NOTES for Mat 7:13-29

Today's reading is devoted to the theme of false prophets (v. 15) and false disciples (vv. 21-22). But before speaking about false prophets and false disciples, Jesus says that the way into the Kingdom will not be simple, that it is a narrow way that few will want to walk (vv. 13-14).

This sequence is, of course, not accidental. False prophets appear because they are expected. Fallen human nature is inclined toward compromise; for complete peace of mind, everyone would like to fulfill what God requires, but to fulfill it in such a way that the fulfillment is as little burdensome as possible. To violate the word of God directly would be too risky; then, when meeting God face to face, there would be nothing to say to Him. It would be another matter if some spiritual leader appeared, for example a prophet, who by his authority sanctioned such a violation, took the responsibility upon himself, and thereby removed it from those who did not want to walk the narrow way. Of course, if one wants to, such a "prophet" can always be distinguished from a true person of God. But if there is no desire, if the listener is seeking not truth and not God's revelation but self-justification, he can fail to notice even completely obvious things.

It is no surprise that all this is also characteristic of those who call themselves Christians. One name alone, as Jesus says, is not enough; what is needed is readiness to walk that same narrow way. Meanwhile the devil is always ready to point to easier roads, supposedly leading to the very same goal, as he pointed to them for the Savior Himself during the temptation in the wilderness (Matt 4:3-10). The only criterion of truth turns out to be the doing of Jesus' words (vv. 24-27).

And the point here is not only that a person who lives by the Kingdom and in the Kingdom, as all true Christians do, cannot be confused with anyone else: it is impossible to imitate the grace of God. The point is that no abilities and no gifts of God, by themselves, bring a person closer to the Kingdom; for this, a person must first of all change inwardly, and if such a change has not taken place, everything else is useless, even if the action of God is noticeable in that "everything else" (vv. 22-23). But for fallen man, inward change is the hardest path of all, and few are truly ready to walk it. There is no other way into the Kingdom.

As He concludes the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus very sternly warns His listeners, and us as well, against the characteristic divide between hearing—and even accepting as true—His teaching and embodying it in one's life. I would even say the divide between “theoretical” and “practical” Christianity. Serving the truth in practice requires effort to overcome the “resistance of the environment”—perhaps this is the meaning of the images of the “narrow way” and the “narrow gate”—whereas “theorizing” creates almost no inconvenience in this life.

Accepting true teaching must bear fruit: a change in life expressed in actions and an inward recoil from sin and lawlessness. If this does not happen, then there was no real acceptance either, and then: “I never knew you; depart from Me!”

How simple it is to be righteous, how simple to enter the dwelling of the Father: everything is written in Ps 14! Only for some reason the previous psalm declares: "They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one." And Jesus, after giving the very simple "golden rule of ethics" (Matt 7:12), immediately adds that the way is narrow and few find it.

Apparently this simplicity is deceptive: these words are "simple" only when spoken by God, for whom righteousness is a natural state. But if these words are taken up, passed on, and received with faith, then salvation becomes possible and righteousness attainable.

Most Christians usually understand the question of the narrow and broad way in the context of everything Jesus said about persecutions against His followers and, more generally, about resisting the evil in which the world lies. Meanwhile, this image also has a wider semantic context. Indeed, any road, whether a multilane highway or a narrow path, always and by definition involves limitation. The absence of "narrowness," and therefore of boundaries, can mean only one thing: complete tracklessness, the absence of a way. And this is true not only of a physical way, but also, and even more, of a spiritual way. Choosing a certain spiritual path and stepping onto it, we thereby cut ourselves off from the possibility of taking some other path at the same time. It is impossible to walk two paths at once. And the path becomes narrower the more clearly its spiritual quality is defined.

Here the matter is not so much external as internal. The quality of a person's life, of that person's existence, becomes more and more definite; in other words, the quality of the person's soul in the biblical sense of the word. The soul is that stream of life that flows through us and in which we ourselves abide. The quality of this stream determines what our life will be: how much of it will be spiritual and how much natural; how much will be our will following God's commandments, and how much will be chance and automatism, inevitable where there is no awareness of one's own intentions, decisions, and actions, and no relating of them to the commandments given by God. And if a person walks the way of the Kingdom, sharing more and more in its life, then the quality of that person's soul becomes more and more spiritually defined.

And along with this, the way becomes narrower and narrower. For in gaining definiteness and form, it inevitably gains clear boundaries. Inner quality is unthinkable without form, and form does not exist without limits. The absence of boundaries and form also means the absence of quality, and without it life in the Kingdom is impossible, for there everything is utterly clear and distinct, just as God's will is clear and distinct. And everything is present in fullness, in the same fullness in which the breath of God abides, penetrating the Kingdom.

God warns us from following easy ways; from what we so often want to do – to surrender ourselves to the flow, to relax and to go down straight, not “stressing”. Yeah it is really easier, easier like that to manage our problems and burdens. But will this give us happiness? No. We are in fact independent of anywhere we move. Up or down – is already another question. But if we relax, the stream starts then to pull us where we possibly don’t quite wish to get into. And when we begin to stress ourselves, to apply efforts, then at least a kind of use can come out of that. There is a known enough image: Spiritual life is as an escalator running downwards. And remaining even on one place, we need to be running on it upwards. Everyone runs as he can. Everyone has his own road, a “narrow way” leading to God. We must go on it; otherwise the tape will take us away where all people fall. We have to go – It may be difficult to pass, it may be a painful way, but we must go, so that we can enter into life, into everlasting life. Moreover, we should do that with joy and a pure heart – as the psalm invoked us: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” (Ps 100:4).

There are so many people around us all the time, so many faces constantly flashing by... No one from past centuries would envy such an intense life. We often have to interact with people whom we may never see again in our lives. It also happens that we need to form an opinion about a person quickly, because, like it or not, we will have to spend some time near him. And very rarely can we understand everything about a person at first glance: what he is like, what concerns him, what he thinks about, what he lives for, what is dear to him... We have to form an impression from outward signs.

And in most cases this is not just an opinion, but also a judgment, even a condemnation. Of course, physiognomists may be right in some respects, but one cannot read everything from a person's face. The Lord warns us against hasty conclusions and judgments based on appearance in today's passages. He says that a person's "skin" may not correspond at all to what is "inside" (see Matt. 7:15). Even the "outward" attributes of faith are no guarantee of the soul's salvation. After all, as we know, "even the demons believe and tremble" (James 2:19).

Yes, outward signs are needed; to those who observe them, what is counted is "not as grace but as a debt." But blessed is the person "to whom God credits righteousness apart from works" (see Rom. 4:4-6). What is in the heart is far more important to the Lord. That is why He speaks about fruits: our ability to love in practice is His criterion. A heart can pour outward only what it contains (see Matt. 15:10-20). And when we look at another person, the only thing worth being quick with is "mercy," or at least simply a smile.

God's love cannot be earned. His mercy is a gift we receive by faith. But how important it is to answer this gift with our whole life. In order to bear fruit, we must not only acknowledge God's existence, but also fulfill His will for us, becoming a place of His presence in the world. By refusing His call, we risk becoming a barren tree and thereby putting our very existence in question.

Before us is an ordinary scene: the Teacher and His disciples; He tells them something, and they listen... This time the parable becomes an answer to a question put directly to Jesus: why do Your disciples eat with unwashed hands? (see Mark 7:5). And this question is not simply a reproach for untidiness or ignorance of hygiene rules; it is a question concerning tradition: "For the Pharisees and all the Jews, holding to the tradition of the elders, do not eat unless they wash their hands carefully; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold: the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and couches" (Mark 7:3-4). And suddenly the Pharisees notice something that deeply offends them: someone is not keeping this tradition, which for them is equivalent to an insult.

Here a natural question arises: were Jesus' disciples not Jews? Of course they were, and they surely knew this rule perfectly well. But the point is that now they are disciples of the Teacher, and not simply Jews. The freedom of the Spirit, the freedom of love, is already beginning to act in their hearts, calling them to fulfill the true law given by God and separating from it everything superfluous. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, ... says the Lord: I will put My law within them and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall no longer teach one another, brother teaching brother, and say, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Jer 31:33).

These words of Jesus are not about the predestination of some people to good and others to evil. He is simply saying that our actions, our "fruits," are not something spontaneous and conditioned by nothing, but an expression of our inner orientation toward sinking in sin or toward coming out of it. No one except God knows what is inside us, but this is not very important, because the "fruits" correspond to the inner state of the "tree," and if they are bad, the whole tree is cut down. Only, for God's sake, let us not think that cutting down "trees" is our task.

