<p>6:43 <i>For there is no good tree that brings forth corrupt fruit, nor a corrupt tree that brings forth good fruit</i>- We take a third road of indifferent tolerance to far too many. Having spoken of the need to tolerate our brother, the Lord Jesus repeated His common theme: that there is no third road. There's no third position. Either we love our brother, and bring forth good fruit; or we don't get down to it, and bring forth bad fruit. We can't sometimes bring forth good, sometimes bad. At heart, we are either loving or selfishly hateful. Anything less than following Yahweh with all our heart is seen as doing evil in His eyes (1 Kings 11:6).</p><p>Fruit on a transformed person is obvious and visible. If we are to use the presence or absence of fruit as a basis for perceiving false teachers, then we will have no problem at all discerning who is of the Lord and who isn't. And yet this very issue of deciding on others' status has been fatally divisive and destructive for the Lord's church. Statements of faith are analysed, and the teaching of others is watchfully dissected to see if it fits that given statement- in order to decide whether someone is 'in' or 'out'. The Lord foresaw that tendency, for it was the tendency of the scribes too. And instead He offers us this other way, elevating spirituality to the highest level- whoever has the fruits &quot;cannot&quot; be a bad tree. The issue of 'fruit' therefore becomes the key methodology through which to make the judgments which we are called to make in life. The attitude is often expressed that 'Well they may be very nice Christians and all that, but they do not understand the Truth about... issue X'. The Lord is tackling that mentality head on, by saying that this &quot;cannot&quot; be the case; if the fruit is there, then they are a good tree, whatever misunderstandings they may have (and we all have them).&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>