Finishing up Luther on the Sermon on the Mount--Fruits

You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.

Luther connects this to the previous section, applying it to false teachers.

"Having warned His followers to hold fast to His teaching and to be careful that they are not seduced by others who are ravenous wolves under sheep's clothing, Christ, the Lord, now uses another warning to teach them how to recognize such people by their fruits. He cites an example in plain and simple words that even a child can understand. The most important thing is to understand what he calls a good or a bad tree and good or bad fruit. It is easy to say that this is a fig tree or a thistle or a good apple tree or a sour plum tree... But what Christ is pointing to here cannot be located except by a spiritual understanding on the basis of the Word of God. We heard earlier that these same false teachers put on such an appearance and are so glib in their speech that reason is not capable of evaluating them or of defending itself against them. As a matter of fact, this sort of teaching springs from reason and is completely compatible with it. Naturally it pleases us, for it teaches about our own actions and works, which lie withing our understanding and our capacity.

A brief definition of "a sound tree that bears good fruit" is this: one who conducts his life, existence, and behavior according to the Word of God, pure and unadulterated...

Thus the words "You will know them by their fruits" are set down as a distinguishing mark and a standard for judging and recognizing these prophets. If we are taken in, that is no one's fault by our own... You may say: "all right, but how do I recognize these? they may fool me too." Answer: You know what God's commandments are. See whether they agree with them. I will guarantee that no schismatic spirit will come without making his own special mark and leaving a stench behind so that you can tell that the devil has been there. No false teaching or heresy has ever arisen without bringing along the distinguishing mark He points to here: that it has set forth works different from the ones which God has commanded and ordained. The world is seduced simply because it follows insane reason and leaves the Word of God lying under the bench. It does not notice what He commands, and meanwhile it stares at the masks in the hope of seeing something special."

Luther wants to make the point that any of these false preachers will set up rules/commands/works that are not commanded. They will always go beyond God's word and ignore it, doing their own thing. This is their bad fruit: doing things they themselves invented to set themselves apart.

"It all depends, therefore, on really knowing and maintaining the definition of what Christ calls good works or fruits: a good work is one that is required or commanded by the Word of God and proceeds on the basis of that commandment. So a wife who is pious and faithful in her marriage can claim and boast that her station is commanded by God, that it is supported by the true, pure, and unadulterated Word of God, and that it heartily pleases God. Hence her works are all good fruit... Since they despise the real fruit and works for their lack of any special show, He despises the rotten works that they undertake so ostentatiously in their presumption that they are improving on what He has done...

If you measure them up against the commandment of God and ask whether God has commanded and required such works and whether they have served and benefited the neighbor, it is clear that they are valueless and only a hindrance to the genuine good fruit. The other stations, by contrast, put on no special outward appearance by glittering and glistening. Still they yield the finest and best fruit and are the most useful things on earth--but in the sight of God and of those who are illumined with spiritual vision so that they can see correctly and judge correctly... The regrettable thing is that this ghostly invention of the devil deceives and seduces even the sharpest mind that does not have the Word of God and a sound understanding. It follows its own supposition and devotion, and it imagines that if it find these pleasing, God must find them pleasing too. But this should be reversed so that I find pleasing what I hear is pleasing to Him, even though all of God's stations have their annoyances and many bad people in them who corrupt this fruit, just the way the bad worms do.

... The purpose of Christ's saying is to comfort and strengthen people who are in the stations that conflict with the feelings and attitudes of reason--stations which have many annoyances and evil incidents in them so that people are taken aback and regard them as dangerous and as unsuitable for the service of God.

Nothing but good fruit can come from the station that God has created and ordained, and from the man who works and lives in this station on the basis of the Word of God. With this you can now comfort your heart against thoughts like these: "Oh, it was this person or that who got me into this station. It causes me nothing but disgust and trouble." I have often been tempted this way in connection with my own office, and still am. If it had not been for the Word of God, I would have stopped preaching a long time ago and would have said farewell to the world, the way the monks used to do. It is the devil himself doing this and making everyone's station hard for him. Though God has assigned this office and work to us and is heartily pleased with it as the good fruit of a good heart, the devil so confuses foolish human reason that it fails to recognize this and thus destroys its own station and fruit. Because it does not see that this is a good tree and a good station, it is an obstacle to itself and therefore cannot yield good fruit.


