Oculi—The Sinful Tongue and the Stronger Savior
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus was casting out a demon, and it was mute. So it was, when the demon had gone out, that the mute spoke; and the multitudes marveled. But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons” (Luke 11:14–15).
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca,’” which is an Aramaic term for “empty one” or “empty-headed one.” It is relating to a lack of intelligence. “If you say to your brother, ‘Raca,’ you shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool,’” and there it is the Greek word for moros—you know, moron, foolish, stupid—“they shall be in danger of hell fire” if they call their brother this, “You fool” (Matthew 5:22).
Jesus does not provide us with any exceptions there either. He does not say, “Unless it’s true.” He does not say it’s okay if you have proof that they are empty-headed or stupid. He does not say it is okay if they disagree with your view of foreign policy or how our president is doing at the moment or what should or should not be done in our Synod and by Synod leaders and Synod pastors.
He does not give any exceptions. For some, little or no attempt is made at avoiding this issuing of the verdict of stupidity upon the neighbor. They will freely offer it. You do not even have to ask them for it. They will just give it to you. Isn’t that nice? No peer pressure, no provocation.
They will sit back with a look of self-assurance and proudly assert the empty-headed stupidity of men and women created in the image of God. Men and women for whom the Lord personally endured rejection, betrayal, spit, insults, mocking, beatings, wounds, being nailed to a cross naked for all to see, even His own mother, and enduring His Father’s full wrath against the sins of all humanity in His body and dying in shame and agony. They will freely call the one for whom Jesus did all of that empty-headed and stupid with a smile on their face, with a smirk.
“But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God” (James 3:8–9).
These willful, arrogant, puffed-up insults cannot be practiced among the children of light. There is no justification.
But what if we were a little more clever? How can we please our sinful desires to build ourselves up and to break down our neighbor? To gather a consensus around us and against our enemies without being too obvious? How can we tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation and make it sound okay? One good way might be to make it sound a little more clinical.
Smooth out the sharp edges of our gnashing teeth with euphemisms. According to the Mayo Clinic—I always just think of mayo, but I think it’s Mayo—a personality disorder is a mental health condition where people have a lifelong pattern of seeing themselves and reacting to others in ways that cause problems.
People with personality disorders often have a hard time understanding emotions and tolerating distress, and they act impulsively. This makes it hard for them to relate to others, causing serious issues and affecting their family life, social activities, work and school performance, and overall quality of life. There are all sorts of these personality disorders, but I think a crowd favorite might be narcissistic personality disorder.
Having lists and descriptions of different types of disorders may be helpful for mental health professionals to assist people that are having difficulty functioning in a healthy way in their private and/or public life with themselves and other people. It may be helpful in that situation. It might be helpful for someone personally who’s finding it to be difficult to interact with people and not really understanding why.
It also could be helpful to keep in mind as you navigate difficult relationships and so you can manage them better, these relationships in a godly way with appropriate boundaries. But a list of mental health disorders can also just be a cloak for all sorts of self-justification concerning our sins against our neighbor. Sure, we cannot say out loud that we hate a person or that we have no affection whatsoever for a person because of this or that sin that they have committed against us or something else that they have done or said.
We cannot just outright curse them or insult them or say we could like them or leave them. We do not care one way or the other. We cannot say those things out loud as Christians in good conscience, but maybe we can diagnose them.
That way it will be no different than telling my friends that so-and-so has the flu or kidney stones. All right, this is how it works. All right, let me just look it up then.
Click, click, click, click, click. Someone with narcissistic personality disorder. Okay, has beliefs about being special and more important than others. Has fantasies about power, success, and being attractive to others. Does not understand the needs and feelings of others. Stretches the truth about achievements or talents. Expects constant praise and wants to be admired. Feels superior to others and brags about it. Expects favors and advantages without a good reason. Often takes advantage of others. Is jealous of others or believes that others are jealous of them. Nice, check, check, and check.
It’s the perfect crime, isn’t it? The perfect crime. Now that I have diagnosed my enemy with narcissistic personality disorder, I can proclaim it from the rooftops to anyone with ears to hear. I can do it.
No one will ever know that what I really mean to say is that I despise them, that I feel nothing toward them, no affection, that I would never want to sit next to them in church ever again or eat a meal with them. Anytime someone brings up my enemy, I can mention that they are a narcissist and it does not count as a curse or a slander. I can label and demean them because of the faults or characteristics they happen to have that I, or I think they have, that I see in them.
And I can incite people against them and I’m scot-free because all I’m doing is diagnosing them. And this is not limited to mental health terms either. We can call people, even people we’ve never met, neo-Nazis, misogynists, racists, boomers, neocons.
Take your pick, people we’ve never met. You can call them all sorts of things. We can tell people who have never met them either that they are these things. And it does not count as harming their reputation because we can show proof. We’ve got the receipts. We can show them their social media feed.
It’s true, so we do not even have to try to love them. We cannot get out of this by saying that we have the proof of their dark triad of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism because we watched a documentary about the CEO who let those people go down in that submarine. You do not get past it.
