Outside the Camp

In 2007 I will be con­tribut­ing an arti­cle for each monthly edi­tion of the Com­mon Truth e-newsletter. The arti­cles will be part of a sys­tem­atic study of the “Fruitage of the Spirit” found at Gala­tians 5:22, 23. My orig­i­nal inten­tion was to write a book on the topic as part of a per­sonal study. That is still my goal but hav­ing a monthly oblig­a­tion to the newslet­ter should keep me on track so that I don’t slack off. (God willing)

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The over­all aim of Paul’s shep­herd­ing activ­i­ties through­out the con­gre­ga­tions he helped to plant was to build believ­ers into full-grown matu­rity within the body of Christ. (Eph­esians 4:11–13) This was true within the Roman province of Gala­tia. In writ­ing to them he spoke to them as his “lit­tle chil­dren” and told them, “I am again in child­birth pains until Christ is formed in you.” (Gala­tians 4:19) Ulti­mately he wanted them to be able to make the same asser­tion that he him­self made, “It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ who is liv­ing in union with me.” (Gala­tians 2:20)

After leav­ing the church in Gala­tia though, those new­born Chris­tians suf­fered a seri­ous set­back in their progress toward full­ness in Christ. Cer­tain ones from the church in Judea were infil­trat­ing their con­gre­ga­tions and teach­ing a works-based per­ver­sion of the Gospel. This caused the Gala­tians to turn away from the spirit and start liv­ing toward the works of law. After los­ing their focus on the spirit some were per­haps even falling back into fleshly ten­den­cies. In writ­ing the let­ter, Paul hoped to bring them back in line with the spirit they began with.

This pro­vides the back­drop for which we obtain our theme scripture.

“the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, gen­eros­ity, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-control.” — Gala­tians 5:22, 23

Before we can begin a dis­cus­sion about bear­ing fruit though, we must con­sider what is meant by the term “fruits”. Some may con­fuse bear­ing fruits as works such as evan­ge­liz­ing and mak­ing con­verts. Sadly, we don’t have to look too deeply at the con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian land­scape to see that even though a per­son may man­i­fest good works their inner per­son may be void and lack­ing of Christ. For exam­ple, a dynamic “pas­tor” may lead a church of thou­sands; but secretly be involved in sex­ual sin.

Fur­ther­more, even ungodly men can man­i­fest good works. To illus­trate we can con­sider briefly one aspect of the fruitage of the spirit: Gen­eros­ity. A greedy busi­ness exec­u­tive may give to char­ity to increase his worldly sta­tus or to alle­vi­ate a tax bur­den. Cer­tainly we wouldn’t con­clude that such a man was bear­ing good fruitage in doing so.

So when speak­ing about the fruits we are not talk­ing about what we con­sider good works or deeds but instead are look­ing at a good Christ-like per­son­al­ity. The spirit pro­duces Godly char­ac­ter­is­tics in a per­son and as a result they will inher­ently have good actions. And just as Jesus cau­tions that from an evil heart all man­ner of wicked­ness may spring forth, the con­verse is true that from one hav­ing a pure heart all sorts of good fruitage will be brought forth. (Mark 7:23) Paul cites this prin­ci­ple when he writes to the Gala­tians, “What­ever a man is sow­ing, this he will also reap.” (Gala­tians 6:7) Thus when we look at devel­op­ing the “fruitage of the spirit” in our lives we are not seek­ing works but seek­ing to develop the spirit of Christ within us that will nat­u­rally lead to vir­tu­ous action.

In his let­ter to the Gala­tians Paul lists the fruitage, or the good qual­i­ties, that the spirit pro­duces within us. While this list­ing of the fruitage of Spirit is a won­der­ful round look at the “mind of Christ” we must keep in mind that it is not meant to be com­pre­hen­sive and complete.

In speak­ing about the con­trast­ing works of the flesh he doesn’t pro­duce an exhaus­tive list because they are, in his words, “obvi­ous” or “appar­ent”. In deal­ing with the works of the flesh at Gala­tians 5:19–21, Paul quickly enu­mer­ates a few and says, “and things like these.” Like­wise the list of aspects of the fruit of the spirit at Gala­tians is a gen­eral overview of what is man­i­fest in the per­son­al­ity of a spirit lead person.

In his let­ters to the con­gre­ga­tion at Eph­esus, Paul pro­vides even a broader sum­mary of the fruit of the spirit say­ing, it is “found in all that is good and right and true”. (Eph­esians 5:9) These attrib­utes are the part of the new per­son­al­ity that we take on as Holy Ones of God. (Colos­sians 3:10–14)

Paul was not the first to use the word pic­ture of fruit when deal­ing with spir­i­tual life. Jesus often used fruit in his para­bles and teach­ings. He empha­sized the impor­tance of bear­ing good fruit by show­ing that the qual­ity of fruit pro­duced will deter­mine the true man of God and show up those who are false. Fur­ther­more he taught that those who do not bear good fruit are to be judged and destroyed in fire. (Matthew 7:19) As Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ples of Jesus bear­ing good fruit is imper­a­tive. But how can we develop good fruit in our lives?

