“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
How do I know what matters to someone, to myself, to a church? Just listen to yourself and to what they’re saying. Then we have to compare that with what Jesus taught and what follows from that in the New Testament. We do well first to judge ourselves. Is Jesus’s value system ours and to what extent? Or is it something else? Jesus tells us to first take the log out of our own eye so that we can see clearly to take the speck out of our neighbor’s eye (Luke 6:37a, 41-42).
All of this is taken from Jesus’s “Sermon on the Plain,” an interesting parallel to his “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7). One does well to begin with either and both if one is to understand the teaching, gospel and fulfillment that Jesus brought, as well as the rest of the New Testament. If you don’t have this down well, you won’t have the rest of the New Testament down either or be open to the unfolding of the gospel which we find especially in Paul’s and Pauline (those attributed to Paul) writings. And it’s likely you don’t understand the rest of Scripture, the Old Testament, which all must be taken not literally, but seriously (Walter Brueggemann).
We need to listen and be honest. If I’m so concerned about this or that or something else, just how that lines up with the Bible which I claim to be God’s Word is the question. And even more important, as a Christian, how is my concern and concerns in line with Jesus’s teaching and life which is supposed to be the fulfillment of Scripture, its intent. And we need to try to plumb the depths of both what’s being said to get to the heart of that, as well as what Jesus said and the heart of that. There’s much there, and we’re not taking this seriously if we think we have it down, that we know we’re “saved” and that’s enough. And by the way, what does “saved” actually mean in the sense of what Jesus taught and what follows from that?
We’re all in this process; none of us is exempt; it’s foolish to think otherwise. Just the same, there’s a clear crisis today among supposed Christians in name, maybe actual Christians as that has come to be understood, but Christ-followers, I’m not so sure. But to be a Christian is supposed to be a baptized, committed Christ-follower if we take Jesus’s teaching and the rest of the New Testament seriously. If it’s all about our Christian religious freedom as well as having access to guns, etc., etc., or maybe about losing our privilege over others in some way, then we no longer have to wonder whether we’re in line with Jesus or not.
And Jesus says that what’s supposed to be the heartbeat of it all, of love for God, is love for our neighbor. If that isn’t front and center in our talking and activity, then all of us, me certainly included, need to stare that in the face exactly for what it is, pray about it and get rid of it, or else quit thinking our religion is the religion of Jesus (James 1:26-27). It’s not.
Jesus community 