by Elder Johnny Kim

One of the things that happens when you become a parent is you quickly become accustomed to bodily fluids that emanate from all manner of places out of your children. At least it’s been my experience that the things that might have repulsed you before having kids no longer seem to have the same crippling effect. You don’t think twice about changing dirty diapers, picking noses, and swapping out wet bed sheets all with your bare hands. But every once in a while, even the most invincible super-parent is tested to their limits. I had one such occasion several months ago when my oldest son became sick enough that I had to drive him to urgent care. After I had parked our car just outside the clinic, I opened the passenger door to take him out and was no more than two seconds away from removing him from his car seat when he vomited all over himself, his car seat, and my arms. The worst of it was that since he had been sick for several days, it was the type of vomit that smelled as if it had been festering and rotting in his stomach for just as long. I was equally disturbed by both the rotten smell of it and the fact that it had just gushed forth from his mouth!

As weird as it sounds, that experience is what pops into my head when I read Ephesians 4:29, a verse that we learned about a couple weeks ago for our Youth Ministry Friday Night Bible Study. In the passage, the Apostle Paul writes, “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” The word Paul uses, “unwholesome” or “corrupt,” literally means that which is rotten or worthless. It invokes the idea of rotten food coming out of someone’s mouth. Food that, because of its rottenness, is not only utterly worthless and useless, but also offensive and disgusting. The imagery in the verse not only serves to command us to abstain from such speech, but it also serves to vividly paint the picture of what it looks like when we disobey and speak such unwholesome or corrupt words.

It seems clear from Ephesians 4:29 that Christians are to abstain from rotten speech including profanity and vulgar language, but other passages can also help us to understand that Christians ought to avoid more than just blatant profanities and vulgarities. Later on in the same epistle, we read in Ephesians 5:4 that “there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting” coming from our lips as well. Colossians 3:8 says to put aside “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.” If Ephesians 4:29 conversely describes “unrotten” speech as that which is edifying and gracious, it seems to me that we ought to understand that rotten speech then also includes dirty jokes, inappropriate comments, insults, put-downs, and the like. Things that are anything but edifying and gracious. All these things should have no place in the Christian vocabulary and no utterance from the Christian mouth.

Plenty of time and effort can be spent on trying to specify and categorize these rotten words, phrases, and slang terminology for any given societal and cultural context. However, to think that we only need to simply curate a list of rotten speech to have in our minds to avoid misses the truth about how God has created us. The Bible tells us that our mouths and what we say are merely an expression of what is in our hearts. Matthew 12:34 and Luke 6:45 reveal that at the bottom of it all, a speech issue is ultimately just a heart issue. Because it is a heart issue, speech can serve as window into a heart that is kind, loving, and one that desires to glorify God with every utterance. Because it is a heart issue, speech can also be a barometer for a heart that is sick, dying, and rotten. For those who are saved who still struggle with unwholesome speech, our ultimate hope also lies in this very truth that it is a heart issue, for because it is a heart issue, it means the hope of changing our speech rests in the one who is able and willing to change our hearts.

I concede that certain speech, like with many other things, can be argued to be a gray-area issue. But in the end, also like with many other things, Christians should be occupied with striving for the heights of godliness and righteousness rather than trying to plumb the depths of permissiveness and acceptableness. In any matter of Christian living, we ought to seek to be more like Christ and less like the world. If unwholesome speech could be pictured as foul and rotting food coming out of our mouths, then edifying and gracious speech is sweet, fragrant, beautiful, and refreshing to those who hear it. Which of those two pictures describes the taste and smell of the words you use and the things you say? I would hope that we would all be striving for our speech to be like the latter.