The Ax

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

THE AX

Luke 3:7-9

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

NIV

This are the first words recorded of John the Baptist in the beginning of his public ministry. From what we have been told before he went out into the country around the Jordon preaching the baptism of repentance, but this is the first we have heard of what he preached. His words certainly were not words that would win friends and influence people, yet he must have done just that for crowds came to hear him. The truth here is loud and clear. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Claiming salvation through having Abraham as their father was simply not acceptable. They needed to produce fruit, or we could say the evidence of a change of direction of their lives. Let’s update this truth a bit. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, having repented of our sinful life, we need to produce the fruit, the evidence of that experience, that event in our lives. This certainly could be a case for the fruit of the Spirit being that fruit, that evidence. The point is there should be an absolute change in our lives. We cannot claim our place in the kingdom of God by having Abraham as our father, that is to say, one, we claim we are believers because we were raised in a Christian home, or two, that we are believers because we follow all the rules and regulations of a denomination. They may be many others reasons we cannot claim our place in the kingdom, but we can be certain we must produce good fruit in order to not be cut down and through into the fire. Would this be a case where we could say faith in dead without works, or production of good fruit? We know works is dead without faith, but here is that case for faith being dead without works. But the works are not the works of man, good deeds as it were. But  the works is the production of fruit for without that kind of change in our lives, that kind of evidence, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, no matter what we say we believe, it appears the ax is at the root and the fire is at our feet. That is a hard truth, but it appears that is exactly what John was saying. Yes, he was making that case for the need for accepting Jesus, rather than Abraham. This could also been seen as the good fruit. That all we need to escape the ax is the good fruit of accepting Jesus. Although it is true that we need Jesus for salvation, it is also true that this claiming Jesus as our Savior should also be seen in the evidence of bearing fruit. The claiming of Jesus without the change or repentance, and the production of the evidence of that claim seems to fall short of the need to avoid that ax.