The fruit of repentance (Matt 3:7-10)

When I was a teenager, a church friend invited me to her family’s bach[1] by Lake Balaton in Hungary. As we were sitting on the veranda, I looked up at the tree growing next to the house and noticed an apple hanging from it. As my eyes wandered on, I spotted a pear on the same tree! Taking in the whole, I realised it was a walnut tree. My friend’s father had a quirky sense of humour and decorated the tree with false fruit. Like the tree with loosely attached fruit that is only for show, John the Baptist attacks the Pharisees and Sadducees for not producing fruit that demonstrates a genuine turning to God. What was wrong with these religious people and what kind of fruit was John looking for?

It is hard to know what the Baptist saw, and we are only given his perspective, but there are several aspects that provide us with clues. With the characteristic bluntness of OT prophets, the Baptist calls these people ‘a brood of vipers’ who are trying to escape judgement (Matt 3:7). Vipers were poisonous snakes and the description is meant to evoke a negative association. Calling these people vipers when they come ostensibly with an attitude of ‘repentance’ also indicates that John perceives no change in them. It is not that we earn the genuineness of our repentance by good deeds, but that a radical re-orientation of one’s life towards God inevitably produces a changed outlook and attitude. Further, John accuses the Pharisees and Sadducees of being motivated simply to escape the consequences of their evil.

Of course, there are a number of people whose commitment to God starts with the fear of consequences. In the famous story of Jonah who preaches judgement to the Ninevites, the people repent in response to that message. Yet, wanting to escape the consequences alone is not true repentance. If I steal your wallet and say I am sorry in the hope of escaping arrest, but refuse to return your money, I am not repentant at all. There has to be remorse for the wrong done, a turning away from it and a recognition that God has every right to judge. The Ninevites demonstrate all these traits (Jonah 3:7-9): they call for an expression of remorse (sackcloth and fasting), they acknowledge their wickedness and are committed to turning away from it and they do not presume that God’s grace is their right. Thus, the initial trigger might be fear of the consequences, but along with it comes true transformation of perspective. The Pharisees and Sadducees, on the other hand, are described as vipers even as they try to escape God’s judgement.

Moreover, they demonstrate entitlement, as if somehow their ethnic descent from Abraham makes them eligible for God’s grace (Matt 3:9). We may recognise ourselves in this attitude when we half-heartedly confess sins because we are afraid of the repercussions from God, but at the same time have no real intention of stopping our practice and vaguely hope that as children of God, we can expect Him to forgive us. In such a situation both sin and forgiveness lose their significance and weight and we end up with contradictory behaviours. On the one hand, we say to God, ‘help me’, on the other we don’t want Him to tell us what to do because, really, what we have done is perhaps not so bad and after all, we are God’s children. Genuine repentance results in humility, a recognition that our life is not pleasing to God and needs to change and that we do not deserve His mercy. In so many ways, we can be hopelessly muddled but Scripture holds up a mirror to us so that we might catch ourselves in the act and turn to God in true repentance.

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[1] NZ English for a holiday house.