By Their Fruits Is a Test You Are Told to Run Yourself

He weighs everything by who said it, and he knows that is not a method.

If a man he trusts says a thing, it goes in at full weight. If a man he does not know says the same thing, it sits in a holding area indefinitely. If a man he has been warned about says it, it does not go in at all, even when he cannot find anything wrong with it.

He is aware this is not thinking. He has been aware for years. What he does not have is anything to replace it with, because every alternative he has been offered requires a training he does not have, and the alternatives that do not require training feel like being clever, which he mistrusts more.

So he goes on running the only test he has, and the test is a reputation lookup, and it fails in exactly the situation where he most needs it, which is when somebody he trusts is wrong.

There is a test in Matthew 7 that requires no training at all and that a man can run on his own.

The test, said twice

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (Matthew 7:15-16)

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

And five verses later, He says it again:

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matthew 7:20)

Twice, in six verses, in the same short passage. That is not a stylistic accident. It is a man making sure the one instrument he is handing out does not get missed.

And notice who He is handing it to. This is the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to a hillside of ordinary people with no training and no office, and He gives them a job to do about false teaching and gives them a method for doing it.

Beware. That is an instruction to the crowd, not to the leadership.

You are given the job and the tool for it and you were never meant to be defenseless in front of a teacher. Matthew 7:15 gives the warning and Matthew 7:16 gives the method to an ordinary crowd, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a training you never got who makes the tool usable.

Why fruit and not something quicker

The test He gives has one distinguishing feature and it is worth naming, because it is why the test works.

Fruit takes time.

You cannot look at a tree in March and know. You can look at the leaves and the shape and the bark and be wrong, and every impressive thing about a tree is available in March, and the fruit is not.

Which means the test is deliberately slow, and its slowness is its whole security. Every fast test can be gamed: manner, confidence, vocabulary, the ability to make a room feel something. All of those are available in March.

And do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles makes the same point from the other side. A thorn bush can look like a great deal. What it cannot do is produce grapes, and the only way to find that out is to come back in season.

So a man who has been running a reputation lookup has been running a March test, and the reason it fails is not that he is dim.

You have a test that time runs for you and you were never going to catch this in a moment. Matthew 7:16 sets the test on fruit rather than on appearance, and it is His Spirit who makes patience a form of discernment rather than a failure to decide.

What fruit is, in the letters

And because the word gets used loosely, the New Testament says what it means, and the list is not about results.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Nine things, and not one of them is a number. Not attendance, not growth, not influence, not how many people were moved.

Longsuffering. Gentleness. Meekness. Temperance. Four of the nine are about how somebody behaves when things are difficult or when they have power, which is exactly the circumstance in which March impressiveness disappears.

And James gives a nearly identical test for whether a wisdom is from above:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17)

Easy to be intreated. That means approachable, able to be asked things, willing to be reasoned with.

That is a test any man can run without a single credential, and it is a devastating one, and it takes about a year of watching.

You have a description of fruit that needs no training to check and you were never without a usable list. Galatians 5:22 names nine things and none of them is a number, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named as the one who produces them.

What the same sermon says about the reader

And the end of that sermon, which puts the responsibility somewhere specific.

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. (Matthew 7:24)

Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them.

The doing is the reader's. The whole sermon ends with a man building, and the building is his own work on his own ground, and the two houses in that parable differ in one respect only: what got done with what was heard.

Which means the New Testament never envisions a hearer who receives and does not weigh and does not act. That posture is not humility in the sermon's terms; it is simply not in the picture.

You are a builder rather than an audience and you were never meant to be only a hearer. Matthew 7:24 puts the doing on whoever hears, and it is His Spirit who makes hearing turn into building in an ordinary man.