Good Trees & Bad Trees

When I was 12 years old I discovered an ancient apple tree growing out in the woods near my home in Miamisburg, Ohio. According to Ed, the old farmer who owned the woods, the tree had been planted by none other than Johnathon Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, way back in the late 1830s. That meant the tree was at least 130 years old when I found in 1964.

Sweet Apples from an Ancient Apple Tree

No one had been taking care of it. It’s long drooping branches hung down to the ground like a giant spider. Each had rerooted to form a ring of younger trees around a massive trunk. It’s apples were small, rather sparse, and wormy. But to my delight, if you were careful where you bit into them, they were still very sweet!

It’s amazing to think that without anyone pruning it, fertilizing it, or spraying it, that old apple tree had just kept on producing wonderfully sweet apples over all those years. No amount of neglect could change the kind of fruit it bore because it was by nature a sweet apple tree.

Have a Crabapple

Now in our backyard behind the house there was another tree. This one was beautiful in the spring with bright pink blossoms. It also was pretty old, but it had been pruned often over the years. My father pounded fertilizer stakes into the ground around it and when tent worms attacked, we burned them out as soon as we saw them. It got the royal treatment.

Sour Crab apples from a Crab apple Tree

But when I sampled the “apples” on that tree I quickly spit them out. It was a crabapple tree! The tiny red “apples” were bitter as could be. In fact they weren’t even apples at all. Crabapples are in the family Rosaceae meaning that what look like little apples are actually “rose-hips.”

No matter how much attention my dad poured into taking care of that crabapple tree all it ever bore was more crabapples. That was it’s nature. The old Johnny Appleseed tree on the other hand continued to bear sweet apples in spite of all the neglect because that was it’s nature. If we had given it the kind of care we showered on the crabapple tree it would have borne bigger apples, in greater abundance and with fewer worms, but with all that it’s apples would still be sweet. It is the nature of a tree that defines the goodness of its fruit, not the level of care or neglect that it receives.

Good Trees vs Bad Trees

Jesus used this truth to make a point in the Gospel of Luke, found in the New Testament of the Bible. There, in chapter 6 and verses 43–45, He explained that, “a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.” Then He observed, “A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” What does that mean?

Moral character is an issue of one’s heart. Think of your heart as your “wanter.” It wants what it wants, and we can’t change what it wants, because it doesn’t want to change. We are trapped in the nature that we have. A good heart wants to do good, which shows up in what we say and do, while a bad tree wants to do evil, which also shows up in what we say and do. Our moral character is an issue of our heart.

What Jesus Was Not Saying

Now it’s important to note that Jesus was not comparing a healthy fig tree to a sickly fig tree. No. He was comparing a fig tree to a thorn bush. Those are two different kinds of plants. They bear entirely different kinds of fruit because they have two entirely different kinds of nature, just like a sweet apple tree is different from a crabapple tree. So, if we think Jesus was talking about a healthy tree versus a sickly tree, we miss His point entirely. It’s not an issue of disease or a lack of care; it’s the nature of the tree that makes it what it is.

What was His point?

Jesus was telling us that we, including all human beings, are like the fig tree and thorn bush. We all have a certain kind of heart, and it is our heart that determines what kind of “fruit” we want to bear, whether good or evil. Even the healthiest thorn bush cannot bear figs. Nor can the healthiest crabapple tree bear sweet apples. Our “wanter” has to change.

In light of this we can see that no amount of nurture, can ever change our heart. No financial advantages, parental love, child training, quality education, or even church ministry, Sunday School, Christian camps or Vacation Bible Schools can ever change the kind of heart that a person has. Though all of these advantages can increase the level of fruit in a person’s life, polish up their external appearance, and open doors of opportunity, they cannot change one’s nature. For one’s heart to change from bad to good there needs to be a miracle, like turning a thorn bush into a fig tree, or a crabapple tree into a sweet apple tree. We would have to be changed into an entirely new kind of person with a new set of desires: a “new creation.”

Miracles Are No Problem.

Jesus does not regard our need for a miracle to be a problem. After all, He is the Son of God. He created the world, so nothing is impossible for Him. Like a computer programer, He can rewrite the code of reality in any way He chooses. That is what miracles are, God overriding His normal reality to produce the reality He wants. Now, we are not living in a computer simulation. All this is real. But in this reality, Jesus is able to do what would otherwise be impossible. He can change our heart nature from evil to good.

Jesus was sent into this world by His Heavenly Father for this very reason. He came to rescue people like us from the dilemma we are caught in. John 3:16-17 sums it up. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son [that’s Jesus], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Jesus came to save us, not condemn us. He does so by taking away our evil heart, the one that wants to do what is wrong, and replacing it with a good heart that wants to do what is right. Everyone needs this miracle because everyone starts out in this world with an evil heart that wants to rebel against God. We have all been born as sinners and that is why we continuously want to sin against God.

How does Jesus provide us with the miracle we need?

