False Prophets and Teaches notes

Matthew 7:15 ESV

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

7:15 Beware Meaning “be alert” or “be watchful.”

false prophets Refers to those whose teaching contradicts Jesus’ teaching. Beginning in , Jesus has reinterpreted the established religious and social norms of His day. Here, He portrays those who contradict His instruction as false prophets—people who falsely claim to speak on God’s behalf (compare and note).

sheep’s clothing Refers to disguises that portray innocence.

ravenous wolves Describes those seeking to undermine Jesus’ teaching for personal gain.

Faithlife Study Bible

Matthew 5:1–7:29 ESV

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on 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.” And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Evangelical Commentary on the Bible B. Jesus’ Teaching on Discipleship (5:1–7:29)

Then Jesus warns against false prophets (vv. 15–23). The false prophets popularize the broad road by advocating a lawless way of life. They are easily recognized, for what they do reveals what they are (vv. 15–20), and what they do contradicts what they say (vv. 21–23). In verse 23b “evildoers” (lit. workers of lawlessness) shows that the antinomian does not really live without law; he chooses his own law instead of God’s.

Matthew 7:15–20 ESV

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 The False Prophets (Matthew 7:15–20)

ALMOST every phrase and word in this section would ring an answering bell in the minds of the Jews who heard it for the first time.

The Jews knew all about false prophets. Jeremiah, for instance, had his conflict with the prophets who said: ‘ “Peace, peace”, when there is no peace’ (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11). Wolves was the very name by which false rulers and false prophets were called. In the bad days, Ezekiel had said: ‘Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain’ (Ezekiel 22:27). Zephaniah drew a grim picture of the state of things in Israel, when ‘The officials within it are roaring lions; its judges are evening wolves that leave nothing until the morning. Its prophets are reckless, faithless persons’ (Zephaniah 3:3–4). When Paul was warning the elders of Ephesus of dangers to come, as he took a last farewell of them, he said: ‘Savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock’ (Acts 20:29). Jesus said that he was sending out his disciples as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matthew 10:16); and he told of the good shepherd who protected the flock from the wolves with his life (John 10:12). Here indeed was a picture which everyone could recognize and understand.

He said that the false prophets were like wolves in sheep’s clothing. When the shepherd watched his flocks upon the hillside, his garment was a sheepskin, worn with the skin outside and the fleece inside. But a man might wear a shepherd’s dress and still not be a shepherd. The prophets had acquired a conventional dress. Elijah had a mantle (1 Kings 19:13, 19), and that mantle had been a hairy cloak (2 Kings 1:8). That sheepskin mantle had become the uniform of the prophets, just as the Greek philosophers had worn the philosopher’s robe. It was by that mantle that the prophet could be distinguished from other men. But sometimes that form of dress was worn by those who had no right to it, for Zechariah in his picture of the great days to come says: ‘They will not put on a hairy mantle in order to deceive’ (Zechariah 13:4). There were those who wore a prophet’s cloak but who lived anything but a prophet’s life.

There were false prophets in the ancient days, but there were also false prophets in New Testament times. Matthew was written about AD 85, and at that time prophets were still an institution in the Church. They had no fixed abode, and had given up everything to wander throughout the country, bringing to the churches a message which they believed to come directly from God.

At their best, the prophets were the inspiration of the Church, for they had abandoned everything to serve God and the Church of God. But the office of prophet was singularly liable to abuse. There were some who used it to gain prestige and to impose on the generosity of local congregations, and so live a life of comfortable and even pampered idleness. The Didachē is the first order book of the Christian Church; it dates to about AD 100; and its regulations concerning these wandering prophets are very illuminating. A true prophet was to be held in the highest honour; he was to be welcomed; his word must never be disregarded, and his freedom must never be curtailed; but ‘He shall remain one day, and, if necessary, another day also; but if he remain three days, he is a false prophet.’ He must never ask for anything but bread. ‘If he asks for money, he is a false prophet.’ Prophets all claim to speak in the Spirit, but there is one acid test: ‘By their characters a true and a false prophet shall be known.’ ‘Every prophet that teacheth the truth, if he do not what he teacheth, is a false prophet.’ If a prophet, claiming to speak in the Spirit, orders a table and a meal to be set before him, he is a false prophet. ‘Whosoever shall say in the Spirit: Give me money or any other things, ye shall not hear him; but if he tell you to give in the matter of others who have need, let no one judge him.’ If a wanderer comes to a congregation, and wishes to settle there, if he has a trade, ‘let him work and eat’. If he has no trade, ‘consider in your wisdom how he may not live with you as a Christian in idleness … But if he will not do this, he is a trafficker in Christ. Beware of such’ (Didachē, chapters 11–12).