And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.

The outward masks of special works and worship are so dazzling that an ordinary Christian life seems pale by comparison. So they have no shortage of doing, teaching, and believing. "The difference is,' Christ says, "that they hear My teaching, but all they want to do is what they themselves have invented. I cannot keep them on the track of doing what I teach them." If we Christians were as diligent in our works as they are in theirs, we would be nothing but saints. Still neither side really gets anywhere: we are lazy and indolent; they are entirely too active, but never in doing genuine works. And so, thank God, we still have the advantage, in that we have started believing and loving a little and are on the right track, however weak our progress may be.

Now He closes this with a beautiful analogy, showing the final outcome of both: "Everyone who hears and practices My teaching is a fine, smart builder, who does not build on sand but first finds a strong rock as a foundation. Once he has this, he builds on it so that his house may last and stand firm. Then when the storms and rains strike around it and above it, and when the floods and wind strike beneath it to wash away the ground and upset the house, it stands immovable against all of them as though it were defying them. But everyone who erects his building on sand will discover that it will stand only until the rain and the floods wash it away and the wind upsets it, so that it lies in a heap or collapses by itself." With this analogy He intends to give us faithful warning to be careful that we hold tight to His teaching and do not let go of Christ in our hearts, as our only sure Foundation (1 Cor. 3:11) and the Cornerstone of our salvation and blessedness (1 Peter 2:6), ans St. Paul and St. Peter call Him on the basis of Isaiah 28:16. If we stand grounded and built on that, we shall remain impregnable."

Luther on judging, my thoughts, 3

Some kinds of sermons! The Lord Christ's succinct and short and Luther's going on and on.

That was indeed mostly law. Here we can see an example of how the law is preached to Christians, also. And do we not need to hear this lesson over and over? These are not silly man-made rules. (On another blog we had a heated discussion about the third use of the law/ see Book of Concord).

We do judge, just as described. It sure hit home with me. Guilty as charged. There is this despicable judging everywhere: in homes, in extended families, schools, work places. It is terribly unfair and unbecoming. May we become gracious people as we have received grace.

Luther on the Sermon on the Mount , part 2

on judging...

"This warning, therefore, is highly necessary. Once we have discharged our office--be it public preaching and rebuking or brotherly admonishing, as Christ teaches it in Matthew 18:15-17--we can learn from this warning and get used to tolerating, concealing, and adorning our neighbor's transgressions. If I see something in him that does not please me very much, I should pull back and take a look at myself. There I will find many things which do not please other people either and which I want them to pardon and tolerate. This will soon relieve the itch that tickles itself and enjoys someone else's transgressions... Thus you will be happy to square things with the other person. First you will say: 'Lord, forgive me my debt'; and then you will say to your neighbor: 'If you have sinned against me, or if i have sinned against you, let us forgive each other.' But if you see that he is the kind of coarse person who will not stop unless you rebuke him, then go to him and tell him so by himself, as we have often pointed out on the basis of Matthew 18:15; this may cause him to improve and desist. This should not be called passing judgment on him and condemning him, but admonishing him in a brotherly way to improve. Such admonition should proceed in a fine and peaceable fashion, according to God's commandment. Otherwise, if you are tickled and if you poke fun at your neighbor and ridicule him, you only make him bitter and stubborn against you. By withdrawing your love from him and finding enjoyment in his sin, you become much worse than he and twice as big a sinner. You also fall under the judgment of God by your condemnation of one whom God has not condemned. Thus you load an even heavier judgment on yourself, as Christ warns here, and you deserve even greater condemnation from God...

I shall not discuss the fact that this miserable judging makes you damnable not only on account of the deed itself, but also because the person who does the judging is usually stuck deeper in sin and vices than other people. If he went back and read his own diary and account book, telling how he has lived since his youth, he would hear a story that would make him shudder and that he would like to suppress from other people. Now everyone would like to pretend that he is pious and to forget the whole past and to criticize and condemn some poor man for sinning just once. Such a person brings double trouble on himself...

You do not imagine, do you, that God is unable to spread out an account book before your very nose and to cite not only your transgressions and the sins of your youth, but also your whole life, which you thought was very precious, as the monks think about their cloistered life?...

