What is the meaning of "make the tree good" in Matthew 12:33?

From the fact of the sin these Pharisees were doing, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Lord now turns to the cause of this, the spring from which the evil comes. "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt. For from the fruit the tree is known. Offspring of vipers! how can ye speak good things, being wicked?" (verses 33-34). The Searcher of hearts, He who understandeth the thoughts afar off, uncovers the real condition of these men and the condition of man in general. The tree is bad, the fruit must be bad. The tree must be made good, and that denotes a change, and the fruit will be good. "The heart is deceitful above all, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart" (Jer. 17:9, 10). He does it here and speaks of them as John, the forerunner did, as "offspring of vipers," with wicked hearts and impossible to bring forth anything good. And, later, once more He spoke of the condition of the heart of man, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matt. 15:19). How little those Pharisees, and Sadducees as well, believed in this and how unwilling they were to accept the sentence and verdict of Him, who knoweth all things. They were given to their ceremonial, ritualistic observances, very scrupulous about their phylacteries and fringes of their garments, making long prayers, keeping the outside of the cup and the platter clean, but never acknowledging the condition of the heart before the Searcher of Hearts. Self-righteous, moral, religious and, with it all, "offspring of vipers." All their religious observances and outward morality did not and could not effect a change. And so they stood before Him whose finger had written the law, boasting in the keeping of the law and rejecting the Lord, blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

The tree (Israel) had manifested itself by its evil fruit. If the tree had been good, the fruit would have been the same; but since the fruit was corrupt is evident that the tree was corrupt. Therefore the indictment the Lord brings against Israel is most solemn, calling them a generation of vipers. He knew their hearts, which, being evil, could not produce good words. What they were speaking come from what most abounded in the thoughts of their hearts. It is a simple principle He insists upon: a good man would speak good things, an evil man evil things.

How simply does one word of our Lord expose all this sophistry. "There is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him: but the things which come out of man, those are they that defile him." "If any man have ears to hear let him hear" (Mark 7:15-16). And again, "a good tree bringeth forth good fruit; and a corrupt tree, evil fruit." The Lord says the source of the evil is within, the philanthropist, that it is without. The Lord begins with the heart — "make the tree good, and its fruit will be good:" philanthropist would remove the had fruit and be content to leave the tree just as it is. It is one of the most refined delusions of Satan to make sin appear an accidental or circumstantial thing, rather than the corruption of the whole moral constitution of man — the very law of death. And when once this is affirmed, the atonement, regeneration, and resurrection are necessarily surrendered. Sin may be dormant, but it is still sin; and if a man were in the desert all his life long, and never saw anything but water, drunkenness would exist in embryo in the sin which is in the heart. The cause of one sin and of ten thousand sins is one and the same — sin that dwelleth within. It will be apparent to all who know the truth of God, that every attempt to make sin to consist only in the outward act has led to the nullifying of the atonement and to the substitution of morality for christian holiness.

Now, the Teetotal system, however modified, will be found to offend against these fundamental truths. Having a low estimate of sin, it presents as low a remedy. Even as to the single evil with which it seeks to deal, it barely skims the surface. It does not, it cannot touch the heart within, and so it wreaks its vengeance upon the liquors without. Pharisaism washed the hands, Teetotalism washes the lips. But the same word of the Lord detects the inadequacy of both. "Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: there is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear." (Mark 7:14-16.) The entire spring of moral action, the heart, is corrupt before God. What man is, taints what he does. Hence, while the human method is to cut off this and that, the divine is, first of all, to make the tree good. If that be done, good fruit is sure to follow: if not done, the more men work about it they only get more bad fruit.

(2) Cleansing. The truth of cleansing is so intimately connected with that of the defilement which made it necessary, that the passages which bring out one declare the other also. The leper, for instance, suggests, as we have been seeing, the guilt of sin and its defilement as well: "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean;" and our Lord's answer is: "I will, be thou clean." The leprosy is cleansed; the defilement is removed; the shame is taken away. There is no question that a gospel which proclaims forgiveness without a corresponding deliverance from the defilement of sin is only a half gospel. Forgiveness lies at the basis, but, as our Lord declares, the way to make good fruit is to make the tree good. The words of mercy to the woman of whom we have lately spoken, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace," intimate in the strongest way her deliverance from her sin. So, too, with the woman in the 8th of John, where indeed our Lord says: "Go, and sin no more." The soul is made at home in the presence of infinite holiness, as well as of infinite love. The love which has forgiven is too great to allow the forgiven one to be still defiled. We need not say how this is reiterated in every miracle of our Lord.

Let us see what that character of "lost" is. There were the two things; I was guilty before God (not merely lost, though "lost" goes a great deal further), and besides that, there was the state I was in. "Guilty" refers to judgment; but when I say "I am lost," I speak of my present state. My carnal mind is enmity against God, so "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." I am "guilty" by reason of what I have done; but I am "lost" by reason of the state I am in. I am not in the earthly paradise in which Adam was, nor am I in the heavenly paradise where God is. Where am I? Totally away from God. It is not in the first moment of that awakening we learn the extent of this - that it is all over with me (not that God cannot take me out of that place). You must make the tree good, as well as its fruit. It is not merely that I have done wrong - the fruit - by which I am "guilty" - but the tree is bad. God is holy, and I am unholy; so I never can be with Him - though, of course, grace comes in - but that was our condition.

"Make the tree good and his fruit good." I cannot do that; the only thing is to kill it. And indeed I cannot do that either. But God has done it, and I can therefore say, I am dead, 'and my life is hid with Christ in God'.

He who has felt his need and helplessness and trusts in Christ alone, is on the ground of the pure favour of God; but he who is still a stranger to this state, however full of good works, charities and religious duties, is on the ground of inflexible righteousness. The tree must first be made good before the fruit can be good. We must be engrafted into the living Vine and drink of the fatness of its roots, before we can bear fruit to God. Christ only can bear fruit to God; but as the tree bears fruit through its branches, so Christ bears fruit to God through His members.

Here then one glorious Figure towers above all else in the chapter, and from this point down to verse 37 He meets the whole power of evil. He took no notice of the charge of casting out demons in Matthew 9, by the power of Beelzebub, but does so here in a way that narrows everything down to Himself and the opposing power of the devil. "He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathers not with Me scatters." The tree is either good and its fruit good or corrupt and the fruit corrupt (verse 33). The two classes could not be clearer, and in the light of christian doctrine it is the distinction between what is of Christ and of Adam. Here the two generations are brought out: one come under judgment as having blasphemed the Holy Spirit, and another coming into view as doing the will of the Father and associating themselves with the Son, the rejected Messiah.

Hence the Lord pronounces them a generation of vipers. "The tree is known by his fruit." It was a bad tree, and no good fruit would He expect from it. "O generation of vipers," He adds, "how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word (that is, I suppose, everything betraying contempt for God) that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned" (vers. 34-37). What God insists upon is testimony to Jesus. These idle words betray the heart's rejection of Jesus, and slight the Holy Ghost's testimony to Him. "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." It is with the mouth that confession is made unto salvation; and the words that leave out Jesus prove that the heart prefers its sin to Him. The words of the mouth evidence the state of the heart. They are the outward expression of the feelings, and they show a man in one way as much as his conduct does in another. If the heart is evil, the words are evil, the conduct is evil: all therefore comes into judgment.