James 3:5

‘So the tongue also is a little member, and boasts great things. See, how great a an area of brushwood is kindled by how small a fire!'

He now brings their thoughts back to the tongue. The ‘small' rudder of that ship is like that other ‘little' member, our tongue. Both are very similar. For like the rudder the tongue is only a small member of the body, but the problem is that it can boast great things (for ‘boasts' compare James 1:9. It can be positive or negative). For it can sway men to do its will, or it can lead them on a downward path. It can encourage them or destroy them. And how quickly men begin to boast about themselves and their own ideas (compare 2 Corinthians 11:12), offering people what is not really true. They can begin to make much of themselves and to lead men astray with their teaching, and begin to make out that they are some great one and thus go astray themselves. They become proud of their ability to sway men by their oratory (see 2 Corinthians 10:10) and offer them worldly wisdom and controversial ideas. And then before anyone knows what is happening fires of dissension and false teaching and partisanship and bitterness are lit, and kindled into a large flame, and the whole church is put in disarray. And all as a result of that little tongue! How dangerous the tongue is. (Compare 1 Corinthians 1:11; 1 Timothy 6:4; 1 Peter 3:9)

Its effect is similar to the way in which a small spark of flame can set off a great brushwood or woodland fire. (The word can mean timber and be used of woodland, but rarely, if ever, means forest). One moment a spark, and shortly afterwards it is as though the whole world were ablaze. And how often muttered words spoken behind people's backs, or rash words that are spoken in haste and ignorance in public, have spread and spread, and have weakened the effectiveness and blessing of a whole church and have ‘set it on fire' in a harmful way.