If you want good fruit, you must make the tree good. If your tree is not good, it will have bad fruit. A tree is known by the kind of fruit it produces.
Have you ever seen someone you recognized and thought to yourself, “I know him,” only to find out it wasn’t that person at all? Maybe you went up to him, called him by name, and got a strange look in return. How embarrassing! Perhaps you wanted to find the nearest hole in the wall and crawl inside.
Jesus, in Matthew 12, was accused by the Pharisees of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, proclaimed that a house divided against itself will not stand (Matthew 12:25). In other words, the Pharisees did not recognize Jesus for who He truly was, the Son of God. They could not recognize the fruit He produced.
On the other hand, Jesus did recognize the Pharisees for who they truly were and He called them “snakes” (Matthew 12:34). He said in our verse for today, that one can recognize a tree by its fruit. Jesus recognized the Pharisees by their bad fruit, and He called them out on it.
Brothers and sisters, what kind of trees are we? How will Jesus recognize us? Will He recognize us as His own, or will He not recognize us as His followers? He will know our allegiance by the fruit we produce. Are we producing good spiritual fruit or bad spiritual fruit? Are we being fruitful in service to the King or are we not producing much good fruit at all? As you go about your day today, think about how you want to be recognized by our Savior. Let us be truly recognizable as His followers by the fruit we are producing.
By Shawn Cornett, Bible League International staff, Indiana, US
