Our first scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, beginning with the 15th verse. This is Jesus speaking during the Sermon on the Mount:
“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits.”
From the Sermon on the Mount, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, beginning at verse 16. Paul writes:
“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 if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
Lord, you give us your word. You have planted seeds in our hearts, and you tend them, you water them, you help them, and make them to grow so that they bear fruit. Help us to know ourselves and to know one another and to know you better by the fruit that grows within us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So after listing out and describing a descending spiral of human depravity, Paul now turns to proclaim the fruit of the Spirit, the evidence of a regenerate person, of a renewed heart and a transforming mind. These nine fruits begin to increase exponentially within each and every believer immediately upon their being born again, being born of the Holy Spirit from above.
Every Christian will receive and enjoy each one of these virtues in their life, albeit not in equal measure or to the same degree as every other believer. But still, every one of these nine fruits will be somehow present in their life. Each fruit flows out from the redeemed person as a moral good, as their response to the great work which God’s salvation has affected upon their soul. Each fruit is fundamentally opposed to one or more of the immoral works of the flesh.
Remember that the sense of those works was a spiraling descent into depravity and immorality, with pornea leading into sensuality, sensuality leading into idolatry, idolatry leading to sorcery, expressed through enmity, strife, jealousness, and wrath because of our sinful selfishness. And the selfishness is the root cause of all of our rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy, with the result of that selfishness being drunkenness or intoxication, and orgies and unseemly carousing—a total abandonment of self-control which leads around again to pornea.
Now, I envisioned this cycle like one of those giant yellow funnels that you find at a children’s science museum. You know the one that you slide a coin onto the side of, so the penny rolls around on its edge, going around faster and faster, propelled ever downward by the force of gravity and the path that it’s trapped on. Similarly, the sinful spiral starts out at the edges of life slowly at first; but as time passes by, the sinner moves from one act of immorality to the next, faster and faster, until their wickedness becomes such a blur that anything and everything good becomes an ancient memory.
Then, when they reach the bottom of the funnel, they suddenly drop dead into the bucket beneath. However, the fruit of the Spirit moves in the opposite direction. These different fruits build one upon the next, rising to the sky like a tower built upon solid foundations, increasing and improving a person’s character and soul as the Christian cooperates with the Holy Spirit as he sanctifies and transforms us closer every day into the image of Jesus.
Unfortunately, even though we do make progress along the path of the sanctified life, we will never reach perfection this side of Christ’s return. We can never be morally perfect in our lives; we will never be completely free from sin or sinning, even as we are freed from the curse of sin. But we will become better, and we will become more and more like Jesus the longer and closer we walk in step with him.
Now, many people outside of the Christian faith believe and think that they practice and exhibit these same particular virtues, and yes, they do to some degree, but only so far. They do experience them so that one day when they hear the gospel proclaimed, they will either turn to Christ in repentance and enjoy an exponential increase of spiritual fruit, or if they reject the gospel, then on the day of judgment, they will stand before God’s holy throne without any excuse. They will not be able to say, “I didn’t know,” because they will have willfully and obstinately rejected the grace which Christ freely offers repentant sinners.
The author of Hebrews warns: “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” And this warning is applicable to all the people who reject Jesus Christ outright and to the many unregenerate souls who may comfortably sit in different church pews every Sunday, sitting underneath the ministry of word and sacrament, but who do not and will not respond to Christ truly in faith and in repentance.
So, if a person continues in the many works of the flesh, if their continuing provides evidence of their unregenerate nature, then the fruit of the Spirit offers proof of our salvation to those around us and for our own encouragement. So if Christ lives within us, then we must stop, put aside, and reject all of our past works of the flesh and constantly be crucifying our sinful nature with the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. While he plants the seeds, we must still tend the garden of our heart, and soon we will see spiritual flowers blossom in our lives, smell their pleasing aroma, and enjoy the sweet taste of their fruit on the day of harvesting the fruit of the Spirit.
So we begin again, as Paul does, with the fruit of love, of agape. We start with love because we have received the agape of love. Now we begin to experience true joy because of this love; and living in joy, we know peace, and out of this peace, we start to express patience and kindness towards all others. Behaving in such a way, we honor our Heavenly Father, our adopted brother, and our sovereign Lord. Through this newfound goodness, we eventually become faithful and obedient to the will of God in our lives.