Illus­trat­ing aspects of the Chris­t­ian per­son­al­ity as fruitage shows how these virtues develop in a per­son — that is organ­i­cally and not mechan­i­cally. They are not pre­pared as one would an apple pie; rather they are cul­ti­vated like an apple tree. To fur­ther illus­trate, when bak­ing we gen­er­ally have con­trol over the process from start to fin­ish. The end prod­uct is there­fore solely deter­mined by our selec­tion of ingre­di­ents, our abil­ity to fol­low a recipe, and our culi­nary skill.

When gar­den­ing we only have par­tial con­trol over the end result. A skilled farmer can do much to pro­duce a good har­vest; how­ever there is a cer­tain ele­ment that is left in the hands of God. Paul calls to mind this prin­ci­ple at 1 Corinthi­ans 3:6,7 where he writes, “I planted, Apol­los watered, but God gave the growth. So nei­ther the one who plants nor the one who waters is any­thing, but only God who give the growth.”

By com­par­ing the pro­duc­tion of these qual­i­ties to a bring­ing forth a har­vest of fruit it clues us in to the opti­mal way they will develop in us — that is organ­i­cally grown in tan­dem with God. While it is pos­si­ble to try to work on these indi­vid­ual aspects of the Chris­t­ian life, our best suc­cess will be achieved when we allow them to nat­u­rally spring forth as the result of ger­mi­nat­ing the seed of God’s Word planted within us, watered by his Spirit. In con­sid­er­ing how we can have a boun­ti­ful spir­i­tual har­vest it comes down to these three sym­bolic ele­ments: Soil, seed, and water.

Soil

Soil rep­re­sents us as indi­vid­u­als as we are made from the ground. We were orig­i­nally cre­ated in the image of God and still within our hearts there lies fer­tile ground that may pro­duce a rich crop of spir­i­tual fruitage.

Jesus illus­trates the prin­ci­ple of good soil in his illus­tra­tion of the seed sower in Matthew 13. In his para­ble he likens a per­son who is recep­tive to the seed of God’s Word as good soil that would pro­duce an abun­dant crop. Such a per­son will­ingly receives God’s Word and cher­ishes it in their hearts. On the oppo­site side, poor soil is man­i­fest by those that have no last­ing inter­est in the Word of God, who fall away in times in tribu­la­tion or who allow sec­u­lar inter­ests to encroach upon their spir­i­tu­al­ity. There­fore, in order to have good soil we need to have a deep love for God’s Word; such an ever­last­ing love that over­shad­ows all other things in our lives.

Seed

In Jesus’ illus­tra­tion the seed is God’s Word. When we think about God’s Word we may have the ten­dency to just think about God’s writ­ten word the Bible. But when we speak about God’s Word we are ulti­mately talk­ing about Jesus Christ who is the revealed Word of God. ( John 1:14) Jesus Christ is the chan­nel by which God speaks to us today. (Hebrews 1:2) And because the “tes­ti­mony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” we can under­stand that the entire inspired writ­ten Word is a rev­e­la­tion of Jesus Christ. (Rev­e­la­tion 19:10) Jesus then is the seed that will pro­duce “right­eous fruit” in our lives. (Philip­pi­ans 1:11)

The seed may also com­pare to our indi­vid­ual nature. When we are born as humans, sin implants the fleshly nature, or seed of sin, into our hearts. If we allow such a seed to ger­mi­nate it will bring forth a cor­rupt har­vest that with­ers and dies. For­tu­nately though, we have the oppor­tu­nity to plant a new seed within us, Jesus, God’s liv­ing Word.

When we accept Jesus into our hearts we can begin “sow­ing with a view to the spirit” and we “will reap ever­last­ing life from the spirit”. (Gala­tians 6:8) At this time we are “born anew, not of per­ish­able but of imper­ish­able seed, through the liv­ing and endur­ing Word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23)

Water

Soil and seed have great poten­tial for growth but they need water to cause ger­mi­na­tion. While a fruit tree requires only the one time plant­ing of a seed, it will require water through­out its mat­u­ra­tion and on through that its entire life.

The water that God pro­vides is the Holy Spirit that he rains down upon us bring­ing us growth. Joel prophet­i­cally spoke of a time that God would bring rain in full mea­sure, even a down­pour upon his peo­ple and that he would “pour out [his] spirit on all kinds of peo­ples” (Joel 2:23,28) This rain shower started to pour on Chris­tians on Pen­te­cost 33 CE when God poured out his holy spirit upon a group of gath­ered believ­ers.(Acts 2:17–21)

This was in accord with Jesus’ promise that his Father would send them the Holy Spirit. (John 16:7; Acts 1:4,5) Like rain, the Spirit is poured down into the soil of our hearts and causes the seed of Jesus to grow within us. (Gala­tians 4:6; Romans 5:5) This water enriches our lives.(Psalm 65:9) The Spirit forms “liv­ing water” that flows out of the hearts of believ­ers. (John 7:37,38) And the liv­ing water brings forth a rich crop of Christ-like fruitage — love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, gen­eros­ity, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-control. (Gala­tians 5:22,23)