It is when our hearts are bent into submission to the sinful nature that our lives reap bad fruit, we bear fruit of death. You can tell whether or not a tree is bad by looking at the fruit it produces – Jesus told us this. Why have we begun to imagine anything differently? It makes sense, doesn’t it, that if our lives are full of back-stabbing and vengeance, meanness and hostility, selfishness and jealousy, we are a bad tree? Does it not make sense that if the lives we live are underscored with sex on the brain, wasting hours on the latest craze to seduce us, if we’re hateful and argumentative and angry all the time, then we are bad trees? Is it unreasonable that if we’re drunks and perverts, ultra-competitive, driven by divide-and-conquer, dying inside every time someone else makes it – is it unreasonable, then, to assume that the tree is bad? Simply look at the fruit and you can see – if the fruit is rotten, the tree is bad. If you don’t believe me, read Galatians 5:19-21 for yourself. It is sad to say, but the majority of the Christians have not changed; the majority of us model what has been said above. It is as Gandhi said: “I love your Christ. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

What, then, does a good tree look like? A good tree models the Sermon on the Mount – not an exposition on new laws to be added to our lives, but what someone who lives in the Kingdom of God really looks like, without effort. Good trees give off good fruit; they are loving and alive, sparkling and radiant, calm and not pushy, generous with money, time and people, always ready to help. It hurts to see someone else hurting and it is unbearable to hurt another – physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Good trees do not double-cross others, do not lose their cool, aren’t in trouble with the government authority.

None of this comes because you force it into your life; any application of this as laws will undoubtedly fail. A good tree is only good because its roots are anchored right – anchored in the Son. Then they will draw nourishment from God and the tree will naturally grow into a good tree, feeding off the Spirit. Here lies one of the greatest errors in our thinking regarding spiritual transformation: we think we have to force ourselves to transform, when really the attributes of the Good Tree will invade our lives and become second-nature to us; but only if our roots are anchored correctly. In the same breath, if our roots are not anchored right – and no matter what we may say or think can alter where we have truly placed the roots – then it will be seen: our roots will draw up brackish water and our lives will be dark cesspools whose fruits are radiant only of evil, and we are not in any way like Christ, even if we stamp the name Christian onto our cars and sleeves.