The Sermon on the Mount ends with an important observation from the Savior: for the Kingdom, what matters most is relationships, relationships with Him and with neighbors. Otherwise a person's whole life is like a house built on sand. At first glance, a person who in Christ's name not only prophesied, but even cast out demons and worked miracles, must be a disciple of Christ, and if so, his path must certainly end in the Kingdom. In reality, however, everything turns out not to be so simple.

The main problem here is that fallen man in general tends to substitute form for content. In this case, paradoxical as it may sound, the form turns out to be precisely prophecies, the casting out of demons, and even miracles - everything we tend to regard as content, treating only the religious shell of a spiritual tradition as form.

If we were not talking about Christianity, that would indeed be so. But Christianity is unique. It is not a new religion, not a new theology, not a new morality, and not even a new spiritual tradition; it is a new life. And in life, the main thing is life itself. Its flow. Its process. Its spiritual quality, its very dynamic - the very thing a modern philosopher would call existence. And, of course, relationships - with God, with Christ, with other people.

After all, relationships determine the structure of our life, its spiritual algorithm. Christianity is not about what to do, but about how to be, how to live, in what spiritual state to exist. This is the content of Christianity - and all external activity here is nothing other than form.

Meanwhile, among Christians in every age there has been a strong temptation toward a kind of religious activism, when Christianity itself began to be perceived as a practice - not the practice of life itself, but of specific activities and "spiritual" works. Religious education, charity, missionary work - the list can be continued, if not indefinitely, then for a very long time. It is taken for granted that the more such works a person completes in a unit of time, the more active he is in this respect, the better a Christian he is.

It is no wonder that many have tried, and still try, with all their strength - even to the point of a mental or nervous breakdown, which they often regard as a cross connected with the "ministry" that "God has supposedly entrusted" to them. Such people often do not even realize that God wants something entirely different from them, just as they do not realize that their breakdowns, crises, and at times more serious problems are precisely the collapse of the house built on sand that Jesus speaks about.

Here a stern warning is given to all of us who hope that everything will work out without any effort on our part, through merely theoretical “faithfulness” reduced to words, words... At the same time, Christ also gives hope that many who seemingly gave no thought to observing the will of the Heavenly Father, but who in their lives were simply and naturally active in showing mercy to those around them, will be received by the Lord into His Kingdom.

It seems that here we see an answer to the frequently asked question: what will happen to those who did good deeds without being believers? It is pointless to answer this question “in general”; each person will be judged individually. Nevertheless, this passage from the Sermon on the Mount gives hope that every circumstance will be taken into account.

It is interesting that those rejected because of their lack of mercy present as their merits the miracles and prophecies they performed in the Lord’s name. This means that the presence of such miracles does not guarantee that the person who performed them is pleasing to the Lord, even though the miracles themselves may be fully in accordance with His will. But where there is no love, neither miracles nor spiritual gifts can save.

It is frightening. It turns out that one can even work miracles in His name—and yet He will say that He never knew us... But these same verses give us hope. It turns out that working miracles is not necessary at all: the main thing is not to practice lawlessness. As someone once said, “simply keeping the commandments is more important than special effects.” So let us strive not for special effects, but to do His will.

The desire for firmness, for a reliable ordering of life, belongs to almost every person. To a significant degree, many of our opinions and actions are explained by this desire. As Matthew concludes the account of the Sermon on the Mount, he includes in it today's parable of the houses built on sand and on rock: in it the Lord speaks precisely about this firmness of life.

This parable sounds like a kind of conclusion to the whole Sermon on the Mount. Some Protestants like to call the Bible an instruction manual for human life, and we see that this view is not without foundation. The whole Sermon on the Mount speaks of what is needed in order to be alive in the true sense of the word. And the concluding parable emphasizes that it is about real life, the kind no calamity can collapse.

This does not mean that there will be no calamities, but a person who lives by Christ's word and fulfills this word is stronger than any adversity. Moreover, by Christ's victory we become stronger with Him than death itself. Even hardships appear for such a person not as a depressing, oppressive accident, but as the way of the cross by which we can follow God.

Fallen humanity tends to hope in the magical power of the word. Even in prehistoric antiquity, when pronouncing a word, naming something, the human being was sure that one could influence the thing named. Later this attitude was transferred to people and to gods. It was believed that by a word one could compel not only a person, but even a god or spirit, to do what the one pronouncing the word needed. Spells could be laid on gods and spirits, forcing them to serve a human being.

