

What will the words of the Gospel mean to you?  Death or life?

“Death and life is the great alternative which is placed, …before man.  According as he uses his tongue, he falls under the power of death or attains to life.”1

“But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.  See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:14-15).

“And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
What does it mean to “love the tongue?”  People can love many things, but the tongue?

“But ‘to love the tongue’ is a strange and obscure expression.  He loves the tongue, says Hitzig, who loves to babble.  Euchel: he who guards it carefully, or: he who takes care of it, i.e., who applies himself to right discourse.”2

Do you use your tongue, your words the way that God intended?  Or do you use them in a way that destroys others?  When people have spent time talking with you, do they leave you refreshed or depressed?  Do your words have the sweet aroma of heaven or the sulfurous stink of the pit?

Beware how you use your tongue!

Indeed, “death and life are in the power of the tongue!”

 

 

 

1.  Keil & Delitzsch, Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, the electronic version in eSword.
2.  Keil & Delitzsch, ibid.