Then our moral character is defined by our gentleness and our self-control. Truly then we will be living in a Christ-like manner, showing agape to everyone—God and men—having been saved by grace alone through this great gift of faith in Christ, which he gives to all the elect according to his transcendent love: God’s agape for his people, the Lamb’s agape for his bride, the church, Israel.
It is quite natural that the first spiritual fruit in the life of every believer is agape. Paul commends us to live our faith by working through love, so the Holy Spirit empowers us for these good works so that now we can love others selflessly and purely because Jesus has first loved us.
The world thinks it knows what love is, but what it calls love is only mist and shadows. But the Lord, he taught his people how to love others through the law—to love our brothers, our sisters, and our neighbors. But his people never really understood it. Sure, they found it easy to love their brother but not their neighbor. Instead, they learned from the world how to hate their enemy and to limit those whom they considered to be their neighbor.
Then Jesus came along and taught us how to love our enemies, teaching us to recognize all mankind as our neighbor. This Samaritan story demonstrates how even our differences in religion, nationality, or ethnicity should not prevent us or hinder us from loving others, especially those who are different from us, because they are also crafted in the image of God.
Through his actions, Jesus taught us how to love those who are marginalized or ostracized by polite society—eating with and socializing with sinners and tax collectors, healing those considered to be ceremonially unclean by disease of their personal circumstances, and even forgiving the soldiers who were crucifying him.
Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the only man who ever lived a perfect and sinless life, gave his life; he died to redeem all the sinful people whom he and the Father had covenanted to save before the foundation of the world. Out of agape, God the Father agapes us so much that he gave his only begotten Son so that we might become his adopted children and receive eternal life.
That is love, that is agape, and that is the first seed planted in our spirit-tilled hearts, taking root and transforming everything about our lives—both the way that we view the world and the way in which the world views us.
But how does the fruit of love manifest itself in the life of the Christian? Through our changed consideration of others, we begin to think of other people’s importance before our own—their concerns, their feelings, and their needs, although not necessarily their opinions. Then we become willing and wanting to meet and fill their needs, to address their concerns, and become more considerate of their feelings, trying not to cause unnecessary offense.
We want to feed the hungry; we want to take care of the sick and the dying. We want to clothe and house the poor and unfortunate, to care for widows and orphans. We refuse to show partiality; we refuse to lie to one another, including speaking those truths which feel uncomfortable.
We agape as Christ agaped us; we agape as if we are agapeing to Jesus Christ himself. When we love others, we’re expressing our Heavenly Father’s love for them that he has first shared with us. When we love like this, then we begin to feel the same joy that the Lord finds in us.
Next, the Greek word for joy is “kara,” and it’s used to refer to both a state of joy or delight as well as the source, cause, or object of joy. It’s also related to another familiar Greek word, “charis,” which we ordinarily understand as grace, and God’s grace alone is how we receive our salvation and all the blessings of the Lord.
Truly, joy is something that we experience and express only because of the love of Jesus Christ and the comfort of his Spirit within us. The Lord himself takes joy in us, his children, even though we have been and are a sinful people. Through faith in him, we find our joy in him, and so we become at peace.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of the fruit of joy being one of the blessings enjoyed by the redeemed of the Lord, writing: “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
The joy and peace that we experience because of the Holy Spirit within us is an encouragement for us to remind us that Christ will never abandon us nor forget us. However, the joy which we are promised, this joy which we find welling up from deep within us, is not necessarily happiness.
We are not promised to be happy each and every day of our Christian lives. We will get sad; we will feel overwhelmed. We will be overburdened; we will get frustrated, upset, and mad. But even still, we can be, we should be, and we must be joyful. We must choose joy daily.
Joy is partially our attitude, partially our state of mind, because we must choose to keep our eyes on Jesus, on his cross, through all of our problems, and choose to remain in the joy of the Lord. Otherwise, we will let Satan drag us down and close our eyes to the light of life in which we hope.
Joy is the reason why Horatio Spafford was able to write the famous hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” after suffering economic tragedy. He sent his wife and four daughters for a holiday in Europe, letting them travel on ahead of him. But while crossing the Atlantic, their ship, the Ville du Havre, struck another vessel and sank, killing 226 people, including all four of his children.
Later, while crossing the Atlantic to reach his grief-stricken wife, Horatio wrote the words to this hymn near the place where the ship sank: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.” Only Christian joy can comfort a person like that.
Whenever we struggle, whenever we are unhappy, whenever we feel particularly joyless, that is when we most need to turn our eyes toward Jesus in faith. We remain joyful by being heavenly minded, remembering all that Christ suffered on our account so that we may receive eternal life in his kingdom and enjoy peace with God and one another.
