A.W. TOZER (1897-1963) was the pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago for 31 years and for 12 years was the editor of Alliance Weekly. This article was adapted from his book The Root of the Righteous (Christian Publications 1955), with permission from Lowell Tozer.
One marked difference between the faith of our fathers as conceived by the fathers and the same faith as understood and lived by their children is that the fathers were concerned with the root of the matter, while their present-day descendants seem concerned only with the fruit.
This appears in our attitude toward certain great Christian souls whose names are honored among the churches, as, for in-stance, Augustine and Bernard in earlier times, or Luther and Wesley in more recent times. Today we write biographies of such as these and celebrate their fruit, but the tendency is to ignore the root out of which the fruit sprang. “The root of the righteous yieldeth fruit,” said the wise man in Proverbs 12:12 (KJV).
Our fathers looked well to the root of the tree and were willing to wait with patience for the fruit to appear. We demand fruit immediately even though the root may be weak and knobby or missing altogether. Impatient Christians today explain away the simple beliefs of the saints of other days and smile off their serious-minded approach to God and sacred things. We’ll imitate their fruit without accepting their theology or inconveniencing ourselves too greatly by adopting their all-or-nothing attitude toward religion.
Subscribe to Decision
Get your own subscription, or renewal, or bless someone by giving Decision Magazine as a gift.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
So we say (or more likely think without saying), and every voice of wisdom, every datum of religious experience, every law of nature tells us how wrong we are. The bough that breaks off from the tree in a storm may bloom briefly and give to the unthinking passerby the impression that it is a healthy and fruitful branch, but its tender blossoms will soon perish and the bough itself wither and die. There is no lasting life apart from the root.
Much of what passes for Christianity today is the brief bright effort of the severed branch to bring forth its fruit in its season. But the deep laws of life are against it. Preoccupation with appearances and a corresponding neglect of the out-of-sight root of the true spiritual life are prophetic signs that go unheeded. Immediate “results” are all that matter. Religious pragmatism is running wild among the orthodox. Truth is whatever works.
A tree can weather almost any storm if its root is sound, but when the fig tree that our Lord cursed “dried up at its roots” it immediately “withered away.” A church that is soundly rooted cannot be destroyed, but nothing can save a church whose root is dried up. No stimulation, no advertising campaigns, no gifts of money and no beautiful edifice can bring back life to the rootless tree.
The whole Bible and all the great saints of the past join to tell us the same thing: “Take nothing for granted. Go back to the grass roots. Open your hearts and search the Scriptures. Bear your cross, follow your Lord and pay no heed to the passing religious vogue. The masses are always wrong. In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you are among them.”
“A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the righteous shall not be moved” (Proverbs 12:3, KJV). D
Give To Where Most Needed
