Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
- Matthew 7:16b-20
That verse can be a little frightening, depending on how it is interpreted. Actually, it can be a lot frightening. This is the kind of verse the enemy takes out of context and uses to make people who have been following Jesus for thirty years hope that they're going to Heaven instead of know that they are. There are preachers who use this verse to try to show that one can lose their salvation and or that if one doesn't live a holy enough life they can't possibly be a Christian, no matter what they claim to believe. Before you get frightened and refuse to read further, Dear Reader, they are wrong. But without some understanding of the love and grace of God this verse can be frightening, almost as scary as the following:
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
- Matthew 6:14-15
Now, if you read that verse through legalistic filters, that is one of the most nightmare producing verses in scripture, in my opinion. Maybe I feel that way because sometimes I struggle with forgiveness. Sometimes there are people and things I don't want to forgive. Sometimes there are people and things that I want to forgive, think that I have indeed forgiven, and then suddenly, without warning, the hurt and anger resurfaces and I know that my forgiveness is not yet finished. And yet, I am fully aware that I want and need forgiveness desperately, from God, and from man, and from myself. I am, without forgiveness, a record of much and very despicable and selfish wrong with very little right. And if I am honest about the majority of what little right there is, most of that came out of selfish and or people pleasing motives. No, I need forgiveness. So this idea that one must earn forgiveness is frightening to me, because I have as much of a chance to qualify for forgiveness on an earning and deserving basis as I do salvation, in other words no chance in Hell, which is where I will be without it.
I don't bring this subject up today because it is the first of October and time to get scary and spooky, but rather because of the prayer that we have been looking at, the Prayer Of St. Francis. We have come to the section where whoever penned this precious prayer reminds us that it is in pardoning that we are pardoned. This statement is true, and based on the model prayer, sometimes called the disciples' prayer but most often called the Lord's prayer, where Jesus tells us to ask our Daddy to forgive us as we forgive others.
I have heard it preached and taught that the as there is an = sign, in the same manner as. And that I would agree with. But I vehemently disagree with the resulting logic that makes people run around trying to force their flesh to forgive others in order to feel forgiven of God, just as I shout from the rooftops that we are not to and can not go about life trying to be a good tree so that we can bear good fruit and prove or feel that we are God's, much less earn being God's.
We have it all messed up and mixed up and wrong. Sure, it is logical and makes some sense when taken out of context that those verses say what they mean and mean what they say. But they don't. Or rather they do, but not what we try to make them say far too often. Context is everything. First comes context with the words immediately, adjacent, then with the paragraphs, expanding outward to include the book/letter and an understanding of to whom and when the book was written. Then, the verse must be kept in context with the entirety of Scripture, with all 66 books, and the way to do that is to look at it through the filter of the theme at the center of all of it, which is God's love for us and His purpose and plan to defeat and destroy evil through the sacrifice of Jesus.
So, any interpretation of these verses that puts the power in our hands, makes us responsible for fulfilling or proving or creating or qualifying for forgiveness or salvation is contrary to the overall theme of scripture and therefore out of context. You can not force God to forgive you by forgiving others. If you must forgive others before God will forgive you, if God will only forgive you to the extent that you have forgiven others, then, when you do the = the reverse is also true. If you forgave everyone who ever hurt you, God would be forced to forgive you, even if you had no faith in Christ. No. It doesn't work that way. The scripture is clear that forgiveness comes through Christ, as does our salvation.
So how else can we look at these verses and this part of the prayer? Well, Jesus used the fruit tree as a metaphor and called us the branches attached to Him, the vine. There are references to grafting in scripture as well, so let me use the grafting of fruit trees to explain how these verses say what they mean and mean what they say without meaning what we sometimes think. That we use logic to get them wrong also makes sense when we remember that His thoughts are not our thoughts.
