Five-year Bible reading plan for 2 August 2018

King James Version (en)

Luke, Chapter 6, verses 46-49

⁴⁶ and join the obedience of good works to the hearing of the word, lest in the evil day of temptation we fall like an house built upon the face of the earth, without any foundation

⁴⁶And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

⁴⁷Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:

⁴⁸He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.

⁴⁹But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

NOTES

Comparing the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and Luke makes it clear that Luke generally presents it in less detail. Of course, hardly any of the evangelists transmitted Jesus' words verbatim. At that time it was customary to compile the sayings of teachers and preachers, shaping them into a special kind of literary text and sometimes into entire collections. Even taking this fact into account, however, it is obvious that Luke singled out what he considered most important in Jesus' sermon. For the evangelist, the most important thing is the absence of condemnation. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged”—these are the Savior's words that Luke considers most important in the whole Sermon on the Mount. Why these particular words? Matthew, for example, has many other themes that are no less important.

Yet the absence of condemnation really can be considered a measure of the quality of a person's inner life. This is not about making an assessment, of course, but precisely about condemning. It is entirely natural to assess a person's particular action in a given situation. Condemnation is another matter: it concerns not the action but the person himself. A person thus becomes the judge of another person, although God never appointed him to be such a judge. A person's path, its outcome, and its evaluation are the prerogative of God and God alone. Even if someone is clearly heading straight for the lake of fire, only God can sentence him to that lake.

Any human being can only state the fact that a sinner is moving in that direction. Why, then, do we pronounce judgment so readily where no one has given us the right to do so? Evidently because we do not see the situation as God sees it and do not use the same criteria—not absolute criteria but relative ones. We see a person not in the fullness of the life God has given him, but only in his particular present condition. We apply certain formal criteria, usually moral and religious, to this condition and naturally obtain a completely distorted picture of reality. But this is no surprise: as long as our life is determined not by the breath of life God has given us but by our own nature, nothing else can be expected.

If, however, we live the life of the Kingdom, such a distortion of reality simply cannot occur. If it does occur, it means that we are still far from the Kingdom, as the evangelist bears witness to us.

How should we understand the parable of the bad or good tree? After all, all people, including us, sometimes bear good fruit and sometimes bad fruit. Here again there is a temptation...

For an adequate understanding of the Savior's words, it is important to imagine how houses were built in Judea, and in all Palestine, in Gospel times...

For an adequate understanding of the Savior's words, it is important to imagine how houses were built in Judea, and in all Palestine, in Gospel times. The soil in most of Palestine is rocky; the powerful foundations needed when building on clay or sandy soils are not necessary there. It was only necessary to clear away the upper alluvial layer (usually thin enough) in order to reach the stone. After that, the simplest strip foundation was laid, its basis being large corner stones (cornerstones). But removing the upper layer was absolutely necessary; otherwise, in winter, during the rainy season, when turbulent streams flow from the mountains down the slopes into the valleys, the house would almost certainly "float."

The Savior, as we can see, compares spiritual life with a house that makes sense to build only on rock, after first clearing it of everything that can get in the way of construction. Clearly, the image of a house built on rock was meant to remind the listeners that listening and hearing are not the same thing. The one who has heard will certainly move from words to action, applying what he has heard in practice. But, of course, there will also be those who, after listening to everything, will not want to change anything in their life.

And this is no surprise: in spiritual life the main role is played not by intellect and not by feeling, but by the will. It is precisely through acts of will that the spiritual "I" of a person, which constitutes the center of the human person, manifests itself. But often the person himself does not realize this, at least when it comes to practical life. And he lives without realizing either the true causes or the true significance of his decisions and actions.

Such unexamined spiritual life really resembles a house built on sand: the acts of will that determine a person's spiritual life remain for the most part unconsidered, and often entirely unnoticed, so that a person, in a spiritual sense (and sometimes not only in a spiritual sense), literally lives without knowing how.

Any thought that unexpectedly comes to mind and any feeling that seizes the heart can lead to decisions and actions completely unexpected even for the person himself, decisions and actions that he often can neither understand nor explain. And only full awareness of every choice made and every decision taken makes a person's spiritual life (as well as his life in general) inwardly whole and consistent. In that case every action of the person comes from the depth of his spiritual "I." And his spiritual life turns out to be founded not on the shifting sand of random thoughts and feelings, but on the rock of conscious choice.

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