Thus you see why Christ is speaking out so harshly against this vice and pronouncing such a severe sentence: 'Whoever judges will be judged.' This is as it should be.. By meddling into God's judgment and condemning one whom God has not condemned, you are giving Him just cause to do the same to you in turn. He will condemn you and all your work to hell, in spite of all your piety. He will elevate to a position of honor the neighbor whom you have judged and condemned, even making him a judge over you and having him find ten times as much in you that is damnable as you have found in him. So you have done very well indeed. You have angered and alienated both God and your neighbor. thus you lose both the grace of God and the christian life simultaneously, and you become worse than a heathen who knows nothing about God."


WHEW! Anyone ever hear sermon's like that?

Luther on "Judge not, that you be not judged"

Instead of Witherington's commentary, I find myself occupied by Luther. Currently, I have pastor's book out: Luther's Works volume 21, on the Sermon on the Mount. I should finish reading it and return the book.

Just quoting parts of "Judge not, that you be not judged".

After some qualifications about applicability in the secular realm and warning against sects who think they know the gospel better than qualified preachers, the "schismatic spirits", he goes on to apply the sermon to the Christian life and attitude.

OK, here we go.

"The other kind of judging or passing judgment deals with maters of life, when one person criticizes and condemns the life and works of someone else and is not pleased with what anyone else does. This vice is very widespread and common. Now, as in matters of doctrine we should be of one accord, with one mind and understanding and faith, so we have the command to be of one mind and heart in our external affairs. Since there are many stations in society, their works must be dissimilar and varied. Then, too, in this varied life there are also various kinds of faults; for example, some people are odd or short-tempered or impatient. This is inevitable in Christendom, since our old Adam is not dead yet and the flesh continually strives against the Spirit.

What is needed here is the virtue called tolerance and the forgiveness of sins, by which one person bears with another, pardons him, and forgives him, as St. Paul teaches in beautiful words (Rom 15:1): 'We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not please ourselves.' this is the same thing that Christ says here: 'Judge not.' there are some in Christendom whose gifts are greater and better, and there must be, especially among the preachers. But such people should not put on a superior air or take the attitude that they are better than those people who do not have these gifts. In the spiritual sphere, therefore, no one should lord it over others. Outwardly there ought to be some difference. A prince should have a higher and a better position than a peasant, a preacher should be more learned than an ordinary manual laborer. A lord cannot be a servant, a lady cannot be a maid. Yet in all these distinctions of position the hearts should have the same attitude and pay no attention to the dissimilarity. This happens when I make allowances for my neighbor, even though he may occupy a lower station and have fewer gifts than I. When he is a groom taking care of a horse, I am just as pleased with his work as with my own work when I preach or govern land or people, though my work is better and accomplishes more than his. I must not look at the outward masks we wear, but at the fact that he lives in the same faith and the same Christ as I, that he has grace, Baptism, and the Sacrament as much as I, though my work and my office are different and higher. For it is the same God (1 Cor. 12:6) accomplishing and giving all this. He is as pleased with the tiniest as with the very biggest.

What is prevalent in the world, however, is the exact opposite of that commendable and beautiful virtue about which St. Paul speaks. Everyone is pleasing to himself. A man will come along in the name of the devil, unable to look at his own vices, but only at other people's. This clings to all of us by nature, and even though we are baptized, we cannot get rid of it. We love to beautify and decorate ourselves and to see what is good in us, tickling ourselves with it as if it belonged to us. In order to maintain our exclusive claim to beauty, we ignore and leave out of sight the good there is in our neighbor. If we notice the least little pimple on him, we fill our eyes with it and so magnify it that on its account we see nothing good, though the man may have eyes like a hawk and a face like an angel. That would be like seeing someone in a garment all of gold except perhaps for a seam or a white thread drawn through it, and then acting shocked, as if it were worthless on that account. Meanwhile I would be precious in my own sight on account of the gold patch sewn on my shabby smock frock. So it is that we overlook our own vices, which are all over us, while we fail to see anything good about other people. Now, once this natural inclination appears among Christians, then the judging begins. Then I am ready to despise and condemn a man as soon as he stumbles a little ore makes some other mistake. He treats me the same way, giving me the same measure I give him, as Christ says here. He searches out and he criticizes the worst things he can find about me. By such behavior love is suppressed, and all that remains is a biting and a devouring back and forth, until they have consumed each other and lost their Christianity."

Not finished, yet, have to go.