NOTES for Luk 6:45

The speck and the log are images that reflect the essence of human sin, which keeps a person from seeing God and neighbor. Anyone who has experienced such an encounter with his own sins after paying close attention to another's imperfections knows that these are not hyperboles. Jesus calls us to watch ourselves and first remove the logs from our own eyes. Yet He does not want us to stop there, saying that this must be done in order to clear our brother's eye. The Lord is not proposing that we stop looking altogether at the problems of those close to us, focus on our own shortcomings, and turn away from a world full of sin. On the contrary, He expects that, once we have cleared our own eyes, we will be able to look at this world with His eyes, full of mercy and love, and so become His coworkers. In the same way, a few verses earlier He entrusted to His disciples the beatitudes, which make it possible to "be sons of the Most High."

The parable of the house built on the rock concludes the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. It also concludes the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus explains what He expects from His disciples and what it means to be "sons of the Most High." In this parable He once again draws our attention to how important it is not merely to listen to and accept the truths of the Gospel, but also to act in accordance with them.

If, after hearing the Beatitudes, we calmly say, "Yes, this is very wise and beautiful," but do not embody it in any way in our life, then we will not be His disciples. Our Christianity will remain only an ethical system, one that can break under the pressure of trials. But if we truly live by His commandments, look at the world with His eyes, and do His will, then this will be a foundation that nothing will be able to shake.

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 to divide people, and ourselves, into good and bad. And sometimes it is even pleasant to say, "Oh, what a bad person I am!" as though that were useful for humility. But here we are judging again, and it is said: "Do not judge."

Here it is more about the inner, spiritual direction that stands behind our actions, and that direction depends on us. Therefore, in order not to be a bad tree, one must bear good fruit; and for the Lord's words to benefit us, they must be put into practice. This is the Christian's basic moral task: to do good, not to judge. Christ will judge.

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.

Christ calls His disciples to build a house on rock. But this image is not as simple as it seems, for this rock is not a set of “universal human” notions about life, nor firmly established commandments and laws. It is the word of Jesus, that is, the Good News, which always remains new to a person and never hardens into a mass of stone. Try building your life on love for your adversary, on conscious and honest forgiveness. One cannot grow accustomed to such things, just as one cannot love “out of habit.” The paradox of the Christian life is that it is built on a rock fixed not in the earth but in heaven, where there is no support other than God. But to be able to grasp hold of “thin air,” one needs a courageous desire, a readiness to find what is firmer than any earthly stone.