Chapter 18 BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them (Matt. 7:15-20).
The theocentric focus of this passage is God as the owner of the orchard, who cuts down any tree that does not bear good fruit. As the creator, He has standards of productivity. He evaluates men's output in this life. Their output in history indicates what their output will be in eternity. Some He will spare, and some He will burn.
To Judge a Prophet This passage is important for laying down a principle of judgment: what a man does in history testifies to his eternal condition. What he says may be judged by what he does and what his followers do.
The context of these remarks is the false prophet. The false prophet may sound good initially. The listener may have trouble determining whether the prophet's message is true or false. Jesus said to watch carefully for the results of the prophet's ministry. There is continuity between what a man says and what the results are.
Under the Mosaic Covenant, the prophet possessed lawful authority over both priests and magistrates. He had special revelation from God. The judicial marks of his prophetic office were two-fold: His call to worship the God of Israel and the fulfillment of his predictions.
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee (Deut. 13:1-5).
But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him (Deut. 18:20-22).
The Old Covenant was still in force in Jesus' day. Prophets still existed. John the Baptist was a prophet (Luke 7:28). He condemned religious leaders in harsh terms, calling them vipers (Matt. 3:7). He condemned a king, although this cost him his life. It was not easy for men to know for certain whether they were hearing a true prophet or a false one. If his words sounded plausible, what else could men use to judge the legitimacy of his office? Jesus said: by the fruits of this office. The ministry of a true prophet will be productive of righteousness. The ministry of a false prophet will not.
This means that the actions of a man's followers will testify to the legitimacy of his claim. He is responsible for their actions. He is their representative, their spokesman. He cannot disassociate himself from them. If he will not impose negative sanctions against them, then he must be assumed to be in agreement with them. By their fruits we will know him.
Gamaliel understood this principle in discussing the ministry of the apostles. "Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space; And said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men. For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply [it happen] ye be found even to fight against God" (Acts 5:34-39). The ministries of previous prophets had come to nothing. The religious authorities should wait and see, he advised. They took his advice.
Under the Old Covenant, prophetic ministries bore their respective fruit rapidly. There was time to wait and see. Korah and Dathan rebelled against Moses, but their rebellion did not last long. Negative sanctions came rapidly. "And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the LORD hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the LORD hath not sent me. But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the LORD. And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation" (Num. 16:28-33).
Under the Old Covenant, the judgments of God in history were down payments on His judgments in eternity. Men could make accurate judgments on the basis of God's visible judgments. But would they? Or would they take their stand with the false prophets and the kings who hired them? Time after time, the Israelites sided with the false prophets. They did not rebel when their leaders imprisoned and killed the true prophets. For this, they eventually paid the price: captivity. Their sin had gone on for generations. As had been true of the Egyptians and Amalekites before them, the multi-generational bills eventually came due.
Evil men had rebelled against good fruit. That was their great sin. Jesus repeated this accusation: the forefathers had persecuted the prophets. They had brought negative sanctions against the true prophets. This accusation had judicial merit because of the visible relationship between a prophet's words and their outcome. Covenant-keepers would have recognized the difference. That Israel had not recognized the difference, generation after generation, had condemned the nation. The fact that still they had not changed would soon condemn the nation forever. Jesus, as the final prophet, brought His covenant lawsuit against them in the name of the former prophets.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation (Matt. 23:27-36).
Christ's Monopolization of Three Covenantal Offices The New Covenant has none of the Old Covenant's offices: prophet, priest, or king. There is no covenantal prophet today. No one is granted the authority to speak God's word authoritatively, commanding civil and religious leaders to do what he says on pain of God's immediate sanctions.(1) No one's voice of authority exceeds the Bible's. There is no covenantal priest today, mediating sacrifices between God and man. There is no covenantal king, anointed by a priest or a prophet in God's name. Jesus alone retains the three-fold title. He referred to Himself as a prophet: "Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:33). Hebrews calls Him high priest: "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus" (Heb. 3:1). Revelation calls him king of kings. "And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS" (Rev. 19:16). These offices have ceased; Christ holds them as monopolies.
This has changed the application of Jesus' law governing false prophecy. The office of true prophet has been annulled in history. One mark of the true prophet was his ability to invoke immediate sanctions, as Elijah proved on Mt. Carmel: fire from above. Elisha had the same ability. "And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly. And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight" (II Kings 1:10-13). This time element no longer operates in the New Covenant. God's historical sanctions are predictable, but only in the broad sense: if men continue in their sins, then they will suffer corporate judgment. As to when, we do not know.
