Scripture Daily

Context No. 331 of 4322 · Matthew

Context · Reflection

Matthew 12:30-37: in context

30“He who is not with me is against me, and he who doesn’t gather with me, scatters. 31Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 32Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in that which is to come. 33“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit. 34You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. 35The good man out of his good treasure brings out good things, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings out evil things. 36I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Jesus has just been accused by the Pharisees of casting out demons by the power of the devil, calling the work of God's Spirit the work of Satan. He gives a severe warning about that particular hardness, the blasphemy against the Spirit, the state of a heart so inverted that it names good as evil. But then he widens out to a principle about all of us, and it is about the relationship between the heart and the mouth.

A tree is known by its fruit, he says. You cannot get good fruit off a bad tree or bad fruit off a good one; the fruit simply reveals what the tree is. And then he applies it to speech: out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What comes out of your mouth is the overflow of what is stored inside, and the good person brings good things out of a good treasure while the evil person brings evil out of an evil one. The mouth is a readout of the heart's actual contents. And he presses it to the most revealing kind of speech: every careless, idle word, he says, the throwaway lines we do not plan or guard, will be accounted for, because those unguarded words are precisely where the truth leaks out. By your words you will be justified, and by your words condemned.

The uncomfortable implication is that I cannot fix my speech by policing my mouth. If bitter or contemptuous things keep spilling out, especially when I am tired or off guard, they are telling me what is actually stored in the heart, and that is what has to change. What do my unguarded, idle words, the ones I would not have chosen to say, keep revealing about what is really filling my heart?

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