Bearing Fruit

“Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8).

John the Baptist came preaching a word of repentance of the kingdom of God in the wilderness. People from all over Judea and the countryside came to hear and be baptized by John.

As John was baptizing the crowds, the Pharisees and Sadducees came out to him to be baptized. This is when John the Baptist declared to all who were being baptized, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

John was declaring, “Don’t just go through the motions of religion. Don’t just react based on your emotions. If you are going to be baptized, if you are going to repent, if you want to live a new life, live in a way that demonstrate you have repented of your sins and turned to God.”

It’s not just about saying the right things. It’s not even about going through certain rituals. What counts is our genuine repentance and genuine change.

What would be the point of going through the motions of getting married and even saying all the right things but living as if you were single? Could such a marriage survive where your partner said all the right things but lived as though he were still single? Where his life, priorities, and habits hadn’t changed? What would it be like if he only said all the right things but was still dating and seeing other people?

John was telling the people, including the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were coming to be baptized, “If you are going to be baptized, prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and are now turning to God.”

What John the Baptist told the people in the wilderness still preaches today.