Ethical Cause and Effect The delay of sanctions makes it more difficult to judge correctly about the quality of a movement's fruits. The question is: Does this cause-and-effect relationship still exist? Some, if not most, theologians assume that such predictable historical sanctions no longer exist. They agree with Meredith G. Kline, who writes that ethical cause and effect in history are, humanly speaking, essentially random. "And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways."(2) But if they are correct, then we are faced with an enormous burden: judging a movement by its fruits. If there is no cause and effect relationship between bad theology and bad ethics, or bad ideology and the visible outcome, then making accurate judgments becomes far more difficult than it was under the Old Covenant. It is difficult enough already: longer time frames for roots to produce visible fruits. But if there is no predictable relationship whatsoever, then we must judge strictly on theological content -- a task that few Christians are well-equipped to perform.
What of fruits other than prosperity? "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:19-24). Here we can surely make judgments. These are individual fruits.
Economic Effects of Greed
What are the economic effects of these rival lists of fruits? Does evil consistently produce wealth? Does righteousness consistently produce poverty? Or are the outcomes random, as Kline says? If they are random, then no expressly biblical economic theory is possible. If the outcomes are perverse, then we must search for institutional means of converting evil personal motives into positive effects. This is what most versions of free market theory have sought to do, from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1714) until the present. The profit motive, coupled with private ownership, produces incentives for serving others. Men's greed becomes their motivation to meet the demands of other men. Free market economic theory has this great advantage over socialist theory: it recognizes original sin. It does not assume, as socialism assumes, that concentrated political power -- legalized force -- makes those who wield it either wiser or kinder. On the contrary, free market theory assumes the opposite: power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.(3)
Free market economic theory is self-consciously agnostic with regard to God. It never mentions God, except as a belief that produces predictable responses. If we accept either the covenantal randomness of corporate effects of common confessions, or the covenantal perversity of individual results, then we cannot construct biblical economic theory. We must then appeal to this or that humanistic theory. But if righteous roots produce positive fruits in history, and unrighteous roots produce undesirable fruits, then biblical social theory becomes possible.
Individual and Corporate Fruitfulness The passage refers to false prophets: individuals. Yet in another context, the parable of the fig tree, Jesus was referring to Old Covenant Israel (Luke 13:6-9). So, the concept of fruit as a sign of spiritual roots applies to both individuals and corporate entities.
Applying this principle to societies, we conclude that there are standards of productivity that we can apply to assess the rightness or wrongness of that society. There also has to be human discernment of these standards and their proper application in history. "Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." This statement is an extension to individuals of the corporate principles of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. The theologian who argues that Jesus substituted individual predictability for corporate predictability has to assume that the covenant's continuity applies only to individuals. But then what of families? What of churches? Does this principle apply only to individuals? Doesn't it also apply to movements based on the teachings of individuals?
Pietism denies this principle's applicability to the world outside a Trinitarian covenant, and then seeks to deny the legitimacy of this covenant to civil government. Christian self-government under biblical law, yes. Christian family government under biblical law, yes. Christian church government under biblical law, yes. But not Christian civil government. "There can be no such thing as Christian civil government. What existed in Mosaic Israel before the captivity has been annulled in principle." The problem with pietism is that it openly surrenders to covenant-breakers the God-given New Covenant right to establish their civil covenant over covenant keepers. Somehow, we are expected to believe that a Christian civil covenant will not produce the positive fruit that a non-Christian civil covenant will produce. For the pietist, the realm of the civil covenant is governed by a reverse covenantal system of sanctions: biblical law produces tyranny, while "neutral" civil law produces good.(4)
Jesus' words here create an enormous exegetical problem for pietism, one which the pietists for over three centuries have dealt with by ignoring it. Jesus' words, if they were ever dealt with exegetically by pietistic social theorists, would force them to declare the existence of a realm of government in which a false confession produces good fruit, and where a true confession -- faith in the Trinity -- produces bad fruit. What is not true for the other three oath-bound covenants -- individual, ecclesiastical, and familistic -- is somehow true for the civil covenant. This was surely never taught in the Old Covenant. The opposite was taught. It is never formally taught in the New Covenant. Cause and effect apply to individuals and to their movements, Jesus taught. What He taught was consistent with the Mosaic system of corporate sanctions. But the pietist claims to have discovered a principle in natural law theory or democratic theory which supersedes both the Mosaic law and Jesus' teaching on roots and fruits. This principle, discovered in the mid-seventeenth century by Rhode Island's Roger Williams, and elaborated in the eighteenth century by deists and atheists, teaches the reverse of what Jesus taught here, yet it has to be true, pietists assure us. It has to be true because modern democratic theory teaches it. To oppose it would be theocratic, and we all know how bad theocracy is, meaning Trinitarian theocracy. A humanistic theocracy -- the reign of democratic man -- is what we need. This is what God wants. Why, we are not told.
Free Market Theory If Jesus' words are true, then modern free market theory labors under an enormous burden: Mandeville's curse. Free market theory promotes a view of society that says that supernatural ethics is irrelevant. Evil men, if they live under a private property system, will produce good things. Compared to what evil men produce under socialism, this statement has been proven true in both theory and practice, i.e., fruits and roots. But the ultimate test of free market theory is not its success over socialism. It is its success over God's corporate sanctions in history.
