In the last couple posts we have taken a look at the various places that Matthew and Luke cite Psalm 6, the text of Psalm 6 itself, and how it relates to its usage in the New Testament.  Now let us return our attention to Matthew 7:19, and how we should understand its use of fire.  I have been flailing around with Greek word choice and citations from Hebrew scripture because Matthew 7:15-23 read:

[15] Be wary of false prophets, who come to you in the clothes of sheep but inside they are ravenous wolves. [16] From their fruits you will recognize them. They do not harvest grapes from thorns or figs from brambles? [17] Thus every good tree produces good fruit, but the fruit a diseased tree produces is bad. [18] It is not possible for a good tree to produce bad fruit nor a diseased tree to produce good fruit. [19] Every tree not producing good fruit shall be chopped down and cast into the fire. [20] From their fruits therefore you shall recognize them. 

[21] Not everyone saying to me “Lord, Lord” shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but the ones who are doing the will of my father in the heavens. [22] Many shall say to me in these days, “Lord, Lord was it not in your name we prophesied and in your name we cast out demons, and in your name we did many works of power?” [23] And then I shall confess to them that “I never knew you; Separate from me workers of lawlessness.”

There are a couple of lines of thought that certain flavors of Christianity today hold to be true, which the passages above could be viewed as supporting.  One of those tendencies is the belief in hell as a place of eternal damnation, the other is what I think of as persistence in Old Testament morality, wherein there is a checklist of good and bad behaviors, and virtue is a matter of doing good behaviors and abstaining from bad behaviors.  

The hell belief can obviously be read into vv. 19’s “every tree not producing good fruits shall be chopped down and cast into the fire.” But remember, we are investigating Matthew’s use of fire precisely because of his citation of Zechariah, where the saved remnant is purified by the fire the way that gold is purified in a smelter, and that this occurs on what is discussed as a discrete day of judgment rather than over the course of eternal punishment (and that this specific set of imagery also seems to be imagery that largely describes the Babylonian exile and reframes it as divinely authored trial). This basic shift of “literally the Babylonian exile occurred and it was like a trial by fire for the people who survived it” to “God will author another trial like the Babylonian exile and after this trial by fire we will live in a utopian state rather than our current crappy world” continues in the New Testament and the language that Matthew is using her very much falls into the second category.

We should also remember that in Zechariah, there is a two-thirds portion that are utterly destroyed.  Here it seems to be the case that the trees cast into the fire refer to that portion rather than a purified remnant. But this destruction seems to be a discrete action rather than eternal damnation, as indicated by the phrase “in these days” and also by the fact that the trees are described as being cast into the fire, but not as being eternally tortured therein.  

The passage can also be easily read as implying a sort of checklist morality, where the people who do bad things produce bad fruits and then are cast into the fire and Jesus says to them “Separate from me workers of lawlessness.” But here it is important to remember the larger context within which this passage appears.  This passage occurs towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and the reference to the law that most immediately precedes it is Matthew 7:12:

Everything therefore which you wish that people would do to you, thus also do to them.  For this is the law and the prophets.

Notably the word for law here is νόμος nomos, so it can quite directly be contrasted against lawlessness’ ἀνομίαν anomian.  This is obviously a substantial condensation of Mosaic law, which certainly involves more details than this.  But it is also important to keep in mind the larger context of the Sermon of the Mount as a whole, which includes passages like Matthew 7:1-2:

[1] Judge not, so that you will not be judged. [2] For in the manner you judge a judgment, you shall also be judged, and in the measure you measure, you shall also be measured. 

Or Matthew 6:14-15:

[14] For if you would forgive people their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive to you. [15] But if you would not forgive people, neither will your father forgive your transgressions.

These are obviously cherry-picked examples to make a point, and it is certainly worth a much more detailed examination about how we should reconcile the passage above, which seem to imply nearly universal salvation to people who are forgiving and non-judgmental, against passages like Matthew 5:18-19, in which Jesus says that not even the smallest mark of the law will pass away and that anyone who would loosen the least commandment shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

But it is also quite obvious that what Matthew views as behaving lawfully is probably not what the flavors of Christianity that view upright behavior as “never drink, don’t be gay, don’t have premarital sex, etc” seem to think that it is.