Introduction

In the last post in this series I highlighted the danger of substituting religious duty or ministry performance for the fruit of righteousness.

But there’s another potential pitfall. It’s possible to acknowledge that the fruit is ethical in nature, but to use the fruit test to measure a person’s moral performance rather than to assess their paternity. Instead of asking, “Whose likeness do we see here?” the sheep wrongly ask, “How good/bad is this person?” 

To understand these two very different ways of using Jesus’ fruit test, we need to understand the difference between the righteousness taught and embodied by Jesus and the righteousness of the Pharisees.

In turn, we’ll see that these two different types of righteousness are based on two very different ways of interpreting, teaching, and living out the law of God.

Series Outline

Here’s a brief outline of the series, with this post highlighted:

1. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing : Introduction

2. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Identity

3. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Activity

4. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Paternity

5. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Discovery, Part 1

6. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Discovery, Part 2

7. Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Destiny

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The Righteousness of the Pharisees vs The Righteousness of the Kingdom

In Matthew 5:20, Jesus warns his listeners (the disciples and the crowd who overhear) that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He then proceeds to contrast the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven—Jesus bringing the law to its full, mature manifestation in his life and teaching (5:17)—with the inadequate, superficial understanding of the law taught by the Pharisees (5:21-48).

Konradt (persuasively I think) argues that 5:20 functions as a heading for the “antitheses” that follow (5:21-48), with each of the statements beginning with the phrase “you have heard that it was said to the ancients” (5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43) functioning as a summary of the Pharisees’ superficial understanding of the law.

The sense is, “You have heard [in your regular synagogue instruction] that it was said [by God] to the ancients … but I say to you that …” (See Konradt, Christology, Torah, and Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Wayne Coppins [Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2022], 80-89). For a similar reading of this passage, see R. T. France (Gospel of Matthew, NICNT, 194-196).

Behind Jesus’ critique is the conviction that there are lesser commandments in God’s law, and greater ones (Mt 5:19; 22:36-38; 23:23). The weightiest commandments of all are love for God and neighbour (Mt 22:36-38). Closely bound to these are other requirements that closely reflect the character of God, such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness (23:23). The “lesser” commandments (e.g. tithing, 23:23) matter, but they matter precisely because the greater commandments give them ballast. They show the outworking in the details of life of a character of love, mercy, justice, and truth. 

The Pharisees did two things that badly distorted the law. First, they magnified the minor commandments: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you tithe mint and dill and cumin, but neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and faithfulness” (23:23). And, second, they minimised the major commandments. With each “you have heard that it was said” statement (5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43), Jesus shows how they minimised the major commandments. 

Murder and Lies

Since a wolf in sheep’s clothing, like their father the devil, operates by destruction through deceit, it is particularly instructive to consider these two radically different types of righteousness in relation to Jesus’ teaching about murder (5:21-26), and about faithfulness and truthfulness in speech (5:33-37).

Murder and Anger

According to Jesus, murder is the fruit of anger, the attitude of heart that disdains and dismisses another person (5:21-22). The Pharisees believed that God’s punishment was restricted to the act of murder, the unlawful killing of another person (5:21). 

Jesus critiques that view. Since God is concerned with the attitude of heart behind the act, and not simply with the act itself, righteousness involves more than not killing another person. Anger can errupt into all sorts of aggressions, verbal as well as physical (5:22). Therefore, everyone who is angry with his brother (not just the person who murders) is subject to the judgment of hellfire (see Konradt 2022, 107 for the argument that the stress lands on “everyone” in v. 22).

Jesus then goes even further, stressing the positive as well as the negative. Whereas the murderous, angry person will angrily dispatch their brother (whether verbally or physically), the righteous person will lovingly seek out a brother or sister to be reconciled to them (5:23-26).

