There was a freshness to the air and the streetlights were gently illuminating our front garden. I had arrived home late after being out in town, and I had been to the pub. Just seven months earlier I was arriving home to a scared and angry wife because, to be frank, she couldn’t trust me to go out of the house without getting into some sort of trouble.
I walked into our home to see Laura had a friend from Church round. It was a surprise not to be challenged as I got home late, but it was the first time that I had been late since becoming a follower of Jesus. Laura’s friend asked, quite openly: “aren’t you bothered about where he’s been?” I will remember Laura’s response forever: “I know where he’s been. He’s been telling people about Jesus!”
Reading Galatians 5 we come to verse 22:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is now law.”
All too often we hear preachers and scholars talking of the fruits (plural) of the Spirit, but in the scripture there is no fruits, but one fruit. In the same way that there is no churches, there is just one. There is one Saviour, one God, and one salvation.
If you go to an apple orchard you would be a little confused if you found a tree to be growing with oranges, pears and apples on it. This is firstly because a tree is known by its fruit. We expect apples to grow on an apple tree. Secondly, we don’t expect different fruits to grow from the same tree. It’s the same in the Kingdom of God.
The list of characteristics in Galatians 5 are not the fruits of the Spirit. Jesus is! Those attributes all belong to one character in creation. Jesus! The fruit of the Spirit’s tree is Jesus! If we are walking in, and with, the Spirit of God we will become Jesus to the world around us.
When the Father looks at a believer he sees the righteousness of Jesus. He sees the seal of Jesus on us. When he sees the Church it’s like he’s walking through a Holy Spirit orchard and, as you would guess, he expects to see the fruit of Jesus.
The word ‘disciple’ means ‘little me’, and so to be a disciple of Jesus means to be a ‘little Christ’. A lot of the time you are the only Jesus that your friends and family will ever see. You are the only Bible that they will read.
If you know my story you’ll know that I drank a lot before becoming a Christian. Barely a week went by without me going out, getting drunk and ending up in a bar brawl or calling my wife from the police station. It wasn’t until a year or two ago that she felt comfortable with me grabbing a beer. On that night back in the Spring of 2009, where I got home particularly late, I had gone to a pub with a friend that I was witnessing to in a t-shirt that I had made myself. On the front it said ‘I’m a Christian, ask me why’ and on the back it said ‘I believe in God, ask me why’. For the first time I was in a pub and had committed to not drink alcohol, not because it was a sin, but because it had previously had control over me. God freed me from it. All I used to talk about before I was saved was sex and getting rich, but now I was saved, all I ever talked about was Jesus. I went out in town telling random people about him, exchanging beer for my bible and punches for prayers.
I was a tree with one fruit. I brought forth Jesus with my mouth and my actions. We should all be like that.
Sticking with the same concept, if you are a Jesus, or Spirit, tree then you are expected not to bring forth the characteristics and attributes of the enemy. Galatians 5 lists them as:
“Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.”
We, as believers, are judged four times in this life; once by ourselves, once by the world around us, and twice by God. When we judge ourselves we look at how we want to be and compare it to how we are behaving, or what attitudes we have. When the world around us judges us it says ‘this is what expect from a Christian, so this is how you should behave’. Sometimes this means that we have undue pressure put upon by the world, and sometimes it means that they are put off by stuff that they think about us that isn’t true. For example, the world might call you a Bible basher and expect you to force your beliefs or prayer times on them. However, you might be quite a missionally-minded Christian who considers their environment to be secular, or unchurched, and so is more gentle than the whacky guys that we all tried to stay away from before we met Jesus. Finally, we are judged twice by God. The first of those is to see if you are a follower of Jesus, and thus made righteous by his atoning sacrifice on the cross. The second is about your works on earth. Have you done anything at all for God or was it all self-seeking, self-promoting works of service to glorify yourself? If it’s to glorify yourself you get nothing in heaven. If it’s to glorify your maker, you are given treasure in heaven.
So bare the fruit of the Spirit tree and be like Jesus!
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