Of course, Yahwism, just like later Judaism, always had a sharply negative attitude toward magic and all magical practices, including incantations. But deep in the subconscious, even among religious people, confidence in the magical power of the word continued to live. And if in pagan antiquity it gave rise to the magical practice of spells, then in Yahwist life, as indeed in Jewish life and later in Christian life, it gave rise to the practice of solemn sacred oaths and doctrinal declarations. Publicly and solemnly proclaim the Nicene Creed, and you are "Orthodox." Just as publicly and solemnly swear eternal loyalty to Jesus, and you are a "Christian." And if the oaths are repeated again and again, if declaring one's "faith" becomes a profession, then no doubts remain at all: surely God cannot leave such activity without attention, surely the Savior will not turn away from those who have spoken so many words, perhaps even very correct ones, in His defense!

But it turns out that He can leave them without attention. He can also turn away. For Jesus needs neither advocates nor brilliant orators playing with words; He needs witnesses of the Kingdom, and that is something very different.

Indeed, what depends on us? We can pray, "Lord! Lord!" We can, calling on God's name and receiving spiritual gifts from Him, do good works (v. 22). And is this not enough? What else can we do? It looks as though Jesus wants us not to do something. He says that one must not "combine" piety and lawlessness. The will of the Father is that no one perish, no one, meaning neither I nor you, and sin, lawlessness, leads us to destruction. Jesus calls us to the impossible, as in the whole Sermon on the Mount, but He has already walked this path, the path of righteousness, before us.

The whole life of the Kingdom is built on a system of relationships: those that bind people to one another, unite them with God and with Christ, and, finally, the relationships of Christ Himself with His Heavenly Father. These relationships themselves make up the spiritual foundation of the Kingdom and give it form; that is why they turn out to be something absolutely important and valuable in themselves. But how, under what conditions, is a true, deep relationship possible? A relationship is an intention, an act of will, and the force of an act of will is determined by a person's inner state, the quality of that person's life - not by what he does, but by how he exists.

At creation God gives each person that power of life which, like a stream, flows through him, and in which he, in turn, also moves as in a stream. And He also gives each person His breath - the breath of life, the Presence that determines the quality of the stream of life in which we abide and which abides in us. The will is only the manifestation of this very breath of life. It is born where Presence meets nature. The measure of the fullness of Presence determines the quality of nature, the quality of life - and therefore the intensity of the act of will, its depth and strength. And with that, the depth of relationship, the very thing on which the Kingdom is founded. Everything else, all a person's outward activity, is only the outward manifestation of that stream of life which abides in us and in which we abide.

And miracles... well, miracles are possible. Healings too. And the casting out of demons. But for the person himself this often changes nothing, because both miracles and healings are performed by the action of God's breath, and demons flee from that same breath. But whether this breath will change the person himself, whether it will give a different quality to his existence, depends only on the person himself.

Of course, this will not happen automatically. And if a person relied on works - even miraculous and supernatural ones - and not on living relationships with Christ, at the end of the path he can find himself with nothing. After all, all the miracles and healings essentially took place only around him, without changing his own life, that depth of it which in the Kingdom becomes the surface. And then an answer sounds that is unexpected for the person and frightening in its unexpectedness - quite natural, alas.

Christianity is probably unique precisely because it unites things that seem irreconcilable from the point of view of our earthly reason. Why are two seemingly different passages included in today’s reading? Perhaps because the first speaks of prudence and the second immediately afterward of recklessness: the prudence of building a secure house on rock and the recklessness of touching a leper. How can the two be joined? Here lies the profound essence of Christianity. Holy foolishness and dogmatic purity may seem to have nothing in common, but they are two poles encompassing the whole world. The rigorous rational thinker Thomas Aquinas and the remarkable mystics Francis of Assisi and John of the Cross. The philosopher Solovyov and the mystics of the Name-Glorification movement. We all form one body, because when you dedicate yourself to Christ, you dedicate your whole being: reason and soul, heart and mind.

Advent is a season with a particularly good selection of readings. They are short and extremely concrete. It is a time to return to the way children learn what matters most. Isaiah and Matthew give us two opportunities to understand something that is unpleasant to understand. They explain it in simple words. They explain it as to children, using different arguments and trying to lead us to act reasonably. It is no accident that the Sermon on the Mount, with all the force of its directness, ends with three verses about a house on rock and a house on sand. Like little children, the Lord teaches us His truth, which is that we can do anything—even build a house on sand. A house on sand is a house built upon what is temporary. The rock is what is eternal. In our life, only the Lord is eternal.