Truth and Lies

Turning to the issue of being truthful in our speech, Jesus summarises God’s requirement (expressed in various places in the OT) that all sworn testimony be truthful and that oaths be kept and not broken (5:33). To solemnly swear before God that something is true when, in fact, it is false is to break both the third commandment (against taking God’s name in vain) and the ninth (against bearing false witness).

According to Jesus, the Pharisees left themselves ethical wiggle room by swearing by “heaven” (v. 34), by “earth” (v. 35), by “Jerusalem” (v. 36), or by “your head.” By deliberately not invoking God’s name, they thought to transport themselves to an ethical free space (Konradt’s apt phrase: see 2022, 82), where absolute truthfulness was somehow no longer obligatory.

But since “God is in all of life, and every statement is made before him” (Morris, Matthew, Pillar NT Commentary, 125), he demands transparent and complete truthfulness of his people. Anything else is from the devil (5:37), the father of lies. Jesus strongly opposes using God’s law—intended to guide God’s people in righteousness—as a fence that restricts righteousness to a limited set of circumstances and concerns. Such a fence must be broken down: “But I say to you, do not swear at all.” In other words, on all occasions, in all your speech, be faithful and true. 

So that’s a quick sketch of two examples of how the righteousness of the kingdom differs to that of the Pharisees. For sketches of the others, see Konradt, 2022, 80-89 and France, NICNT, 196-197.

When you step back and view the antitheses as a whole, the overall impression is that God’s law on the lips (and in the life) of Jesus appears as something full and expansive, reaching deep into the heart of a person, governing inner motives and desires, and spreading wide into all of one’s relationships, governing behaviour towards enemies as well as friends. In contrast, God’s law on the lips (and in the life) of the Pharisees is something thin and restrictive, shallow in its understanding of the law, and narrow in its application.

The Fruit Test Wrongly Used as a Performance Test

It is critical to see that the righteousness of the Pharisees distorts and deforms the law itself. It is no longer God’s expression of the character of love, mercy, justice, and faithfulness, first his own divine character, and then the character of his adopted children.

Now, outside of the limited, restrictive application of individual commandments, there lies a vast ethical free space. I must not murder (5:21-26), commit adultery (5:27-30), divorce my wife without just cause (5:31-32), tell a lie under oath (5:33-37), harm someone without just provocation (5:38-42), or be disloyal to my tribe (5:43-48). But, with those boxes ticked, I am free to be as unloving, unjust, untruthful, unfaithful, and unmerciful as I like. 

The law intended to guide us in the path of goodness, love, and truth, now becomes religious or cultural clothing that can be worn to hide deep corruption, hatred, lust and pride. Do you see how a wolf in sheep’s clothing will lick his lips at such a self-serving appropriation of God’s law?

Remember that the fruit test is designed to determine the character of the tree, the family to which it belongs (7:16-20). I proposed in the previous post that this is revealed by looking closely at a person’s character traits, behavioural patterns, and repentance markers. That is the fruit test used as a paternity test, revealing whether or not someone has the “whole-person righteousness” (Pennington, Sermon on the Mount, 121) that identifies them as a child of a Heavenly Father.

By contrast, by “performance test” I mean a way of using the fruit test that falls head first into the error of the Pharisees. No longer does the fruit test reveal character traits and behaviours that reveal someone to be loving, meek, merciful, and truthful, like their Father in heaven. Now it highlights a limited, isolated set of performance criteria that only serves to confirm that they belong to us, that they know the dress code of the tribe.

The difference between a paternity test and a performance test

The difference between a paternity test and a performance test can be simply illustrated.

That’s an illustration of how Jesus’ fruit test is designed to function, distinguishing between good trees, which exhibit the heavenly wisdom of the family of God, and bad trees which exhibit the earthly, demonic wisdom of the serpent’s seed.

A performance test is conceptually very different.

Now there is no imaginary line of demarcation. There is a performance scale, on which each tree sits, from very bad, to very good. A performance test involves ascertaining where someone sits on the line. That is, I suggest, how in practice the fruit test is frequently used by churches and organisations which are seeking to assess a prophet’s credentials.

