How To Apply The Fruit Of The Spirit Series

Let us look at the process of reaping. When I plant one tomato seed, I harvest many tomatoes. With sowing and reaping, the concept always works the same, I sow a little, I reap much more than I have sown. It works with seeds, and it works with other areas of life as well.

I sow a little anger, I reap a larger response of anger around me. I sow a little immorality, I harvest larger consequences from that small bit of immorality. However, if I sow tiny little bit of faith in Jesus Christ, I harvest a much larger amount of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control……

Do you see that? A little sown, yields much more in time.

This brings us back to verse 1. Here Paul gives us practical application of the Fruit of the Spirit. We see there in verse one what we are to do when we find a brother or sister someone who is caught in sin. What he means here by caught in sin, is not a premeditated sin or a person with continued unrepentant sin, but a sin that has caught a person off guard. When he says, “you who are spiritual”, He means those who are following the life of the Spirit, as evidenced by the Fruit of the Spirit in their lives.

What we see in his description is the Fruit of the Spirit in action. We see patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control involved here in this example from Paul. Now you could argue that those virtues can be in anyone and they are not uniquely Christian – that is true, if we were talking about human virtues – these are not of human origin, they are of supernatural origin. Fruit of the Spirit, since it is of the Spirit and not of humanity, is of supernatural origin and not human origin.

So, what we see is this: A person you know falls into sin and you set about to restore him and the person responds not so favorably, he is a jerk and tells you to take a hike. Now how you would naturally respond is to perhaps, tell them off, become angry, become offended and walk away letting them remain in their sin. But, if you have the developing Fruit of the Spirit, you would exhibit more of the patience, kindness, gentleness and self control that you in all honesty, could not be able to exhibit on your own – thus being able to restore this person.

See how that works?

Actually it is quite easy to see this in action as God intended it. Have you ever been called on a sin you have committed by someone and they were sarcastic or nasty about it. Did they create the feeling that they were someone more spiritual than you by bringing this sin to your attention? Well, that’s spiritual correction done by human effort, and it always leaves a bad taste in your mouth. See, by correcting in a human way they are really focusing on themselves and not on the Holy Spirit. They are comparing themselves in their spiritual life to who you are your spiritual life. The problem being, they have no idea about your real relationship with God. Beware of those people who like to brag about their own spiritual success or spiritual growth, they are not living by the Spirit.