The free market is not autonomous, for man is not autonomous. The free market can produce, and has produced, wealth untold for hundreds of millions of people. But it has also placed urban men in great peril. The division of labor has been extended to such a degree that men are cut off from the soil. They cannot feed themselves. They live in highly interdependent environments that can sustain life only through extensive exchange -- an exchange system that rests on fractional reserve banking and computerization. Everything that sustains life for most urban people is in some way dependent on public utility systems, banks, trains, and traffic control systems. Each of these systems is dependent on computers. If the computers break down, society breaks down. The division of labor collapses, and with it the life-support systems of cities.
This is only one example of the risks facing modern man. Modern biological warfare is another. So is the proliferation of small-scale nuclear weapons. Our cities are vulnerable. The free market has made possible the creation of vast interdependent production systems that have sustained a huge growth of population. The free market has done this irrespective of men's confessions of faith. This professedly neutral system of universal blessings has allowed the evolution of a society that is vulnerable to any number of universal curses. Yet men do not repent. They do not see how vulnerable they are. They do not see the looming sanctions of God. "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God" (Deut. 8:17-20).
We speak of the market as an impersonal mechanism. We think of mechanisms as tools. Then we insist that tools are neutral. By this, we mean that they can be used for good or evil. But tools are not morally neutral. Nothing is morally neutral. Tools are the products of social systems, and social systems are not morally neutral. Tools extend the systems that furthered their production. Tools make us dependent on these systems. If we rely on our tools, we thereby rely on the social system that created them. But what if that social system is founded on a false oath? Has it not become the corporate equivalent of a false prophet? Was it not built in terms of false prophecies, such as the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote a well-known document written mainly by a well-known unitarian?
Common grace is a great blessing, but it cannot be extended apart from special grace.(5) A society built on some version of common grace theology -- the common confession of man -- rests on a fragile foundation. If God withdraws His special grace, leaving only the economic fruits of abandoned confessional roots, the tree will eventually cease bearing fruit. Surely Europe is now in such a spiritual condition. Asia has never even had the roots. Asians imported the free market and its computers in the hope of escaping poverty. For a while, Asia did begin to escape poverty. But the Asians are trapped by their tools, copied from the West and mass produced, and also by the banking system.
Social systems are package deals because they are based on worldviews. Worldviews are package deals.(6) The dependence of free market ideas and practices on a specifically Western, biblical-covenantal view of the world, the free market economist is loathe to admit. Such an admission undercuts his claims of autonomy and universality: of economics as a science, of capitalism as a social system, and of man as a product of impersonal evolution. I am not saying that demand curves do not slope downward and to the right in Asia, just as they do in the West. I am saying that there is no such thing as a demand curve outside of the economist's conceptual toolkit. Demand curves are abstractions based on assumptions that can never be true in the real world and are then taught as truths to gullible undergraduates by far more gullible professors.(7) I am not saying that people do not respond predictably to incentives. I am saying that humanistic capitalism's incentives are being sold to millions of people at low prices that do not reflect the true risk of subsequent transactions. Godless capitalism is being sold almost as an addictive drug is sold. "There's no risk. Try it. You'll like it." No doubt they will. They will also become addicted to the division of labor that comes with it -- a division of labor based on a confession: "My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth."
Conclusion There is a predictable connection between confession and visible results, between invisible roots and visible fruits. This connection takes longer to manifest itself in the New Covenant, for prophetic sanctions have been transferred to Christ. Jesus warned His followers to examine the fruits when they are not sure of the roots. While the introductory verses indicate that He was discussing the office of prophet, the general principle is universal: a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
The priority here is developing wise judgment. Wise judgment begins with a confession of faith in the God of the Bible. It matures through a careful study of God's law (Ps. 119) and obedience, i.e., applying the written law to our decisions. As we develop wise judgment, we can better assess the claims of those who come to us in God's name, as Old Covenant prophets used to come. We can hear their confessions and see the results of these confessions. On the basis of what we see, we can assess the truth of what we hear.
Footnotes:
1. Gary North, Inheritance and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1999), ch. 41, section on "The Levites' Revelational Separation," subsection on "The Prophet's Separation."
2. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
3. Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Creighton (1887).
4. Except, dispensationalists say, in the State of Israel. There, we are told, the State may lawfully and profitably impose Talmudic law, which sometimes is applied Mosaic law, on recalcitrant Arabs and Christians, as well as on recalcitrant secular Jews.
5. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 6.
6. Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetics: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R, 1998), pp. 102-103.
7. These impossible assumptions include: 1) men respond to price changes that are infinitesimal, i.e., unobservable; 2) a curve exists at one instant in time, yet men's decisions are made over time; 3) other things remain equal in a world in which we cannot change just one thing; 4) men's tastes do not change as prices change. There are no doubt lots of others, but my expected cost of recalling them is higher than my expected gain.
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