Some people say that words are cheap. Jesus didn’t think so. He thought words are both wonderful and dangerous. They are eternal in their power. Jesus said that on the Day of Judgment, our words will justify us or condemn us. I find that very frightening. In fact, Jesus said that at the Day of Judgment we will “have to give an account for every careless word” we’ve spoken.1
In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said something even more emphatic about words. He said that the language we use can be like an act of murder. So if we call somebody a fool, it is such an evil act that we “will be liable to the hell of fire.”2
And yet, one day Jesus himself called a man a fool. If Jesus, who taught that every word makes us open to judgment, and who warned especially against using a word like fool — if Jesus himself called a man a fool, he must have been very sure of what he was saying. The word came in the midst of a lesson, near the conclusion of a story. Jesus must have been very conscious of what he was saying if he dared to use this forbidden word. So it would be good to know how Jesus defined a fool.
The scripture setting
It happened this way. One day while Jesus was teaching, a man in the crowd interrupted him. He said, “Teacher, tell my b
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