Exhortation to Choose the Right Way and Produce Good Fruit by Full Obedience to His Words So As To Enter Into Life and Avoid Destruction (7:13-27).
We now move on to the application part of the Sermon, and we soon find that it is applied with a punch. For from here to Matthew 7:27, in contrast with His opening words in Matthew 5:3-16, where it was solely God acting in blessing on His people that was emphasised, Jesus now puts what He has said against the background, first of calls to life (Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 7:21), and then of warnings concerning the final judgment (Matthew 7:19; Matthew 7:23; Matthew 7:26-27). For in the end all must be adjudged in the light of ‘that day' (Matthew 7:22). And He is calling them to a positive decision in the face of it, with a warning of what will result if they respond negatively. Thus having commenced the Sermon with huge encouragement, He now ends it with grim warning. And the question that each of His listeners would now have to face was how they would respond to it.
This final passage opens and closes with choices to be made between two options, the first example in Matthew 7:13-14 demanding a choice of which gate to enter and which path to tread, and the final one demanding that they consider which foundation they will build on. And the stern warning is given in each case that while one of those choices will lead to life and security, the other will lead to final death and destruction.
And the central thesis of the whole passage is that men will be judged by the fruits that they reveal, whether in ministry or in life (compare Matthew 12:36 and often). This too is presented in terms of differing alternatives, although in this central portion the emphasis is mainly on the wrong alternative which must be avoided. Thus:
False prophets will come who are like wolves dressed up as sheep. They are to be avoided.
There are good trees and bad trees. The bad will be destroyed.
Not all may enter the Kingly Rule of Heaven, but only those who do the will of the Father in Heaven.
Men will do things in His Name but will not be ‘known' by Him because they work iniquity.
Not all who call Him ‘Lord, Lord' will be accepted, for some will enter because they do His Father's will, while others will be told to depart because they did not.
In the chiasmus of the whole sermon the themes here parallel those at the beginning:
His disciples being the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16) parallels the need to enter by the narrow gate and walk in the pressurised and afflicted way (Matthew 7:13-14).
The persecution of the true prophets, and the coming persecution of His disciples on the same basis (Matthew 5:10-12), is paralleled with the need to reject false prophets whose fruit will reveal them for what they are (Matthew 7:15-23).
The beatitudes, which are the foundation on which their lives are built if they are true disciples (Matthew 5:3-9), are paralleled with the need to choose between two foundations so as to ensure that they are based on those foundations (Matthew 7:24-27).
We will now consider the analysis of this section.
Analysis of Matthew 7:13-27.
a Two ways are now open before men and they must choose either the one or the other. One lead to destruction, and the other leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
b They are to beware of false prophets who will lead them astray, they will be known by their fruits (Matthew 7:15-16 a).
c Things that grow reveal their nature by the fruits that they produce. Those which are good produce good fruit, but those which are not produce inedible fruit, and are cut down and burned (Matthew 7:16-19).
d By their fruits the quality of trees are known (Matthew 7:20).
c It is not by saying ‘Lord, Lord' that a man or woman enters the Kingly Rule of Heaven, but by the doing of the will of the Messiah's Father in Heaven (Matthew 7:21).
b For there will be many false prophets, false exorcisers and false wonder-workers who will use His Name, to whom He will declare that He never knew them, and whom He will cast forth as workers of iniquity (Matthew 7:22-23).
a There are two ways open to men, the one of obedience and the other of disobedience, those who follow the one are like a man who builds his house on rock whose house will continue on, and those who follow the other are like a man who builds his house on sand and his house goes to destruction (Matthew 24:27).
We note that in ‘a' there is the choice of two options, and one lead to life and the other to destruction, and the same applies in the parallel. In ‘b' comes the warning against false prophets, and in the parallel His judgment on false prophets. In ‘c' trees are revealed by their fruits and in the parallel so are men and women. Centrally in ‘d' all is known by its fruit.