NOTES for Mat 12:38-45

The scribes are typical people of science. They know what should happen, and they seek experimental confirmation of their guesses about Jesus. They would like to receive a sign that would free them from moral choice and, above all, from the need to trust, to "fall into the hands of the living God." Jesus speaks about the sign of the prophet Jonah and about His resurrection on the third day after the Crucifixion. Then He recalls the Ninevites, who repented after Jonah's preaching, and says that, against the background of the Ninevites' repentance, the scribes' search for proof falls under condemnation.

The point is that Jonah called things by their proper names in Nineveh. Evil deeds were called evil deeds, not necessary cruelty; violence was called violence, not a restriction of freedom for the sake of the interests of one phantom or another. The Bible says that the Ninevites were people too, although Nineveh of those times resembled the fascist regimes of the 20th century. And the human heart is capable of opening to the truth, to a serious moral assessment of itself. The Ninevites repented and turned away from their evil deeds. No miracles or signs were shown to them, but they recognized the justice of Jonah's assessment of their deeds, and they were saved. God gave the human person a moral center, the conscience, and we can be saved if we listen to its voice.

Indeed, faith is not so much a question of reason and proofs as a matter of conscience. And then Jesus says that ceasing to do evil is not enough to become a person of truth, a person of conscience. One must begin to do good, or else one will fall into even worse sins. On the path of truth one cannot stand still; one can only walk. If you are not moving upward, you are falling.