The desire for solidity, for a reliable ordering of life, is proper to almost every person. To a great extent it explains many of our opinions and actions. Concluding the account of the Sermon on the Mount, the evangelist Matthew includes today's parable about houses built on sand and on rock, in which the Lord speaks precisely about this solidity of life.

This parable sounds like a kind of conclusion to the whole Sermon on the Mount. Some Protestants like to call the Bible an instruction manual for human life, and we see that this view is not entirely without grounds. The whole Sermon on the Mount speaks about what is needed in order to be alive in the true sense of the word. And the concluding parable emphasizes that the subject is real life, a life that no misfortunes can bring down. This does not mean that there will be no misfortunes, but a person who lives by Christ's word and fulfills this word is stronger than all misfortunes. Moreover, thanks to Christ's victory, together with Him we become stronger than death itself. Even difficulties become for the person who fulfills Christ's word not depressing and oppressive accidents, but the way of the Cross by which we can follow God.

The words about a house built on sand or on rock, with which the Lord Jesus Christ concludes the Sermon on the Mount as Matthew tells it, implicitly suggest two important things. First, this is about a person's responsibility for his life and destiny. This responsibility is by no means always about a person's well-being. The New Martyrs who died in Stalin's camps were not concerned with having a successful life from an earthly point of view. Those who sought that renounced their faith and went off to teach scientific atheism. The outward circumstances of life and the twists of history very often do not give us the chance to live, as the apostle says, a "quiet and peaceable life," and that is not what we answer for. But our eternal destiny, a person's standing before God, whether you have lived your life in truth or in falsehood and sin, that is where human responsibility lies. One cannot live without this, and living with it is painfully difficult.

And second, the Lord says that His word is the firm support from which you can fulfill your eternal responsibility and find life. So God not only gives us responsibility and freedom, but also reveals the truth, so that we may use them for life and not for death.

With the parable of the two builders, the prudent and the foolish, Christ concludes the Sermon on the Mount, and there is profound meaning in this.

Of course, the Savior's words, His teaching, made a deep impression both on educated scribes and on the simplest people. We know from all four Gospels that enormous crowds gathered to listen to His preaching. And words often make a strong impression on us as well. It happens that we hear someone's inspired sermon, one that touches us to the depths of the soul, and it appears that we will never be the same as before. It appears that our whole life must change at once. But time passes, and we completely forget how bright and how new our life appeared to us. We return to everyday worries and practical problems, to our ordinary life. Why disrupt an established way of life or break established, even painful, relationships? For what? And life keeps flowing on as usual.

The same thing happens every day: we read the Gospels, the Epistles, the Prophets. We close the book and go on about our business.

But Jesus insistently emphasizes that it is important not only to listen, but to live by the Word of God. Our life in Christ can take place only if the commandments of Christ lie at its foundation like a great rock. And among them, as He Himself said, the most important are love for God and neighbor.

It is worth recalling how houses were built in Palestine in Gospel times. Then (as, for that matter, often today) builders did not need a strong artificial foundation: the soil of Palestine itself is rocky, and to reach stone it is enough to remove only a comparatively small layer of sand and clay. On the other hand, if this is not done, during the winter rains a house can easily "float away": streams caused by heavy downpours quite easily wash away the not very thick upper layer. It is clear that Jesus compares a person seeking the Kingdom with a house builder who removes the unreliable alluvial layer from the reliable rock.

It is not hard to guess that this concerns the spiritual foundation on which a person builds his own life. Evidently, this is the ordinary spiritual state of fallen man, when he does not think about how, by what, and for what he lives, but simply drifts with the current. And even if in such a state this person tries somehow to direct his life, the attempts usually fail: in order to solve the task one has set, one needs to know something about the spiritual foundations of what one is trying to influence. But fallen man, who does not think about spiritual life, sees only the fluid and unreliable surface of the reality around him, forever changing and always elusive, on which it is impossible to build anything and on which one cannot even lean, so changeable and inconstant is it.

And only after a person penetrates deep, breaking through the surface of things to their essence, does he discover the real foundation: God, spiritual life, and then Christ and the Kingdom. And he finds that very rock on which he can calmly build his life because that rock will not fail him.