MATTHEW 12:37 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. The judgment by words — not works alone but words — is the consequence of the abundance-of-the-heart principle: what the heart contains, the mouth reveals, and what the mouth reveals, the judgment evaluates. The Pharisees whose mouths produced the Beelzebul charge have condemned themselves by their own words. The words are not the basis of salvation but the evidence of the heart's condition that salvation or condemnation reflects.
Church Fathers on Matthew 12:37
The Lord follows up what He had said before by moving their fears, shewing that they that have thus sinned shall receive the most extreme punishment, 'I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment.'
And the meaning is; If every idle word which does not edify the hearers is not without danger to him that speaks it, and if each man shall render an account of his words in the day of judgment, how much more shall you, who have spoken falsely against the works of the Holy Spirit, saying that I cast out demons through Beelzebub, render an account of your false charge?
Or such as lacks either rightness in itself, or reasons of just necessity;
Read all 7 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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