Luke 6:43-45--A Tree and Its Fruit

Luke 6:43-45
English Standard Version

A Tree and Its Fruit
43 “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

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This is probably the closest to the words we've seen of Jesus is Matthew 5-7 so far.  This is one of Jesus' final points to His disciples in His first big sermon--"The Sermon on the Mount."  It will be important for us to identify who are the real disciples and who are the fake disciples.  Don't you think that requires some kind of judgment?  Now you know why I don't latch onto the words "Do not judge" without the context of the surrounding verses.  We are not to condemn people to hell or judge them to be "irredeemable," nor are we to lack forgiveness so as to imagine their offense so large that we could never forgive it.  However, we must be able to use good judgment to discern between true prophets and false prophets, good trees and bad trees, good fruit and bad fruit, the board way and the narrow way, and between the solid rock and the shifting sand (again, see Matthew 7 where all these examples are spelled out).  We also need to decipher what kind of "fruit" is being produced in someone's life and that tells us what kind of "tree" they are (while the identity of the tree comes from characteristics that are unseen, namely its DNA, that identity makes it bear a certain kind of fruit in its season--both the season and the type of fruit tell us what kind of tree it is.).

We know the different between a grapes and figs and figs grow on trees (Jesus will curse a fig tree later) and grapes grow on vines.  Both were symbols of the nation of Israel, but Jesus is telling us that we can tell which people belong to the "true Israel" that is in Him and which are maybe ethnically part of Israel (physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), but they bear fruit in keeping with the world.

For more exposition on the "fruit" that the worldly man bears and the Fruit of the Spirit, see Galatians 5:16-26 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.  There are many more places in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that lay out for us the characteristics of the wicked and the righteous (Proverbs is full of general comparisons where the wicked are usually called "fools" and the righteous are usually called "wise").  So, this is not a new teaching, but something that Jesus needed to point out to them because He's going to come down hard on the Pharisees because they have everyone fooled thinking they are squeaky-clean on the outside, but they are inwardly filthy, dead, and corrupt.  Jesus can see both the inside and the outside, and isn't fooled.  He's telling the disciples that eventually what's on the inside will show and everyone will know them by their fruit.

Another way that we know true disciples and people who are only interested in following Jesus for what they think they can gain from it is how they respond to persecution.  While that's not addressed in today's passage, have you ever noticed that when the world cracks down on Christianity, it makes it obvious who the real Christians are and who are the fakes.  For example in China, the churches that the government approves that will change the words of the Bible and only preach the messages approved by the government--you know those so-called churches are fake because they have received the endorsement of those that are Atheist in their worldview.  They are not preaching the true gospel.  In the time of Paul the fake disciples recanted and quickly proclaimed "Caesar is Lord" when challenged by Rome and denied ever meaning to say that "Christ is Lord" because they never really meant it.  The true disciples were willing to die for the gospel.  It is the same today, Jesus will tell us later that His true disciples will most likely lose family, friends, money, and possibly even their lives for the sake of following Him.

Let's return to the end of today's text now.  Whatever is in your heart will eventually come out of your mouth and will be shown in your actions.  Jesus also says that those who are in Adam will be living for this world and will be trying to build up their treasure here--for this is all they have to live for.  They have no hope of heaven.  Those who are in Christ will be willing to sacrifice treasure here to lay up for themselves treasure in heaven (rewards that we will be given for being obedient to Christ).  Those rewards are viewed as better not only because they are imperishable and will last through the final judgment, but because they are worthy of being laid at the feet of Jesus because it's not about what I have done, but what He has done in and through me.  "To God be the glory, great things He hath done!"  So then the "treasure" that is buried deep in our hearts will come out in our hearts and our actions and what we think is invisible to all (our nature and identity) will be revealed by our words and our works.

Have we not been saying the same about Jesus, that His words and His words are proving that the identity statements that He is making about Himself are true?  We will later scrutinize some of the words and works of some of the others and see if their walk and their talk align with who they claim to be.  We may think we have everyone fooled sometimes, but God is not fooled.  He sees both the root and the fruit.  He knows what our lives are built upon and He knows if we have come through the narrow gate or if we are imposters who tried to skip coming through the gate and tried to sneak over the wall.  We know that everyone who comes through the port of entry gets their identity papers checked and has their passport stamped.  In the same way, God seals those who are genuine believers with the Holy Spirit and He clothes us in new garments white and clean and takes the "filthy rags" that we were dressed in before.  It will be obvious to Him and everyone else who belongs to Him in the end and who are the true citizens of the kingdom of God and who are those trying to escape the border patrol and customs and border protection and tried to come in "some other way."

Acts 4:12
English Standard Version

​12 "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”