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11. Responding to Jesus’ Words: Four Warnings (7:13–27)
¹³Go in through the narrow gate, since the gate¹ is wide and the road spacious
which leads² to destruction, and those who go in by it are many. ¹⁴But how³
narrow is the gate and how restricted⁴ the road which leads to life, and those who
find it are few.
¹⁵Be on your guard against false prophets, who come to you dressed up as sheep
while inside they are savage wolves. ¹ It is by their fruits that you will recognize
them. People don’t pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, do they?
¹⁷In the same way every good tree produces good⁵ fruit, while a rotten tree
produces bad fruit. ¹⁸A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, or a rotten tree good
fruit. ¹ Every tree which does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the fire. ² Well then, it is by their fruits that you will recognize them.
²¹Not everyone who says to me “Lord! Lord!” will come into the kingdom of
heaven, but only the person who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
²²On that day many will say to me, “Lord! Lord!, wasn’t it in your name that we
prophesied, and in your name that we threw out demons, and in your name that
we performed many miracles?” ²³Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you;
get away from me, you law-breakers.”
²⁴So everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice will be
like a sensible man who built his house on the rock; ²⁵then the rain poured down,
the rivers rose and the the winds blew and attacked⁷ that house, but it did not
collapse, since it had been founded on the rock. ² But everyone who hears these
words of mine and does not put them into practice will be like a foolish man who
built his house on the sand; ²⁷then the rain poured down, the rivers rose and the
winds blew and hammered against⁸ that house, and it collapsed—and its collapse
was dramatic.
The Golden Rule of 7:12 concludes the substantive content of the discourse on
discipleship. What follows is a series of four short sketches which underline the
importance of an existential response to what has been heard and warn of the
consequences of failing to respond. There is no uniformity in their literary form
(unlike for instance the six examples of the greater righteousness in 5:21–47 or
the three examples of misdirected piety in 6:1–18), but each in a different way
draws out the contrast between a right and a wrong response, between the true
and the false, the saved and the lost. This is, then, a rhetorical conclusion to the
discourse,¹ aiming to motivate the hearers to take appropriate action.¹¹ A key
word which runs through the last three of the four sections is poieō, “to do,”
though English idiom does not allow the repetition of the same verb in
translation: it is represented above by “produce” (fruit) in vv. 17, 18, 19, by “do”
(the will of God) in v. 21, by “perform” (miracles) in v. 22, and by “put into
practice” (Jesus’ teaching) in vv. 24, 26. In each case except v. 22 it is those who
“do” who are commended; in v. 22 the wrong sort of “doing” is contrasted with
the right sort in v. 21. In vv. 24 and 26 both men are described as “hearing”
Jesus’ words but only the first “does” them; the message is clear, that those who
have now “heard” Jesus’ teaching receive no benefit from it unless they also put
it into practice.
Some interpreters treat the third scene, vv. 21–23, as a subsection of the second
dealing with false prophecy. Apart from a single use of the verb “prophesy” as
one of a series of charismatic activities claimed in v. 22, however, the two
sections have little in common, and v. 20 with its repetition of v. 16a looks like
the conclusion of a section, after which a new group is introduced in v. 21. As
we shall note below, the nature of the deception in vv. 21–23 is quite different
from that in v. 15. Whereas that was deliberate deception of disciples by those
outside the group, the people of v. 22 are, at least in their own understanding,
insiders; they are not so much deceivers as self-deceived. Their situation is
closer to that of the non-practising hearer of v. 26 than to that of the wolves
dressed up as sheep.¹²
The resultant four sections therefore press increasingly closer to home: the first
is a simple contrast between saved and lost, the second concerns outsiders who
merely pretend to be insiders, the third looks at those who think they are insiders
but are not, and the fourth draws a line even within the group of insiders (who
hear Jesus’ words) between those who respond and those who do not. In each of
the four cases, the result of a failure to respond is catastrophic: “destruction” (v.
13), “cut down and burned” (v. 19), excluded from the kingdom of heaven (vv.
21, 23), and the total collapse of the house (v. 27).
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