A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 7:18-19
“Do you have wealth? It is a good thing. But only if your use of it is good. You will not be able to make good use of it if you are evil: wealth is an evil for the evil, a good for the good, but it is converted into good when it is in the hands of the good.
Do you want to have honor? It too is a good. But only if used well. How many are those whom honor has led to a bad end! Yet how many others have been helped by honor to behave well!
Be a good tree. Do not fool yourself that you can produce good fruits if you are a bad tree; good fruit comes only from a good tree. So, change your heart and your actions will change too. Weed out greed and plant love. As the root of all evil is greed, so the root of all good is love.
If only you knew what goodness is! What you want is not good, the good is what you do not want. Look within yourself, seek within. What is not pleasing to your renewed heart, kill off; what is pleasing to it, nourish.
If you find yourself void of good works, why are you so keen to have external goods? What use is a coffer brimming over with money, if your conscience is empty? What use are the things you have, if you do not have the One who gave all?
Do not put your trust in untrustworthy riches. Hope in God, in God alone. He gives you all in abundance: the goods of the earth for your use, the goods of eternity for your pleasure.”
Augustine of Hippo in Sermons 36, 5ff (PL38, 217) in Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, ed. by Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1994) 292-293.
We must weed out greed, that is, the desire for money, and plant love. To plant love is to plant the reminder in our hearts that we have everything we need, have ever needed and will ever need in Christ.
What Augustine is getting at is the source of our power and trust. He’s asking us to consider what we are trusting in to produce any results, any fruits in our lives. Only love, not money, can produce fruit that lasts.
I head from Cairo to London today. I have a meeting there with Sas Conradie and hope it bears fruit between Tearfund and GTP. Make it so Lord Jesus.