Meditating on him and his work will both humble our hearts and elevate our souls to joyfulness from any depth of negative feeling. So the fruit of our joy is expressed by our attitudes, in how we treat others and how we respond to trials and tragedy.
Then peace—shalom, wholeness. We are no longer at enmity with God; we are no longer counted as his enemy. He has brought us into peace with him, not because we achieved a victory but because Jesus has conquered our hearts, filling us with peace.
The brokenness of our lives, the damage caused by our sins and sinfulness, is being repaired and restored because of all that Jesus has done. We are spiritually returned to the status of our first forebears back in the Garden of Eden from before the fall. We are brought into the Lord’s presence without fear of condemnation.
Our hearts are filled so that we can bask in the light of his glory and enjoy his favor. Encouraging the disciples and promising them that he would send another paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to them, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
His peace, which manifests through his love and his joy, becoming more like Christ, being made in his image, being adopted as God’s children, and having the Lord cause us to be at peace with him, causes us to become peacemakers.
For blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Being at peace, having our relationship with the Lord restored, this spiritual fruit manifests through our works of reconciliation, through our efforts to repair damaged relationships—whether between siblings or parents and children, or husbands and wives, or between nations and other people groups.
We help others enjoy a measure of peace with one another, but the ultimate goal and aim of our peacemaking is still and must always be to point towards the one source of this peace, leading them to Jesus Christ, who wants them to be at peace with him.
This is the great ministry of reconciliation to which every Christian is called to serve. As Paul told the Corinthian church, “Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” True peace is to be reconciled with God and man—all of us united together in Christ, the sons of God.
Then flowing out from this peace, we become more patient and long-suffering because the Lord has been so patient and long-suffering with us and our sinfulness. Adam and Eve’s first sin in the garden required their death, but in mercy, the Lord instead cast them into exile. He allowed them to survive and thrive to eventually birth the people from whom the redeeming Messiah would come.
Time and again, the Lord received us back into his favor, even as God’s people have broken faith with him, violating his covenant over and over again. The golden calf at Sinai, the cycle of sin, repentance, and rescue during the days of the judges, the idolatry and rebellion against the Lord and his law in Israel, resulting in the Babylonian captivity, and even the unjust death of Jesus in Jerusalem at the demand of the Jewish leadership—
The Lord has patiently suffered and permitted us to sin and dwell in our darkness until now when he is raising us up into the heavenlies and is sanctifying us into his glory. Therefore, as we grow more sanctified, we become more patient and forbearing towards others and their offenses against us. Thus, we begin to love our enemies better, to truly forgive them, and to better trust that the only righteous judge will render his judgment in time.
Paul told the Roman church: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” This Christian attitude can only come through holy patience. Jesus told us to turn the other cheek not so that we would become doormats or allow people to walk all over us, but as a lesson to forgo our assumed right of vengeance, to break the violent cycle of retributive justice found in the lex talionis, the law of the jungle: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
Yes, that law, that rule is found in the law, and it was given as a standard for justice to ensure fairness and equity in punishment. But the practical application of this judgment is merciless and only ends with the land filled with the blind and the toothless. However, Christians, being filled with the Spirit of God and the love of Christ, are called to extend mercy and grace to others because of the mercy we’ve received from God.
So let us be patient and leave justice to the only perfect, righteous, omniscient, and omnipotent judge. Be patient and allow him to have mercy on whom he will have mercy, as he has shown to us. We don’t need that weight on our shoulders. Let all the vengeance be his.
The next fruits that we exhibit are kindness and gentleness—words that in the Greek carry similar meanings and mutually reinforce each other. They can otherwise be understood as uprightness and generosity.
Christians in uprightness will begin to do what is right and good and correct by nature and by intent. We do not even need to think about doing it; we just do it. Uprightness means that we do not think about holding open a door for someone or helping someone cross the street because we just do those things naturally, just because it’s right.
We return lost wallets to their owner. We’ll mow the lawn of our neighbor who’s homebound when we mow our own. We’ll cross the street at a crosswalk, leave more pennies in the dish at the counter than we take, wash the dishes when somebody else cooks dinner, and all those other little seemingly meaningless niceties and things which we know we ought to do.
