NOTES for Mat 7:24

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.