You do not get past proof that they are a neo-Nazi or something else. You cannot get out of it because you know that your labeling is not coming from love or concern for them. If it were, you would not take pleasure in the label.
You would weep if it were true. You would pray desperately that the Lord would take these things out of your neighbor’s mind and heart. You would take this prized possession of Christ overtaken in their trespass, and “you who are spiritual [would] restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).
That’s what you would do if it were really out of love.
When Jesus begins responding to those who said that He cast out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons, you could almost sum up His overall response as whenever you point the finger, you’ve got three more pointing back at you. Payton, to get on my nerves, has taught my sons that the saying, “You smelt it, you dealt it,” means the same thing.
I do not believe that. But the three fingers pointing back at you basically is what Jesus is saying. He is saying the Pharisees that accused Jesus of casting out demons by the ruler of demons are themselves under the rule of demons.
All the people in the crowd that are marveling are the possessions locked securely in the devil’s kingdom, asking for signs under the kingdom’s domain in need of the Stronger than he to come and steal them away by His righteous life and purifying blood. They all, that whole crowd, if by the Holy Spirit they come to faith in Jesus, must be on guard with how they use their tongue and the rest of their body, lest the demon that inhabited them in their unbelief come back with seven more wicked than himself and take up residence again. The one who points the finger has three more pointing right back at him.
Pay close attention to how you speak. Pay close attention to why you speak. I’m called by God to warn you about false doctrine and practice.
Part of that sometimes is rebuke. It’s part of the public office given me by the Lord. But I’m the only one here who is divinely called as that.
You are not a called pastor of any congregation. None of you are the divinely appointed teacher, overseer, shepherd, and watchman of this gathering of saints or any other congregation. None of you are that.
You may need to, in your private capacity as a Christian or as a parent or someone else in authority over others, you may need to correct, rebuke, or warn fellow believers, but take heed to yourself and to why you speak and how you speak. And let it always be for edification, not for breaking down. Let it never be to puff yourselves up and cast thinly veiled curses toward others or to gather troops on your side.
And know this, most people are not fooled by your feigned concern to clear the air and diagnose the sinful and difficult people in your life. Most people are not fooled by that, just in case you didn’t realize. Yes, you might fool a few people into thinking that you’re just a concerned citizen, but our Lord Jesus knows your heart and He knows what you’re doing every single time.
And remember that every curse you cast at your neighbor in whatever clinical or clever or theologically sophisticated form you might cast it is a curse spoken upon a person whom God made, whom He made in His likeness and loved so dearly that He gave His own Son into death to save them every time you open your mouth to curse another. There is no exception.
When you yourself endure suffering, cursing, and shame as a Christian living a godly life in this evil age, you are blessed. You are being given a blessing and a gift and the privilege of participating in the sufferings of Christ. And that way you can read the Passion accounts of the Gospels, Jesus’ own suffering and death, and you can have the consolation as when you suffer as a Christian, that you have been granted the precious gift to suffer with Jesus. But when you curse your neighbor, when you proclaim to anyone who has ears to hear that your neighbor is demon-possessed, narcissistic, a liar, who gives you bad vibes or bad feels or some other accusation, whether it is true or false outside of your office and with no honest intention that it would be for the good of anyone hearing it, your part in the Passion accounts is very different in that situation because there is only one group of people in those accounts that is accusing and insulting and cursing and reviling.
And it’s not the crowd you want to be a part of. It’s the crowd we were all called out of. You are never justified to have wrath towards your neighbor, but God is.
Our Lord Jesus has every right to be incensed against the wickedness and rebellion of His people. But what does He do? On Palm Sunday, His Palm Sunday, the original one, just a few days before His suffering and murder at the hands of His own people, as Jesus drew near the city, He saw the city and He wept over it (Luke 19:41). He wept over it.
“How often [He] desired to gather [His] children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but they were not willing” (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34). He loved them. He loved the tax collectors, the harlots, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the scribes, Judas Iscariot, and the rest of the apostles that He knew would forsake Him in the hour and power of darkness.
You are never to take pleasure in the imagined or actual wrongdoing of your neighbor or to take satisfaction in being a talebearer about their actions or your carefully researched conclusions regarding their mental state or political or ideological leanings. Even the Lord Jesus, who has every right to cast each one of us into everlasting fire, says, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live’” (Ezekiel 33:11). As He is nailed to the cross and reviled and spat upon by both Jew and Gentile, He says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
He does not revile them or curse them or figure out how He can get them out of His life so He would not have to suffer so grievously at their hands anymore. He begs the Father to forgive them, and He continues to patiently minister to them to the bitter end, to the bitter end, even to death for them.
Do you think He says these words because He believes that Annas and Caiaphas and the rest who bribed Judas to betray Him to them didn’t think they were doing anything wrong? They knew that they were doing something wrong.