If a fruit tree is to be reproduced through grafting, first we must find a compatible stem and root system. We are created in God's image, which makes us compatible for becoming God's fruit trees rather than the cursed fruit bearing trees that we were born as. If you graft one kind of fruit tree onto another that is compatible, it will begin to bear not one but two different fruits. You can do this multiple times. In fact there is a tree called a Fruit Salad Tree, derived at in this manner, that grows six different types of fruit.
Once a graft is done, the tree is no longer what it once was, but the graft alone does not transform or make the tree only capable of bearing the new fruit either. The old branches, the original branches must be cut off and pruned away. Until all the old branches are gone, they will and can bear the old fruit. The more new branches grow, the more new fruit is produced. With proper pruning, the tree can and will produce nothing but the new fruit. And this is what happens spiritually with us, when we surrender to the sacrifice of Jesus. A new spirit is created and grafted into our life. The stem and roots, our mind and body, are still under the curse, but there is something new and clean and different growing in us. The new spirit bears the fruit of God, but the parts that are of flesh still bear old and bad fruit until they are pruned away, brought under submission to God.
God is the one doing the grafting and the pruning and the transforming, not us, but we do have to submit and surrender to His will. He has promised to complete the work which He, not us, has begun, and one day the tree of your life will bear no resemblance to the tree of flesh but will bear only the fruit of God's spirit. That is coming. But we are not yet fully transformed and complete. We still have branches of the flesh in the way and bearing bad fruit. That's why we still need a Savior and His grace and forgiveness to get rid of our fleshly fruit and prune away those branches. We can't do it ourselves any more than a fruit tree can make its own graft or choose which fruit to produce.
We don't decide to bear good fruit and thereby prove we are a good tree. We also don't decide to be a good tree and thereby begin producing nothing but the good fruits of God's Spirit. Likewise, we do not forgive anyone and everyone and suddenly gain or earn God's forgiveness of us, and we definitely do not have the power, through the action of our forgiving people, to force God to forgive us. That's backwards.
We submit to Him in complete surrender to do with us as He wills, Step 3. He makes the graft. We have a new spirit within us. We are now His and not only of the curse. And as He trims and cuts away the cursed will and we surrender to His touch, we will grow new branches and bear more and more fruit of His Spirit and less and less of the fruit of our flesh. As He guides and transforms us and we become more and more like Him and obedient to Him and aware of His forgiveness of us, we will forgive others as naturally as we will produce any other fruit, because He has made that possible. We can not truly forgive much without His grafting of grace. As we become more the new tree we will bear the fruit of forgiveness, not in order to earn or create or make forgiveness for ourselves but rather because we are becoming a tree like the Tree of Life that was grafted into us. We are becoming like Jesus.
We forgive others because we are forgiven. We forgive others because Jesus forgives us and others and we are transforming into His likeness. It is in the forgiveness that we have received and in the forgiveness that we give others that we demonstrate the awareness of what it means to have the new spirit created within us, but it does not create that spirit. And we do not have to perfectly forgive in order to be forgiven, just as we do not have to perfectly bear nothing but good fruits of the Spirit in order to be saved. That comes with pruning. The Gardner will complete the work. One day we will stand before Him with all our old flesh cut away and replaced with the new, and on that day there will no longer be any chance to bear bad fruit or withhold forgiveness. But until then, we will have some issues with having to ask for more pruning, with getting mixed fruit, with having to forgive again when the pain grows back. If you are His, then you are His forever and completely, but that doesn't mean the work is fully manifested.
Lord, let us become more and more aware of Your love and forgiveness for us so that we will, in the same manner as the Tree of Life we are becoming, forgive those who have hurt and owe us. Let us be progressively more willing and fully submitted to the work which You are doing in our lives so that the pruning can be effective and we will look, act, and be more like Jesus every day, producing more and more of the fruits of Your Spirit, including forgiveness, and less and less of the fruits of the flash. Amen.
Peace Prayer Of Saint Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
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