Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Matthew 12:33 - 12:37

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Matthew 12:33 - 12:37


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Kindred warnings:

v. 33. Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit.

v. 34. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

v. 35. A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth good things; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things.

v. 36. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.

v. 37. For by thy words thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

These words no longer describe the sin against the Holy Ghost, but they characterize the conduct of such as may be in danger of hardening their hearts against the benign influences of Christ and His Gospel-message. It is the nature of a good tree to yield good fruit; it is the nature of a putrid, rotten tree to have rotten, bad fruit. All depends upon the relation to Christ, whether a person does good or evil works. As for those that followed the Pharisees in their hatred and its consequences: generation of vipers He calls them. The malice, the hypocrisy, the deceit of serpents is their outstanding trait, Mat_3:7; Psa_140:3. John the Baptist and Christ agree in their judgment of them. Satanic evil is all that one may expect from a morally hopeless brood. The poison of their nature must come out in the filthiness, in the malevolence, in the enmity of their tongue. A significant fact: In the midst of His scathing denunciation Jesus uses a proverb that has a good interpretation as well as an evil. The heart, filled to the brim with certain thoughts, naturally overflows in the words expressing the condition of the heart. If the heart be a treasure-house of good, edifying thoughts and desires, they strive to come out in kind, edifying speech. But if sinful desires have taken possession of the heart, there will be passionate outbursts in words directed against all the commandments. Mat_15:19; Mar_7:21. And this is no small matter: Every idle, vain, empty, superfluous word, spoken without need or the purpose of edifying, is a matter of record before God, and must be answered for at the final Judgment. For the word, as the ancient Greeks were wont to say, is the revelation of the soul. Words are the index of a good or a bad heart, of a heart firm in the faith in Christ and full of love toward Him, or of a heart that has never taken thought of the will of the Lord, and is bad out of pure inertness toward that which Christ has declared to be good—the poorest species of unbelief.