That’s why they needed false witnesses, bribery, and the suggestion of a threat of uprising given to Pilate so that they could achieve their ends. Jesus knows all that, but He begs His Father to forgive them because they do not fully understand how terrible their sin really is. If they did fully understand, they would climb up on that cross and try to take their Messiah down, or they would fall down at the bottom of that cross and beg His forgiveness like the penitent thief.
No matter what your neighbor has done to you or another person, no matter how many times you think they did it, no matter whether you think they’re sorry or not, it will always be true to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And the Lord Jesus prays it, for you know less than He prays it, for the ones you resent, hate, speak ill of, and diagnose. Because if you really knew and clearly understood how the triune God feels when His children are ridiculed, endure gossip at their own expense, are labeled or demeaned because of a particular fault or characteristic, bullied in person or online, isolated, or have people incite others against them with words, if you knew how the Lord felt about that, you would tremble with fear.
At the idea even of speaking a word of cursing toward them, you would tremble with fear. I should tremble with fear when I ponder saying words against others for whom Jesus died; we all should. So if we really understood it, that’s what would happen.
Father, forgive us.
Without the Holy Spirit and saving faith in Christ, you are in the exact same state as even your slanted view of your worst enemy. Without the Holy Spirit in Christ’s merits, you are members of the devil’s kingdom.
You are held captive there by him in your own sinful desires and with your own poisonous tongue. You are locked away securely along with the worst sinner you can imagine in the house ruled by the devil. “For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22–23).
Each one of us is by nature a child of wrath, an enemy of God, ready to blaspheme God by speaking and acting against Him and by murdering our neighbor through theft, lust, cursing with our lips, and coveting what belongs to them. But though you may find yourself playing the part of the reviler in the Lord’s Passion, even if you realize it at this very moment that you’re in the wrong spot, it is also certain that each one of you has been rescued by the Father in heaven from the kingdom of darkness and has been transferred into the kingdom of His Son whom He loves (Colossians 1:13). That is certain.
You’ve been called out of that crowd. You have been swept and put in order and the demons have been cast out of you. While we sat securely away in the devil’s house, God sent His Son to destroy the works of the devil, to bind and plunder his house.
We’re not waiting for Satan to be bound. Jesus bound Satan in His blood. The Lord Jesus prayed for the Father to forgive you as He was nailed to the cross for your sins.
He loved you and gave Himself for you as an offering to God, a sacrifice for your sins. Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh and your unbridled tongue, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving you all your sins. God erased the record of debt brought against you by His legal demands.
This record stood against you, but He took it away by nailing it to the cross. After disarming the rulers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them by triumphing over them in Christ (Colossians 2:14–15). The Stronger One came and took on flesh to be your Savior.
He has bound the devil, now bound the devil, and stolen you away from the house of darkness with His own precious blood. He has taken as plunder from an enemy you, taken you as plunder from that enemy. And now as that enemy, Satan, is bound, languishing and snarling like a rabid dog left out on a leash, stuck in the scorching heat, in chains, awaiting his final punishment when he’s thrown into the lake of fire.
Now, Jesus takes you as spoils of war to present you to His Father without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, blameless. Not an ounce of sin left. And He has transferred you into His kingdom as children of light.
He did all of this for you, all of you who were far off and enemies of God. Do not deny by your words and works that He did this for your enemy as well. God forbid, lest you be found blaspheming the Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, along with those who accused our Lord of casting out demons by the ruler of demons.
God forbid, the Lord Jesus Christ has opened your lips by His holy blood and the Holy Spirit that your mouth may declare His praise. He has not opened your mouth to be petty or catty. Weep for your neighbor if they have truly been overtaken in any trespass.
Pray with earnest desire that they be restored, that the Lord would break into the devil’s kingdom to take them as plunder, that He would cast out the demon and sweep their house and put it back in order. Do not merely pray that you would move from anger and resentment to indifference toward them. Pray that your love for them would be without hypocrisy and that you would be kindly affectionate to them with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to them (Romans 12:9–10).
Pray earnestly for the opportunity to be reconciled to them in this life. Now, pray for the opportunity to be given to you to actually talk with them, to inquire about how they are doing, to confess the wrongs that you have done against them and beg their forgiveness without demanding they apologize first or reciprocate at all, ever. You do it without expecting anything in return.
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come from your mouths. Say only what is beneficial when there is a need to build up others so that it will be a blessing to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of every kind of bitterness, rage, anger, quarreling and slander, along with every kind of malice. Instead, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:29–32). And He has.
Let us pray. We laud, confess, honor, and praise You, Lord Jesus Christ, O King of all grace, living triumphant ruler of all the elect who have come to destroy the kingdom of the devil with all his might in and among us and have thereby called our body, soul, powers, and reason to Your knowledge, praise, honor, and service. Let us poor ones, O faithful Redeemer and Savior, never forget Your benefits and preserve our heart, tongue, and mouth, indeed our entire life, in service and obedience to Your holy will so that we may spread the power and virtue of Your Word through words, works, and a godly life and thus remain Your dear children and the little sheep of Your pasture. For You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
For more about who we are and what we believe, visit the St. Thomas homepage.
