How To Apply The Fruit Of The Spirit Series

So much for peace.

On the positive side, a whole bunch of tee shirts were sold.

Paul is not talking about some kind of spiritual energy, spiritual vibes etc. There is no such thing as a nameless spiritual energy – there is God, who is a personal being, and the Bible also tells us that there is Satan and his dominions. But there is no such thing as some mass of spiritual energy.

What Paul is writing here is also not what comes around goes around. You know, the thought that if I live like as a jerk, eventually people will treat me like the jerk I am. But this is not really about positive and negative acts, what this is, is an explanation of the Fruit of the Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Last week, Lois correctly explained that these are called the Fruit of the Spirit and not, Fruits of the Spirit, as love really is the Fruit of the Spirit and the other eight are expressions of the fruit of love.

Now a couple of weeks ago we saw that we have the natural self and the spiritual self. The natural self is the person we have always been, the person we naturally were born to be. We all have a natural self. We saw that the natural person does things that come to him or her, naturally. But what comes to us naturally isn’t necessarily good, is it? Many of our natural inclinations are quite sinful. We saw for example, it is a natural thing to lie.

We also saw that when we become Christians we have the Holy Spirit come upon us and at the point we also have a spiritual self. Only Christians have a spiritual self. If you remember, the problem that comes into play in our lives is that we continue to do what comes to us naturally as opposed to what comes to us spiritually. We have to learn how to live spiritually, (what Paul calls life in the Spirit) and so God provides us with the Fruit of the Spirit to help us learn this life.

All that said, here is what Paul is getting at here: If I sow the natural life, Paul calls it the sinful nature here, if I sow the natural life, then life for me will not change and I will continue to live like everyone else. I will not be able to work through problems, I will not have answers, I will not understand how spiritual things work. However, if I sow the Spirit, then I will be able to live the spiritual life, or life in the Spirit as God has intended.

If I sow the Spirit, what do I reap? The Fruit of the Spirit.

If I sow the natural life, life as I have always lived it – I will not harvest the Fruit of the Spirit. I will continue to live a life without God’s guidance.

Remember how we sow the fruit of the Spirit? We daily place our faith in Jesus Christ. We talk to him throughout the day (that’s prayer), we learn His word (that’s bible study) and we place our faith in the Holy Spirit and NOT in our own abilities.

See, the Fruit of the Spirit are not enhanced natural abilities, they are supernatural Spirit given abilities so that we can do things that are quite frankly impossible for us to do as natural human beings. The Holy Spirit gives them, so then they are of supernatural origin. This is what Paul is speaking of here – sowing the Spirit in our lives, will reap the spirit in our lives.