What often happens is that a prophet’s (bad) behaviour comes under scrutiny. Maybe some sheep bleat a bit more loudly than usual. But rather than asking, “Does this prophet sit above or below the line?” the pen’s gatekeepers ask, “Has this prophet crossed the line?” (Wherever they might happen to draw the imaginary line). Crossing the line might, for example, mean committing adultery, or committing fraud. Returning to the critical issues of murderous anger and deceitful speech, crossing the line might mean physically abusing a young lamb of the flock, or preaching that departs from the denomination’s doctrinal standards.

The problem is that such restrictive, limited performance indicators leave open a vast terrain of ethical free space through which a wolf can roam free. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that wolves in sheep’s clothing are destroyers in disguise, who operate by stealth, under cover of darkness (“evening wolves,” Zeph 3:3). As such, any clever, deceitful wolf is going to keep their worst work hidden. Not only does a limited performance test not reveal anyone’s true character, but it certainly can’t ever uncover a wolf whose visible fruit is unlikely to include their most egregious abuses.

The proof that the fruit test is typically used as a performance test is seen in almost all of the recent high-profile cases of power abuse within the church. Years after concerns are first raised by sheep, extremely serious abuses of power come to light (e.g. sexual abuse, egregious examples of bullying and spiritual abuse, financial abuse etc), and at that point the leader is (possibly) judged to have crossed the line into wolf territory. And then people come out of the woodwork saying things like, “the warning signs were there”; or, “there were troubling patterns of behaviour but everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt”; or, “we raised concerns with him and with hindsight we can see the consistent patterns of self-justification.” And so on and so forth.

Do you see what is being said in such tragically common scenarios? “We chose not to use the fruit test as a paternity test ten years ago. Instead, we decided to use it last week as a performance test.” Using the fruit test as a performance test will always mean using it too late. Rather than functioning as an intruder alarm that protects the sheep, it now functions as a fire alarm, alerting us that the building is on fire and that sheep are running for their lives with third-degree burns. 

When legalism is disguised as grace

Once the fruit test comes into play as a performance test, the performance being measured is never really just the prophet’s moral performance anyway. The Pharisaical mindset that instinctively applies the fruit test as a moral performance test has already given entry to the prophet-wolf on the basis of their impressive religious duty and ministry performance.

Since the wolf has gained entry on the basis of exemplary performance (whether as a preacher, thinker, writer, manager, motivator, or whatever), there is a strong presumption against the idea that their performance has somehow now become inadequate. Once the fruit test is about performance at all, whatever the metric, the wolf typically goes undetected, unless he commits the faux pas of breaking a cultural taboo (e.g. sleeps with another man’s wife). 

 Common also in such scenarios is covering over serpent-like patterns of behaviour with “grace”. “We’re all sinners.” “It’s not for us to cast the first stone.” “It’s right that we show him or her grace.” “We’ll give him a chance to work on his anger issues/his conduct around female staff/his economy with the truth/his bullying.” 

But that’s not grace; that’s the license fuelled by pharisaical legalism. Behind such an easy tolerance of unfaithfulness, anger, mercilessness, and deceit (“swallowing camels”, Mt 23:24) is a legalistic approach to righteousness that has severed the law from the character of God and his people (for a penetrating exposition of the relationship between legalism and license, see Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ). That is, the law is treated as merely legal in nature, rather than essentially relational in character

Just as a legalist will only consider qualified those whose performance stands out from the crowd, so he or she will then only consider disqualified those whose performance has sunk to the bottom of the barrel. That is why wolves thrive in legalistic environments: they get in because they are impressive, and they stay in because they are never unimpressive enough. 

In the final post of this series we will consider the wolves’ destiny. Though wolves may escape detection in this life, and though Jesus’ flock inevitably will at times fail in rightly applying the fruit test, all impostors will ultimately be disowned and dismissed by Christ.

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