Matthew 3:8 Meaning: Bear Fruit in Keeping with Repentance

People who say they have turned from sin should show it in what they do: that is what John the Baptist meant. In the King James Version, Matthew 3:8 reads, “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.” “Meet” is an old English word for “fitting.” John said it to Pharisees and Sadducees who came to be baptized.

Luke gives the same saying in almost the same words: “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). And Luke lets us hear what John meant by fruit, because the crowds asked him what to do. Share your clothes and your food, he told them. Take no more than you are owed, he told the tax collectors. Use no violence, accuse no one falsely and be content with your wages, he told the soldiers (Luke 3:10–14). For us, as for them, repentance can be as plain as a second coat handed to someone who has none.

John was preaching in the wilderness of Judea with one message: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). People came from Jerusalem and the whole region “and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins” (Matthew 3:6). Then some of the religious leaders came.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Matthew 3:7–10

The Pharisees and Sadducees were rival Jewish parties who disagreed on basic questions: “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both” (Acts 23:8). John addressed them together. His word “therefore” ties the command to his question. If they wanted to escape the coming judgment, they had to show a changed life, and coming to the river for baptism was not enough.

Verse 9 answers the excuse John expected: “We have Abraham to our father.” Descent from Abraham would not protect them, because God could raise up children for Abraham from stones. Verse 10 gives the reason for urgency. The axe is already at the root, and a tree without good fruit will be cut down and burned.

Jesus later used John’s words. He called the Pharisees a “generation of vipers” (Matthew 12:34; 23:33), and in the Sermon on the Mount he repeated verse 10 almost word for word: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire” (Matthew 7:19). In Luke, John speaks the same warning “to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him” (Luke 3:7), not to the leaders alone.

The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. Thayer’s Greek lexicon defines it as “a change of mind,” especially in people who have decided to leave their misdeeds and “enter upon a better course of life.” It adds that the “tokens and effects” of that change “are good deeds.” Repentance begins inside a person, and the fruit is what others can see.

“Meet” translates axios, which Thayer explains in this verse as “befitting, congruous, corresponding.” The King James Version usually translates it “worthy,” as it does in Luke 3:8. Thayer sums up the whole phrase as “to exhibit deeds agreeing with a change of heart.” Paul used the same idea when he described his own preaching: people “should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20).

Fruit is the image Jesus used for judging a person’s life: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). A tree shows what kind of tree it is by what it bears, and a person shows whether repentance is real by how he or she lives afterward.

Most Greek editions of Matthew 3:8, both the modern critical texts and the Byzantine Majority Text, read the singular, karpon axion, “fruit worthy.” The Textus Receptus, which the King James translators used, reads the plural, karpous axious, “fruits.” That is why most modern English Bibles say “fruit” in Matthew while the King James Version says “fruits.” Luke 3:8 has the plural in all these editions. The meaning is the same either way.

Luke’s Gospel shows what John expected, group by group.

And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

Luke 3:10–14

“Meat” here means food, and “publicans” were tax collectors. John did not tell the tax collectors or the soldiers to leave their work. He told them to stop the particular sins their work made easy: overcharging, violence, false accusation and discontent with their pay.

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector in Jericho and a rich man (Luke 19:2). After Jesus came to his house, he promised to change the way he had made his money:

And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.

Luke 19:8–9

The law of Moses required a person who had wronged someone to repay the amount “and add unto it the fifth part thereof” (Numbers 5:7). Fourfold was the penalty for a thief who stole a sheep and killed or sold it (Exodus 22:1). Zacchaeus applied the thief’s penalty to anything he had taken by false accusation, and gave half his goods to the poor besides. John had warned that being a child of Abraham counted for nothing without fruit; Jesus called Zacchaeus “a son of Abraham” after he promised this.

The Catholic Church and Reformed Protestant confessions both teach that real repentance shows itself in deeds. They describe the link between the two in their own terms.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus’ call to conversion “does not aim first at outward works,” but at “the conversion of the heart, interior conversion.” Without this, outward penances “remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance” (paragraph 1430). The Latin Vulgate reads Matthew 3:8 as Facite ergo fructum dignum pœnitentiæ, and the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible translates it “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance.”

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), a Reformed Protestant statement, says that repentance is not “any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God’s free grace in Christ,” and yet “none may expect pardon without it” (chapter 15, section 3). It calls good works “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith” (chapter 16, section 2). It also teaches that a general repentance is not enough and that each person should “repent of his particular sins particularly,” citing Zacchaeus in Luke 19:8 (chapter 15, section 5).

Mark says that John preached “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4), and those he baptized came “confessing their sins” (Matthew 3:6). John himself said his baptism pointed ahead: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance,” but the one coming after him would “baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). In Ephesus, Paul met disciples who had received only John’s baptism. He told them that John had urged the people to “believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus,” and “they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 19:4–5).

After Pentecost, Peter joined repentance and baptism in one command: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Churches differ on what Christian baptism does. The Catholic Catechism teaches, “By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins” (paragraph 1263). The Westminster Confession calls baptism “a sign and seal” of the covenant of grace, of regeneration and “of remission of sins” (chapter 28, section 1).

Language	Bible	Matthew 3:8
Spanish	Reina-Valera 1909	Haced pues frutos dignos de arrepentimiento
Portuguese	Almeida Corrigida Fiel	Produzi, pois, frutos dignos de arrependimento
French	Louis Segond 1910	Produisez donc du fruit digne de la repentance
Russian	Synodal Translation 1876	сотворите же достойный плод покаяния
Arabic	Smith and Van Dyck	فاصنعوا اثمارا تليق بالتوبة
Latin	Clementine Vulgate	Facite ergo fructum dignum pœnitentiæ

Each says the same thing: produce fruit worthy of repentance. The Spanish dignos, Portuguese dignos, French digne and Russian достойный all mean “worthy,” and the Arabic تليق means “befitting.”

In every one of those tongues the fruit looks the same: a coat given away, an honest tax bill, a soldier content with his pay, and a rich man’s house in Jericho where Jesus said, “This day is salvation come to this house” (Luke 19:9).

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• Bible verses about repentance
• Prayers for repentance and change
• Bible verses about bearing fruit