Do you intend to praise God and yet quickly also open your mouth to rain down curses upon people? Do you constantly criticize? Do you routinely have negative things to say to others?
This may be the situation to which James is referring.
Here in Sicily, we have rivers that meet the seas. Here in Sicily, we have fig trees. We have olive trees. We also have many grapevines.
And so I could relate fairly easily to what James was saying as he spoke about the person who spoke both praises to God as well as curses to people from the same mouth:
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
James 3:9-12
Obviously, fig trees do not make olive trees. Obviously, grapevines do not produce figs. Obviously, salt springs cannot produce fresh water.
And yet we routinely see and hear curses for people come from the same people who praise God. Anger and bitterness come out of believers toward others. Jealousy and rage. And we somehow consider that to be OK.
No, if we are doing this, we are producing a fruit that shouldn’t be produced. It is the wrong fruit for the tree that is producing that fruit. It is the wrong type of water coming from the spring, and that must change. The plant must produce the fruit that it is intended to produce. The spring must produce the water that it is intended to produce.
We have been made new, having left behind the old person because we are in Christ. We have been united in Christ and we are now living, alive in him. And so we must live as new people, as new creations, as the people that we have been made to be. And we must produce the right kind of fruit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Is what we are saying full of love? Is what we say full of peace? Is it patient? Kind?
Is it controlled? Are you in control of what you are saying?
This is the type of speech that we, as followers of Christ, must produce. We must praise God in this way and we must speak with others in the same way, remaining consistent with the same Spirit of God in our praise to God and in how we speak with others.