Past history and present events made the words of Jesus meaningful to those who heard them for the first time, and to those to whom Matthew transmitted them.

KNOWN BY THEIR FRUITS

Matthew 7:15–20 (contd)

THE Jews, the Greeks and the Romans all used the idea that a tree is to be judged by its fruits. ‘Like root, like fruit,’ ran the proverb. Epictetus was later to say: ‘How can a vine grow not like a vine but like an olive, or, how can an olive grow not like an olive but like a vine?’ (Epictetus, Discourses, 2:20). Seneca declared that good cannot grow from evil any more than a fig tree can from an olive.

But there is more in this than meets the eye. ‘Are grapes gathered from thorns?’ asked Jesus. There was a certain thorn, the buckthorn, which had little black berries which closely resembled little grapes. ‘Or figs from thistles?’ There was a certain thistle which had a flower which, at least at a distance, might well be taken for a fig.

The point is real, and relevant, and salutary. There may be a superficial resemblance between the true and the false prophet. The false prophet may wear the right clothes and use the right language; but you cannot sustain life with the berries of a buckthorn or the flowers of a thistle; and the life of the soul can never be sustained with the food which a false prophet offers. The real test of any teaching is: does it strengthen people to bear the burdens of life, and to walk in the way wherein they ought to go?

Let us then look at the false prophets and see their characteristics. If the way is difficult and the gate is so narrow that it is hard to find, then we must be very careful to get ourselves teachers who will help us to find it, and not teachers who will lure us away from it.

The basic fault of false prophets is self-interest. True shepherds care for the flock more than they care for their own lives; wolves care for nothing but to satisfy their own gluttony and their own greed. False prophets are in the business of teaching not for what they can give to others, but for what they can get out of it for themselves.

The Jews were alive to this danger. The Rabbis were the Jewish teachers, but it was one of the most important principles of Jewish law that a Rabbi must have a trade by which he earned his living, and must on no account accept any payment for teaching. Rabbi Zadok said: ‘Make the knowledge of the law neither a crown wherewith to make a show, nor a spade wherewith to dig.’ Rabbi Hillel said: ‘He who uses the crown of the law for external aims fades away.’ The Jews knew all about teachers who used their teaching self-interestedly for no other reason than to make a profit for themselves. There are three ways in which teachers can be dominated by self-interest.

(1) They may teach solely for gain. It is told that there was trouble in the Church in the Scottish town of Ecclefechan, where Thomas Carlyle’s father was an elder. It was a dispute between the congregation and the minister on a matter of money and of salary. When much had been said on both sides, Carlyle’s father rose and uttered one devastating sentence: ‘Give the hireling his wages, and let him go.’ No one can live on nothing, and few can do their best work when the pressure of material things is too fiercely on them; but the great privilege of teaching is not the pay it offers but the thrill of opening the minds of children, and young people, and men and women to the truth.

(2) They may teach solely for prestige. They may teach in order to help others, or they may teach to show how clever they are. The theologian James Denney once said a savage thing: ‘No man can at one and the same time prove that he is clever and that Christ is wonderful.’ Prestige is the last thing that the great teachers desire. J. P. Struthers was a saint of God. He spent all his life in the service of the little Reformed Presbyterian Church when he could have occupied any pulpit in Britain. People loved him, and the better they knew him the more they loved him. Two men were talking of him. One man knew all that Struthers had done, but did not know Struthers personally. Remembering Struthers’ saintly ministry, he said: ‘Struthers will have a front seat in the kingdom of heaven.’ The other had known Struthers personally, and his answer was: ‘Struthers would be miserable in a front seat anywhere.’ There are some teachers and preachers who use their message as a setting for themselves. False prophets are interested in self-display; true prophets desire self-obliteration.

