TRANSLATION MATTHEW 12:33

Take the tree for a good one and its fruit will be good. Or take the tree for a bad one and its fruit will be bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. Viper’s gets, how can you say anything good, when you are bad; for the mouth speaks from the heart’s abundance. A good person brings out good things from her treasury of goodness; a bad person brings out bad things from her treasury of badness.

But I tell you that for every worthless word they speak, people will be held to account on Judgement Day. For by your word you will acquitted and by your words you will be condemned.

Matthew depicts Jesus as having his own moral psychology, here expressed in binary terms, but of course most people are a mixture of good and bad. But he would want to insist that bad deeds come from inward badness, and good deeds from goodness, perhaps within the one person. Actions are not accidental but products of personal soundness or unsoundness.

This means that genuine change must be a change in the person, which is the import of Jesus’ word metanoia, a change of mindset, which comes from trust in the joyful news of the Rule of God. In some cases, this metanoia comes from being healed, from breaking the power of evil spirits or evil allegiances, such as love of money. Jesus is not shy of issuing commandments, but he knows he must also help people to be changed.

We can justly be judged by our worthless words, because they are spoken from a store of worthlessness within. We cannot simply detach ourselves from them. This is a profound and rigorous morality.

If we were cheeky perhaps we could ask Jesus if “viper’s gets” might not be a worthless word.