James 3:1-12 “What Real Faith Looks Like: Real Faith Affects the Way You Talk”
Francis Carpenter was an eminent American portrait painter back in the 1800s. Among the people he painted was President Abraham Lincoln. For six months he would come to the White House and paint Lincoln, when he could get him to pose. He sat and listened to him talk, day after day. But after spending six months in the White House with Lincoln he later said that he could not recollect a Lincoln story “which would have been out of place uttered in a ladies’ drawing room.” (Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and the War Years, p. 563)
That’s quite a testimony to the wholesomeness of President Lincoln’s words — and sadly quite different than what we’ve heard from many of our presidents in more recent years!
But it SHOULD be true for us as God’s people as well. If Jesus Christ has come into our lives and saved us, it should make a difference in the way we talk. That’s the bottom line for James 3:1-2, our passage for today. As we saw last week, James again first here gives us the PRINCIPLE he’s driving at, then he gives us some illustrations/examples of that principle. So let’s look at what this passage teaches us about how “Real Faith Affects the Way Your Talk.”
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shawnethomas 