This tweet from Russell Moore reminded me of the closing section of Sinclair Ferguson’s chapter in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, p. 66:
My native land is Scotland. I have the privileged status of being a resident alien in the United States. I carry a green card. But people often remind me, “You have an accent.” (That said, it is one of the wonderful things about the presence and work of Christ’s Spirit in preaching that, fifteen minutes into the exposition, it is possible that others cease to notice the accent and hear only his accent.)
Being “afflicted,” therefore, with an “accent,” brief elevator rides—and the usual brief conversations that ensue there—often give me a certain mischievous pleasure. As the doors open at my floor and I step out, someone will occasionally call, “You have an accent. Where do you come from?” As I watch the doors begin to close, I say with a smile, “Columbia, South Carolina,” and watch the puzzled faces whose expression says, “Come on! You’re not from around here . . . are you?”
That is surely a parable of what it is possible for the people of God to become in the way we use our tongues, as by God’s grace we learn to speak with a Jesus-like accent.
At the end of the day, it may not be so much what people say to you when you are in a room that is the really telling thing about your speech as a Christian. Rather it may be the questions people ask when you leave the room. “Where does he come from?” “Do you know where she belongs?”
Do you speak like someone who “sounds” a little like Jesus because, born broken in your consciousness of your sinful tongue, you have found pardon and renewal in Christ, and now his Word dwells richly in you?
At the end of the day, that is what spiritual maturity looks like—or better, sounds like—because of the transformation of our use of the tongue.
May that be true of us more and more!
