“For 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 figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 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. (Luke 6:43-45)
When I come to a passage like this, I think of it as a “self-examination text”. Jesus is addressing things we must first apply to ourselves before considering how to contribute to God’s work in the body of Christ.
I found it helpful to discover that the “good” in the tree, the heart, and the fruit means moral goodness. It isn’t fruit in the sense of how we are affecting others, but fruit in the sense of what the tree produces whether anyone notices or not (an apple tree is an apple tree even if no one eats the fruit!).
The main point is that in Jesus’ kingdom, the work of God is so transforming that there cannot be any disparity between the person we are, the things we treasure in our hearts, and the way we act towards others.
Which reminded me of a huge lesson I learned in the early 90’s, that God always begins his work in our hearts and people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.
The reason that stands out today is that self-protection makes liars out of us. Hypocrites. We try to act like good people on the outside, but God’s transforming work is hindered because we won’t give up lordship over our hearts. God can’t transform us without leading us out of our old hearts into the new hearts the prophets foretold, but our fortresses of self-protection are defiant that no one is going to mess with the things we have hidden deep inside, not even GOD!
For some of us, the “log” that needs to be removed from our eyes is the log of self-protection. Whatever it is we do to hide a traumatized, reclusive soul must be removed so we can be “transformed into the same image (as our Savior) from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18).
Opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit’s inspection will invariably lead us into another journey through the Beatitudinal Valley. God will bless us with the poverty of spirit that admits the ways we are not doing well in what he is teaching us. He will bless us with the mourning that grieves what he is showing us about ourselves that is not like our Savior. He will bless us with the meekness that gives up trying to fix ourselves and opens the door of our self-protection in submission to the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord. And he then blesses us with the hunger and thirst for the righteousness of being in our hearts what we are trying to portray in our works.
This then leads to us being blessed by becoming genuinely merciful people because of the mercy we have experienced in our hearts. We are blessed by having pure hearts that make us the same on the outside as we are on the inside. We are blessed by becoming peacemakers who genuinely want everyone to experience peace with God, and that leads to us being blessed with joy in our persecutions because we know that the way the world is treating us is because we truly are becoming like our Savior (based on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12).
In Luke 6, Luke is showing us things Jesus taught about life in his kingdom. If we have confessed with our mouths that Jesus is Lord (over every part of our being, self-protection included), and we have believed IN OUR HEARTS that God raised his Son from the dead, the salvation we claim to have will show in what we do (Romans 10:9-10). If that is not what is showing, it’s time for a heart-to-heart with our Father in heaven in the name of Jesus Christ his Son. It will be transforming.
© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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