But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another. (Colossians 3:8-9a)

The Mouth Of A Christian

Pulius Syrus said, “Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is.” Vance Havner wrote, “The Bible has a lot to say about our mouths, our lips, our tongues, for our speech betray us. What is down in the well will come up in the bucket.” The proverbs of holy writ decry the poison of the tongue and the evil it creates warning against unguarded words. Sailors are marked with a badge of distinction when someone comments on how a person “swears like a sailor.” Every person is recognized for the kind of person they are by the manner of language that comes out of their mouth. A good man is rarely accused of ill-tempered speech. Coarse and foul-mouthed individuals are remembered for their inability to control their language. A man’s reputation is largely established by what proceeds from the mouth, which is no more evident than the mouth of a Christian.

The child of God is a person who has been risen through the blood of Christ to show the world the wonderful grace of a loving Father. Their minds are not in the squalor of worldly language filled with anger, rage, slander, and filthy language. Accepting the mercy of forgiveness, a child of God works extremely hard to change their character from an unruly tongue to a speech seasoned with salt bringing grace to their hearers. A change takes place in a purposeful, forced redesigning of the soul to speak words of joy, love, peace, and forgiveness. As the mind forms eternal thoughts of God’s word, the tongue changes from being angry to kind, the spirit of rage and uncontrolled fury to calm patience and dirty language to words of Jesus Christ. The character of anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy language is not a part of the Christian’s vocabulary. There is a determined effort to rid the soul of such foul speech.

Christians are examples, and that example must be how the grace of God has changed their lives. When the world sees little or no change in the Christian’s speech, there will be and cannot be any desire of the lost to desire salvation. It is impossible to walk with the world’s speech with a knee constantly bent in prayer and the word of God. The mind cannot hold the anger and malice of a wrathful heart and the love and grace of God. When the Lord created man, He made the man with only one avenue of character. He will either be a man of grace whose speech is full of kindness and love or be a man of the carnal world whose speech betrays his heart with filthy language. The two are not compatible.

Paul encouraged the saints to get rid of the kind of speech that will obstruct the Christian example. These are not matters that can be ignored. A Christian is not to be known as an angry man. If a man is known to fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, he will not be thought of as a man of a holy character. Having road rage and screaming at the other person does not shine the light of Christ but the devil’s darkness. Telling dirty jokes and allowing cursing as a part of a man’s speech will never bring a lost soul to Christ. Lying is an abomination before God and listed as one of the grievous sins men will go to hell for. The Holy Spirit is admonishing the children of God to be very conscious of their speech and the consequences of an unbridled tongue. These things should not be in a Christian’s life: anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, dirty language, and lying. Get rid of it before it gets rid of your eternal home.