Words to live by for Friday 19th March 2010 as we zoom in on the perfect fruit!

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:16-17, 22-23 ESV).

If we take seriously the fact that the fruit we bear is determined by the seed we sow, then the onus is on us to ensure that what we actually sow and therefore produce, is of the Spirit of God. In our passage today, the apostle Paul was addressing the problem of the Christians from Galatia going back to legalism and insisting that those who profess Christ must be circumcised before they can become Christians or followers of Jesus. So to head them off, as it were, he wrote this letter to clarify a few things. The first is this: if we are to be true followers of Christ, we must of necessity be people of the Spirit, since it is the Spirit who brings conviction to us in the first place and it is He who reveals the truth about who Jesus is to us. The second is that we ought to bear fruit that is consistent with the Spirit. If we fail to do either of these then we are reverting back to our carnal or fleshly way of life.

The second part of the text makes a very important point that many people fail to understand. That is the fruit of the Spirit. We can be very cleaver now any suggest that there are nine (9) fruit(s) of the Spirit. However, the Greek word for fruit is karpos which is singular and as translated correctly states the “fruit” of the Spirit! So when you hear people talking about the nine fruits of the Spirit they are quoting the scripture wrongly and reading the text incorrectly. So what does the writer mean and what is the fruit of the Spirit?

To answer this question we must allow scripture to be the final arbiter and provide the evidence we need to acquit the apostle Paul. Firstly scripture states the God is love (1 John 4:8) and that God lives in us (St John 14:23). So if God is love and he lives in us, then it is he who is helping us to bear fruit from the love that is deposited in our spirit. Secondly scripture states that God proved his love for us because ‘while we were still sinners Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8) and gave up his only son for us so that we might have eternal life ( St John 3:16). This fruit of the spirit then is LOVE [Life Of Victory Enshrined] in Jesus Christ. This fruit of the Spirit is placed in us as LOVE to help us develop: – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are internal attributes that only you individually can allow to grow. No one can force you to be joyful or to be a peacemaker or to be kind and so on. It is up to you, also there are no legal restrictions to you possessing these attributes.

So today, let everything you do be predicated by love and everything you say be seasoned with love and allow it to flow out of you in abundance.

Read 1 John 3