James 3:1-10 DO not, many of you, become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we will receive severer judgment.

Riverside⁽ⁱ⁾ ¹ DO not, many of you, become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we will receive severer judgment. ² For in many ways we all stumble. If any one never stumbles in his talk, he is a perfect man, able to bridle also the whole body. ³ If we put bits into the horses' mouths to make them obey us, we turn about their whole bodies. ⁴ See the ships; great as they are and driven by violent winds, they are turned about by a very small rudder wherever the desire of the helmsman chooses. ⁵ Just so the tongue is a small member, but boasts of great things. Think how small a fire may be and yet how vast the forest that it may set ablaze. ⁶ And the tongue is a fire, a world of wickedness. The tongue stands among our members as that which spots the whole body and sets on fire the wheel of nature and is itself set on fire by Gehenna. ⁷ For every kind of wild beasts and birds and reptiles and animals from the sea is tamed and has been tamed by human kind, ⁸ but the tongue no man is able to tame. It is a restless evil; it is full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless the Lord our Father and with it we curse the men who are made in the image of God. ¹⁰ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This, my brethren, should not be so.