(3) They may teach solely to transmit their own ideas. False prophets are out to disseminate their own versions of the truth; true prophets are out to proclaim God’s truth. It is quite true that we must think all things out for ourselves; but it was said of John Brown, the eighteenth-century minister of the Scottish town of Haddington, that when he preached, repeatedly he used to pause ‘as if listening for a voice’. True prophets listen to God before they speak. They never forget that they are nothing more than voices to speak for God and channels through which God’s grace can come to men and women. It is the duty of every teacher and preacher to bring to men and women not their private ideas of the truth, but the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.

THE FRUITS OF FALSENESS

Matthew 7:15–20 (contd)

THIS passage has much to say about the evil fruits of the false prophets. What are the false effects, the evil fruits, which a false prophet may produce?

(1) Teaching is false if it produces a religion which consists solely or mainly in the observance of externals. That is what was wrong with the scribes and Pharisees. To them, religion consisted in the observance of the ceremonial law. If people went through the correct procedure of handwashing, if on the Sabbath they never carried anything weighing more than two figs, if they never walked on the Sabbath further than the prescribed distance, if they were meticulous in giving tithes of everything down to the herbs of the kitchen garden, then they were considered to be good.

It is easy to confuse religion with religious practices. It is possible—and indeed not uncommon—to teach that religion consists in going to church, observing the Lord’s Day, fulfilling one’s financial obligations to the church and reading one’s Bible. A person might do all these things and be far from being a Christian, for Christianity is an attitude of the heart to God and to one another.

(2) Teaching is false if it produces a religion which consists in prohibitions. Any religion which is based on a series of ‘you shall nots’ is a false religion. There have been some teachers who have said to those who have set out on the Christian way: ‘From now on you will no longer go to the cinema; from now on you will no longer dance; from now on you will no longer smoke or use make-up; from now on you will no longer read a novel or a Sunday newspaper; from now on you will never enter a theatre.’

If we could become Christians simply by abstaining from doing things, Christianity would be a much easier religion than it is. But the whole essence of Christianity is that it does not consist in not doing things; it consists in doing things. A negative Christianity on our part can never answer the positive love of God.

(3) Teaching is false if it produces an easy religion. There were false teachers in the days of Paul, an echo of whose teaching we can hear in Romans 6. They said to Paul: ‘You believe that God’s grace is the biggest thing in the universe?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You believe that God’s grace is wide enough to cover every sin?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well then, if that is so, let us go on sinning to our hearts’ content. God will forgive. And, after all, our sin is simply giving God’s wonderful grace an opportunity to operate.’ A religion like that is a travesty of religion because it is an insult to the love of God.

Any teaching which takes the iron out of religion, any teaching which takes the cross out of Christianity, any teaching which eliminates the threat from the voice of Christ, any teaching which pushes judgment into the background and makes people think lightly of sin, is false teaching.

(4) Teaching is false if it divorces religion and life. Any teaching which removes the Christian from the life and activity of the world is false. That was the mistake the monks and the hermits made. It was their belief that to live the Christian life they must retire to a desert or to a monastery, that they must cut themselves off from the engrossing and tempting life of the world, that they could only be truly Christian by ceasing to live in the world. Jesus said, as he prayed for his disciples: ‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one’ (John 17:15). There was one particular instance of a journalist who found it hard to maintain her Christian principles in the life of a daily newspaper, and who left it to take up work on a purely religious journal.

No one can be a good soldier by running away, and the Christian is the soldier of Christ. How shall the leaven ever work if the leaven refuses to be inserted into the mass? What is witness worth unless it is witness to those who do not believe? Any teaching which encourages people to take what the President of Princeton Theological Seminary, John Mackay, called ‘the balcony view of life’ is wrong. Christians are not spectators from the balcony; they are involved in the warfare of life.