Christian generosity means that we’re liberal with our giving: our time, our money, and our attention. We give without complaints, freely giving more than is asked of us. Jesus said, “And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
We go above and beyond the minimum requirements or expectations in our generosity. Take extra time, spend a few extra moments, give a few extra dollars, listen to the one who’s lonely. Be nice and kind to others, for you may be the only bright spot in a person’s otherwise dark day. You may well be the only Christian that they’ll ever know, and so by your actions, you may teach them who Jesus is.
Be wise and good stewards, since the Lord has blessed us with such bounty and wealth in our lives. We are obligated to share it with others. Round up whenever you pay somebody back after borrowing money. If someone asks for money because they’re hungry, buy them a full meal. If they ask for a meal, then buy them a week’s worth of groceries. Give, spend, and do as much as you are able and your spirit-led conscience dictates, for our cup overflows. Trust that the Lord God, who has already given you so much, will continue to provide for you and that he will not let you lack anything that you truly need.
Next is faithfulness. Faithfulness means more than just faithfulness to Christ but also extends to our faithfulness to one another. Throughout some 3,500 years of church history, God’s people have often violated God’s covenant and broken faith with him. But even still, God remains faithful.
So as we grow sanctified in holiness, as we are conformed to Christ’s image, as we become more patient and forbearing, and as we begin to do more of what is right by nature, then we will also become a more faithful people. Especially when others break faith with us, we’ll continue to meet and fulfill our obligations even though other people may not. Our word is our bond; our yes means yes, and our no means no. We become more reliable and trustworthy.
Next, meekness or gentleness. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” And so we shall when Christ returns and creation is restored and renewed. But what does it mean to be gentle or meek? Jesus exhibited gentleness in all his earthly dealings. Isaiah described it thusly, saying of the divine servant, the Messiah: “He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”
Jesus never caused offense to anyone even as some took offense to him in his gospel. Jesus never did harm; he never forced himself upon anyone; he never insisted upon or demanded his rights. However, meek and gentle as he was, when Jesus spoke, people listened. Jesus always carried himself with humility and authority.
Jesus acted with gentleness and meekness in all that he did, especially when he drove the money changers from the temple. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting there. Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
Jesus is still gentle in this scene because he asks for his father’s glory on account of his father’s honor—not of his own—and he does no harm. He told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my father’s house a house of trade.” Even after he had made a whip of cords, Jesus drove them out with the sheep and the oxen. He drove them out like animals with the cracking sound of a whip, not with the bite of a scourge.
There’s no real sense in that passage that Jesus harmed or hurt anyone. For in gentleness, he plainly commanded the sellers to remove the birds resting in their cages from the premises rather than smashing their cages or setting them loose in the temple courtyard.
Christlike gentleness and meekness do not mean that we should allow ourselves to be taken advantage of, nor does it mean that we are not to stand up for ourselves. But it does define how we should comport ourselves. Let all the world around us scramble and scrape trying to glorify itself. Let other people fight for power and influence over men. We serve the God who justifies us, who glorifies us in his Son, so we can afford to be gentle and kind, meek and mild, patient and upright, because the Lord provides all that we need and far more than we deserve.
The final spiritual fruit which Paul lists here is self-control or mastery over ourselves. This last one is listed because it not only affects all the rest, it commands all of the rest. The fruit of self-control, of mastery over ourselves, is the spiritual point where our will becomes free from its bondage to sin.
This is the point where we will now choose to not sin instead of always choosing to sin. This is a fruit which will only ever be perfected in glory, but still, we begin to enjoy it now, expressing it through our freedom in Christ Jesus.
Thus, the spiritual fruits build one upon the next, layer upon spiritual layer. Because we have been loved, we may now love others, have joy, have peace, show patience, be good and kind, remain faithful, be gentle, and exhibit self-control.
Now, because we have self-control, we will choose the good things of God. Imperfectly, we choose to be obedient; we choose to do good works; we choose now to not sin. We choose to crucify our sinful desires and choose to grow in holiness.
So because these fruit trees were planted in our hearts, we can take the first fruits and replant them, expanding our spiritual orchards and groves, cooperating with the Spirit and being improved upon this foundation. Because the Holy Spirit has first planted those spiritual seeds in our heart, and because we work to tend these fragile plantings, the Lord continues to give us an increase so that one day by faith, we will always and only choose love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
And on that day, when the harvest is ripe and our storehouses are filled with all this glorious spiritual fruit, on that day, King Jesus will say to us, as we stand before his throne, clothed in his righteousness:
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
On that day, we will not be surrounded by our past works of the flesh but only the fruit of the Spirit that is even now growing in our heart by the grace of God alone. Amen.