The Difference Between Good Fruit and Bad Fruit: Luke 3:7-17

I had a grape recently that was so good I dug through the flesh to save the seeds. Then on a walk down our road I tried some wild grapes growing by the side, and I spit them straight out. Same size. Same color. Vines that looked almost identical.

That's the difference John is pressing on in Luke 3. He calls a crowd that walked miles into the desert a brood of vipers, and then tells them to bear fruit worthy of repentance. Today we're looking at what good fruit actually is, and why John switched metaphors from snakes to trees on purpose.

Join me on an immersive Bible Study Experience. Learn more at BibleStudyLive.org

Have a question about the series or a prayer request? Leave me a voicemail: SpeakPipe

What does "brood of vipers" actually mean?

It literally means offspring of vipers, and in that region they would have pictured a very poisonous snake like the echidna.

In Matthew, this line is aimed at the Sadducees and Pharisees. In Luke, John says it to the crowds. That matters, because these were people who had walked miles into the desert to be baptized. Some religious leaders were there, but so were ordinary people. Luke shows John addressing the whole mixed audience at once, because he doesn't want anyone in that group feeling like the scolding was for somebody else.

And he's attacking something specific. Their confidence rested on bloodline. Don't begin to say to yourselves that you have Abraham as your father. By claiming that, they were saying they were inside the covenant and not like the pagans or the Gentiles. John pushes back on the whole family identity argument. You want to talk about your father? Look at your family resemblance. You don't look like Abraham's children, because Abraham's children didn't act like this. You look like snakes.

Jesus uses the same approach later in John 8 when He tells the religious leaders they are of their father, the devil.

This is a long thread in Scripture. The first time we meet a serpent is in the garden. So when John says brood of vipers, he's linking their sin all the way back to original sin.

Why does he ask who warned them to flee?

Because they were an agrarian society, and they knew exactly what that picture meant. When farmers burned off a field, the snakes would come pouring out ahead of the flames, running for safety.

Read it again. You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. He's watching a crowd stream out into the desert to get in the water, and he's describing them as snakes scrambling out of a burning field.

That fire imagery is everywhere in this passage. Two verses later he's talking about the axe at the root of the tree. By verse 17 it's the chaff burning.

So there's an edge to his question. He isn't impressed that they showed up. He's asking whether they came to be changed or just to escape. Sometimes people call it fire insurance. Getting saved because you want out of the consequences, not because you want a relationship with God. Those aren't the same thing.

Snakes running from a fire aren't repenting. They're relocating. They'll be the same snakes in a different field later.

Why does he switch from snakes to trees?

Because snakes don't produce fruit. They just produce more snakes.

That's the point. Think about the snakes in your life. Are they producing fruit? No. They produce more chaos and more snakes. So John switches metaphors to point people in a different direction, and then he gets specific. Share your coat. Share your food. Stop overcharging. Stop extorting people. Stop accusing people falsely.

Notice what every one of those has in common. They're all about how you treat other people, and three of them involve money. In Luke 3, good fruit is measured by what it does for your neighbor and whether you stopped using your position to take advantage of people.

That's the contrast with the vipers. The problem with a snake is what it does to the people around it. It poisons them. Fruit does the opposite. Fruit feeds people.

What does "worthy of repentance" mean?

The Greek word is axios, and it has to do with weighing and balancing scales. Some translations say in keeping with repentance, others say worthy of repentance. Worthy is a little more accurate, because the idea is balance.

The word for repentance is metanoia, from meta, meaning big change, and nous, meaning mind. A changed mind. Turn around and walk the other direction.

So John is saying we're called to produce a life that weighs the same as the turn we claim to have made. If your mind really changed, something visible should balance out on the scale of your life.

Isn't this harsh?

John is intense, yes. But biblical prophets often used shocking language because comfortable language wasn't getting through.

You may have heard the phrase tickling their ears. A lot of preaching comforts people instead of challenging them. That's not what people operating in the prophetic do. When you're talking to people claiming family legacy as their right to the kingdom, you have to make them face themselves and look at the fruit they're actually producing.

What makes fruit good fruit?

There's something in the Greek here worth catching. In verse nine the word for good is kalos. There's another word, agathos, which means morally good or useful. But kalos carries the sense of fine quality, beautiful, the kind of fruit you'd actually want to eat. The kind you'd save the seeds from.

A tree can produce something that still isn't good fruit. Have you ever had a crab apple? Tiny, sour, and you'll get sick eating a handful. We have an old pear tree out back and every pear on it is small and wormy and useless. It's technically fruit. It's still useless.

This calls back to Isaiah 5, where God describes planting a vineyard. He clears the stones, plants the best vines, builds a tower and a winepress. He expected good grapes and it produced worthless ones. The Hebrew word there means stinking or rotten, like the ones I spit out. Then God asks what more He could have done for His vineyard.

That vineyard wasn't barren. It grew grapes. They just weren't the grapes He planted it for.

That's exactly what John is confronting. They had some fruit. It wasn't good fruit.

Is fruit the cause or the evidence?

The evidence. You can't staple good fruit onto a dead tree. Fruit grows out of whatever the root is drawing from.

So John isn't saying produce better behavior and you'll be fine. He's saying the fruit reveals what's happening at the root. The fruit doesn't make the tree. It shows you what the tree is.

Those grapes on my road tasted bad because nobody had ever tended those plants. They're wild, doing their own thing. The ones I wanted to save the seeds from came from vines that had been cultivated with intention.

A lot of us have fruit. We go to church, we listen to podcasts, we know what the Bible says, we might even post the verse. And what's coming out of us is still gross fruit.

That crowd had activity. Walking into the desert and getting in that river took real effort. John looked at all of it and said it doesn't count. Show me something that weighs as much as what you say happened to you.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Two kinds of grapes on the same road
• 01:54 Where we are in Luke 3
• 02:23 Reading Luke 3:7-17
• 04:15 Prayer
• 04:43 What brood of vipers means
• 05:43 Why Matthew and Luke aim it differently
• 06:52 The bloodline argument
• 09:41 A thread that runs back to the garden
• 10:13 Snakes fleeing a burning field
• 11:45 Did they come to change or to escape?
• 12:23 Repenting versus relocating
• 12:52 Why he switches to trees
• 13:21 What he tells them to actually do
• 14:12 Axios, and the balancing scales
• 14:39 Metanoia, a changed mind
• 16:40 Why prophets speak so bluntly
• 18:06 Kalos, and what good fruit means
• 19:47 Isaiah 5 and the vineyard
• 21:11 Good fruit is measured by your neighbor
• 22:26 Fruit is evidence, not cause
• 23:26 Having activity without good fruit

Frequently asked questions

What does axios mean?
It's the Greek word behind worthy or in keeping with, carrying the idea of weighing and balancing scales.

What's the difference between kalos and agathos?
Both are translated good. Agathos leans toward morally good or useful. Kalos carries the sense of fine quality or beautiful.

What's coming next?
Tomorrow we're talking about the different kinds of baptism, and no, not sprinkle versus dunk.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices