Jesus is continuing His teaching about how to respond to His teaching. We saw last week the basic idea that Jesus’ teaching is not to be applied to everyone else. He expects us to apply His teaching to ourselves, and only as we take the plank out of our own eyes, only as we become those who can see clearly ourselves, only as we are trained to become like Jesus, ought we to take up the sacred responsibility of speaking to the sin we see in others. As wounded healers we come alongside our fellow disciples, weeping with them, and in compassion we reflect the grace of Christ as we lead them the path we have first walked out of sin and into the freedom of obedience to Jesus the Spirit longs to cultivate in us.
It seems Jesus is concerned we might not appreciate the radical nature of the change He is discussing. He is not interested in mere behaviour modification. His goal is nothing less than the total transformation of what we are. To be his disciple is to yield to His desire to change our nature, to change the kind of human being we are. This cosmic renovation of our humanity has historically been called conversion. It isn’t simply the change of belief, or behaviour – although of course, both follow.
Jesus’ view of humanity is that the ‘fruit’ we bear in life – what we say and do, think and feel, the way we treat other people, and think about the world – that fruit is the natural outworking of what we are. To change behaviour or belief without changing our underlying nature is like sticking one kind of fruit onto another kind of fruit tree. It is superficial at best... but possibly indicative of a more concerning malady! Jesus’ strategy for producing good fruit in His disciples, isn’t to resort to a form of behavioural manipulation, or even more noble ventures such as education, or psychological therapy. It is to change the tree. A good tree bears good fruit. Or stripping the imagery away: A good man beings good things out of the good stored up in his heart’ (6:45).
This is the grounds of Jesus’ confidence in what can be achieved when His disciples are ‘trained’ (v.40). He fully expects His teaching to be achieved and worked out in practise by His disciples. He isn’t presenting an ‘ideal’ that can be meditated on, but never achieved. This is actually how Jesus expects His disciples to live... as we’ll see next week!
Questions:
Do you think this fairly and accurately represents Jesus’ teaching?
Do you agree with Jesus’ teaching here, or do you think that bad trees can in fact produce good fruit? What do you think that would mean – can you give an example?
Does this idea fill you with excitement, dread or neither? Does it leave you feeling inspired or condemned? can you identify why you react the way you do?
Does this match your experience of being a Christian? Why do you think this is? Do you think this is all a bit simplistic?
How close to being like Jesus do you think we can actually get ... even if we are ‘fully trained’?
Why does Jesus choose to talk about ‘thorn bushes’ and ‘briers’ in this parable? Do you think passages such as Is.10:17 might be in the back of His mind (see similar teaching in Matt.7:19)? Or is something else going on?
How can we store up good (or, I suppose, evil) things in our heart?
In Matt.12:36, Jesus tells us: ... that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. Based on what He teaches here in Luke 6:45, why do you think this is? What do our words reveal about us? Can you ever say that you didn’t really mean something you said?
