The Trees Without Fruit

Someone apathetic towards morality is likely to not be a Christian no matter what they believe about themselves or what they profess.  Christianity, no matter how much contemporary figures like Tim Keller might pretend otherwise, is an inherently, inescapably moralistic religion, and the redemption that shallow thinkers are more likely to focus on depends on morality in the first place.  Without morality, there can be no sin; without sin, there can be no redemption.  Without redemption, many Christians would no longer be interested in Christianity because there is no personal benefit in it for them: they do not care about analyzing philosophies for things like consistency, verifiability, and probability, and they are too stupid to even figure out how to live out basic parts of Christianity.  Lastly, there is absolutely nothing positive about hoping for salvation out of mere selfishness, as Paul himself addresses in Romans 6:1-2 and 6:15-18.

The very gospel accounts that so many ineptly think teach a kind of anti-moralism ironically affirm this.  Of course, a thorough rationalist can already discover that if morality does not exist, there is no such thing as cosmic redemption or even anything that should or should not be done.  Morality is so obviously more central and important than anything pertaining to forgiveness could possibly be and literally anyone can reason these philosophical facts out, no matter how much exposure they have to Christian ideas or the Bible itself.  For those who claim to have allegiance to Christianity and still believe that the Bible does not teach that moral uprightness is the only outward evidence that someone is "saved," passages like Matthew 3:7-10 and 7:15-20 might be very uncomfortable.

Twice in the book of Matthew alone, people who do not act justly, in accordance with their obligations (all obligations reduce down to a matter of justice or relate to it directly), are compared to trees that bear no fruit and are cut down to be burned.  The first to say this is John the Baptist, while the second is Jesus--not that the identity of a person makes their claim more or less true.  In the context of warnings about hell in places like Matthew 10:28 and 18:8, the fire in this comparison is a reference to hell, and Jesus specifically clarifies that the fruit he mentions stands in for righteous acts, acts that are either obligatory or supererogatory (which means morally good but not necessary in order to be morally perfect).

The person who shrugs at whatever moral obligations exist is damned to be destroyed whether they think they are restored to God or not.  Yes, Matthew is a key book of the Bible for establishing that the Biblical hell, while it is itself an eternal realm, is a place of punishment for unsaved humans that reduces them to nonexistence, or humans are reduced to nonexistence by God directly as they are in hell.  What happens to trees thrown into a fire?  They are burned up if the fire lasts long and hot enough.  It is actually also Matthew 25 that says hell was not even created for humans at all, so it is not particularly strange that humans are said to be destroyed in hell, whether immediately or after a longer time.  Matthew is by far the best singular book of the Bible to read for those wanting to read about the true Christian concept of hell.

Though there are very blatant, straightforward passages like Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6, and 1 Timothy 6:16 that clarify just what is meant by destruction in hell (with the latter stating God alone lives forever by default, or else everyone already has eternal life and does not need redemption to obtain it), even the symbolic analogies used to allude to or directly explore the Biblical idea of hell, like the weeds getting thrown into the fire in Matthew 13 and the trees without fruit getting burned, clearly imply cessation of life or existence instead of endless suffering.  Thus, the twin references in Matthew 3 and 7 respectively about trees without fruit being eventually thrown into the fire are consistent with two core Biblical doctrines: a consistent, intentional lack of conformity to God's moral commands means someone is not saved, and unsaved humans are promised annihilation instead of perpetual torment.