(5) Teaching is false if it produces a religion which is arrogant and separatist. Any teaching which encourages people to withdraw into a narrow sect, and to regard the rest of the world as sinners, is false teaching. The function of religion is not to erect middle walls of partition but to tear them down. It is the dream of Jesus Christ that there shall be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). Exclusiveness is not a religious quality; it is an irreligious quality. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the American Baptist minister, quotes four lines of doggerel:

We are God’s chosen few,

All others will be damned;

There is no room in heaven for you;

We can’t have heaven crammed.

Religion is meant to bring people closer together, not to drive them apart. Religion is meant to gather people into one family, not to split them up into hostile groups. The teaching which declares that any church or any sect has a monopoly of the grace of God is false teaching, for Christ is not the Christ who divides, he is the Christ who unites.

ON FALSE PRETENCES

Matthew 7:21–3

‘Not everyone that says to me: “Lord, Lord” will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name did we not cast out devils, and in your name did we not do many deeds of power?” Then will I publicly announce to them: “I never knew you. Depart from me you doers of iniquity.” ’

THERE is an apparently surprising feature about this passage. Jesus is quite ready to concede that many of the false prophets will do and say wonderful and impressive things.

We must remember what the ancient world was like. Miracles were common events. The frequency of miracles came from the ancient idea of illness. In the ancient world, all illness was held to be the work of demons. People became ill because a demon had succeeded in exercising some malign influence over them or in winning a way into some part of their bodies. Cures were therefore brought about by exorcism. The result of all this was that a great deal of illness was what we would call psychological, as were a great many cures. If people succeeded in convincing—or deluding—themselves into a belief that demons were in them or had them in their power, they would undoubtedly be ill. And if someone could convince them that the hold of the demons was broken, then quite certainly they would be cured.

The leaders of the Church never denied pagan miracles. In answer to the miracles of Christ, the Roman philosopher Celsus quoted the miracles attributed to Aesculapius and Apollo. Writing in the third century, the biblical scholar Origen, who met his arguments, did not for a moment deny these miracles. He simply answered: ‘Such curative power is of itself neither good nor bad, but within the reach of godless as well as of honest people’ (Origen, Against Celsus, 3:22). Even in the New Testament, we read of Jewish exorcists who added the name of Jesus to their repertoire and who banished devils by its aid (Acts 19:13). There was many an impostor who rendered lip-service to Jesus Christ and who used his name to produce wonderful effects on demon-possessed people. What Jesus is saying is that if anyone uses his name under false pretences, the day of reckoning will come. The real motives will be exposed, and that person will be banished from the presence of God.

There are two great permanent truths within this passage. There is only one way in which people’s sincerity can be proved, and that is by their practice. Fine words can never be a substitute for fine deeds. There is only one proof of love, and that proof is obedience. There is no point in saying that we love a person and then doing things which break that person’s heart. When we were young, maybe we used sometimes to say to our mothers: ‘Mother, I love you.’ And maybe our mothers sometimes smiled a little wistfully and said: ‘I wish you would show it a little more in the way you behave.’ So often we confess God with our lips and deny him with our lives. It is not difficult to recite a creed, but it is difficult to live the Christian life. Faith without practice is a contradiction in terms, and love without obedience is an impossibility.

At the back of this passage is the idea of judgment. All through it there runs the certainty that the day of reckoning comes. Some people may succeed over a period in maintaining the pretences and the disguises, but there comes a day when the pretences are shown for what they are, and the disguises are stripped away. We may deceive others with our words, but we cannot deceive God. ‘You discern my thoughts from far away,’ said the psalmist (Psalm 139:2). No one can ultimately deceive the God who sees the heart.

THE ONLY TRUE FOUND

Evangelical Commentary on the Bible B. Jesus’ Teaching on Discipleship (5:1–7:29)

Then Jesus warns against false prophets (vv. 15–23). The false prophets popularize the broad road by advocating a lawless way of life. They are easily recognized, for what they do reveals