The answer is found in what Jesus calls “the good news,” the gospel. It is the news that when we repent of our sins, and come back to God, we will be forgiven and our evil hearts will be replaced by God with good hearts that want to please God. Not only that, but He will also give us a new spirit, like a new attitude, and He will even give us the Holy Spirit of God to empower us to actually do what pleases God. It’s a total transformation into an entirely new kind of creature (See 2 Cor. 5:17).

It’s all right there in the promise of God found in Ezekiel 36:25-27. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”

This promise, given to the Jewish people, is given to us also as we are grafted into the rootstock of God’s ancient people.

All we need to do is repent of our sins and “believe” in Jesus, trusting in Him alone to perform the miracle we need. This change of our heart is so complete that Jesus calls it being “born again.” When Jesus says, “You must be born again” in John 3:7, He’s referring to this change of heart that actually saves our soul, for all eternity, from the bondage of wanting to sin. It is the foundational event of the Christian life.

So, how does it work?

It works in the following way. First, Jesus agreed to leave His place in heaven to come down to earth and be born as a baby boy (That is why we celebrate His birth at Christmas.). Then He lived the perfectly obedient life that we were all supposed to live, but haven’t. We have all sinned and “fall short of the glory of God,” like an arrow that fails to hit its target. (Rom. 3:23). Because of this, no one can ever be good enough to earn his way back into God’s favor. But though we have all failed, Jesus did not fail. Though we deserve God’s judgement because of our sin, Jesus did not. He had no debt of His own sin to pay. That is why He could pay for our sins by voluntarily dying on the cross in our place. No one else could do this for us. That is why trusting in Jesus is the only way to be saved from the punishment we all deserve. Whatever else you may believe, don’t miss out on His free gift of forgiveness and salvation. He died for us in order to save us. But how can we know for sure that it worked?

After lying dead in the grave for three days, God raised Jesus from the dead. (That is why we celebrate Easter.) God did this in order to prove once and for all that Jesus was who He claimed to be—God the Son in human form— and that His death was acceptable to God as full payment for all our sins. “Jesus paid it all!”

Now, because of what Jesus has done for us, God the Father is able to forgive us without being unjust as a Judge. We can now be reconciled to God as His spiritual children—adopted into His eternal family.

Whenever anyone truly believes this good news concerning Jesus Christ all these good things happen. But “believing” is more than just a “Sure, why not” kind of response. Believing in Jesus changes everything. If we do not believe in Jesus enough to repent of our sins and actually begin obeying Him as Lord we are not really believing at all. The new birth happens because the faith that saves us is part of the package God provides for us.

It’s amazingly noticeable when it happens, because when we believe the truth in our heart, at the very center of our being, we become a new person. Our old evil heart is replaced with a new good heart that eagerly wants to please God no matter what. Anything less is not saving us from anything. We are saved by a faith that transforms us. That is what it really means to be born-again. When we find ourselves believing in this way, it is because God has changed us on the inside. We have the new nature that wants to do what pleases God. We begin to bear good fruit because we have become a good tree.

“You Must Be Born Again!”

If this has not yet happened to you, don’t settle for anything less. Don’t fall into the religious trap of being a “nominal” Christian— a Christian in name only, with no new of heart—no changed “wanter.”

Nominal Christians often bear the fruit of “supportive circumstances.” Having grown up in church, they know the good news, but they have never really believed it, not in the way that saves one’s soul. As soon as they go off to marriage or college, their real nature emerges. They don’t lose their faith. They never had it in the first place! When one has actually been born again, those supportive circumstances can come and go, but the good fruit just keeps on coming. Just as fertilizing and spraying a tree can increase its yield, supportive circumstances can help Christians grow. But that positive environment does not change the kind of heart a person has. Only God can do that, and He does so by causing those who repent and believe in Jesus to be born again. That’s the miracle.

You’ll begin to bear the good fruit of the Holy Spirit.

What kind of good fruit will you bear as a born-again believer in Jesus? It’s called “the fruit of the Spirit” and a list of it is provided by God in Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” All of this fruit shows up in our relationships. As God’s children we get to show our love for God by the way we love one another. That is why we gather in what is called a local church. As we get to know one another we can include one another in our daily lives. We become like an extended family. We eat together routinely. We help one another out with projects and support one another in times of need. We listen to the teaching of our church pastors so that we can grow stronger in our faith and in our love for others. We give to support the church we would turn to in time of need, making it strong for everyone so that it can be what it is supposed to be for all of its members. We also use our resources to get the good news concerning Jesus out to those who have not yet heard it.

What are you waiting for?

Why not respond right now? Turn away from your old life of sin, and turn to God by faith in Jesus. Ask Him to forgive you. When you do so, it is strong evidence that you have been born again. That is what will turn you into a good tree that wants to bear good fruit. You will not be perfect, but you will want to do better. Like that old sweet-apple tree out in the woods, you will continue to bear good fruit regardless. Get yourself into a good, solid, Bible-believing church, and you will be even more fruitful. If you live near us, we would love to have you walk with us in your new life.

To learn more, or to offer feedback, just call or text me at 971-370-0967.