NOTES for Mat 7:21-23

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where the most important rules for the life of Christ's disciples are gathered, there is a kind of comment by Jesus Himself on this whole moral teaching: one cannot limit oneself to hearing the word; one must carry it out, that is, apply it in life. This means that all these rules, commandments, and moral guideposts are not only ethics, a "moral code," or a charter, but rather instructions for putting faith into practice. For faith is the presence of God in a person's life, and therefore to believe means to live in a godly way. For Christ, no "religious convictions" detached from practice are possible. He is not expecting some special worldview or set of beliefs from us. He is expecting God to be present in the world through us...