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James 3:7
7 For [gar] every [pas] kind [phusis] of beasts [therion], and [te] [kai] of birds [peteinon], and [te] of serpents [herpeton], and [kai] of things in the sea [enalios], is tamed [damazo], and [kai] hath been tamed [damazo] of mankind [phusis] [anthropinos]: KJV-Interlinear
7 For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by the human race. NASB
The tongue is untamable. The sin nature is untamable. The sin nature of man is unchangeable, unalterable, and unfixable.
With these examples, which James uses from his own time, he points out that man has tamed the seemingly untamable.
Man has taken animals, who do not think as we do, do not articulate as we do, do not use the systems of logic and reason that we do, and we have been able to tame them and bring them under our domestic control, to some degree.
In our current day, we can look beyond the animal kingdom and into the scientific kingdom. Man has accomplished transportation feats just in this last century, where man has been bound to the horse for millennia.
From the horse and buggy, to spacecraft, to cars in virtually everyone's possession, man has tamed the powered engine and speed, and made his life faster and more productive.
Man has tamed technology, such that we have laptop computers, microwave ovens, telescope views of deep space, understandings of genetics and amazing cures in medicine. We could continue this list for days, but suffice to say, with all of mans feats in discovery and invention, he has never conquered sin or the sin nature within himself.
Gossip has never been controlled. Deception in politics, in sales, in religion and so forth, are ever present. Controversy in beliefs, in attitudes, in how we perceive the world and life around us, has never been more complicated.
With each advancement in technology and world knowledge, the clarity of truth becomes more and more vague.
I would presume that, that will be the pattern of the remaining days and years, however many there are, of our dispensation, the Church Age.
Technology, inventions, discoveries, general knowledge of this world, and so forth will most likely rush into mind-boggling things, in the years and decades to come. But, the sin nature, illustrated by the tongue, will still be the single untamable item, and cause of mankind's ultimate downfall.
You are not going to change the ultimate course of history, but you can control your own spiritual life and ultimate destiny, by controlling your own tongue.
Self-control comes by faith, faith by application, and application by understanding, and understanding by hearing, and hearing by listening, and listening by self-control over your daily spiritual life.
This is the circle of wisdom, which we studied in Revelation 1, in Isaiah 11, and throughout this entire daily study.
