INTRODUCTION
Today, we’re having the last in our series on the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. We’re going to look at the last three fruit in Paul’s list: faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
I thought I’d do something a bit different to usual today. I’m going to look at three true stories which illustrate these qualities. They’re all from the United States. After each story, I’ll have a short reflection.
FAITHFULNESS
The first story goes back to 2016. The place is Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana.
On July 5th, police in Baton Rouge attempted to arrest Alton Sterling, a black man. They thought he was reaching for a handgun and shot and killed him. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders.
The very next day, in Minnesota, Philando Castile, an African American man, was driving with his girlfriend when he was pulled over by the police. The police officer asked Castile for his license and registration. He told them he had a firearm – he had a license to carry one. The policeman told him not to pull it out. Castile and his girlfriend both said he wasn’t pulling it out. But the police officer shot and killed Castile. In a trial afterwards he said he saw a gun.
These shootings caused outrage. On July 9th, Black Lives Matter protesters came onto the streets in Baton Rouge to protest against police brutality. One of them was Ieshia Evans, a nurse. Evans had travelled to Baton Rouge from New York, where she lived, after seeing news coverage of the shooting of Sterling. That’s 1,500 miles away. This is a photo of her being arrested by police officers.
What has this got to do with the idea of faithfulness? Faithfulness means that you are loyal to someone. You are unswervingly loyal. You stand by them. You look out for them. Black Americans were suffering. Evans was a black American. So, she stood by her fellow black Americans. She showed faithfulness.
Faithfulness is a quality God has in spades. God is faithful to his people. God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Israel. He told them, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting LOVE; therefore I have continued my FAITHFULNESS to you’ [Jeremiah 31:3]. Faithfulness is an expression of love.
The people of Israel were often not faithful to God. God, however, continued to show faithfulness to them.
In Azerbaijan, Priscilla and I faced many challenges. But as we went through those challenges and saw how God took care of us, we discovered God’s faithfulness.
God wants us to be faithful in the same way as he is faithful. We need to be faithful to God, faithful to our husbands or wives, faithful to our friends.
Being faithful to God doesn’t just mean that we go on believing in him. We need to be faithful in doing tasks that he gives us. Jesus once taught about servants. He asked, ‘Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, TO GIVE THEM THEIR FOOD AT THE PROPER TIME?’ [Matthew 24:45].
What did the servant have to do for his master to consider him faithful? He had to give his master’s household their food at the proper time. It doesn’t seem too tough! But food is rather important! We can take Jesus’ words in a physical sense. We might need to literally give food to the hungry. We can also take Jesus’ words in a spiritual sense. We need to provide the food of God’s word. I am faithful to God when I prepare and deliver sermons. Jesus’ parable gives us one example of a task. There are lots of tasks God gives us.
But we aren’t only faithful to God. We also need to be faithful to our husbands and wives and friends. Faithfulness isn’t always easy!
GENTLENESS
The second story is from 2006. It’s also from the United States, this time, from Pennsylvania.
In October 2006, a man called Charlie Roberts opened fire at an Amish school. He shot ten girls, five of whom died. He then shot and killed himself. That is not an example of gentleness. But what happened next is.
Charlie Roberts had a family. He was married to a woman named Marie Monville. We might suppose that people who had lost loved ones would feel bitter towards the family of their killer. But the local Amish community didn’t show bitterness towards Monville. They showed the opposite.
After the shooting, Monville was staying with her parents. She saw a group of Amish men walking down the street and knew they were coming to her parents’ house. Her dad said, ‘‘You can stay inside, I’ll go out and talk with them.’ Then Monville saw the Amish men hug her father. She said afterwards: ‘I couldn’t hear the words they spoke. I saw the embrace. I saw them put their arms around my dad and put their hands on his shoulder. Everything about their gentleness conveyed the words that I couldn’t hear.’
The Amish even set up a fund for Charlie Roberts’ family. Grieving families accounted for half the people who attended Roberts’ funeral.
Monville used the word ‘gentleness’ to describe those Amish people. What do you think? A person who is gentle does their very best not to hurt. They use the least force possible. Their words are not rough or irritating. Those Amish people were all those things. They were extraordinarily sensitive to how Monville would have been feeling.
God is gentle. And God wants us to be gentle in the same way that he is gentle. In Paul’s list of Fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness is followed by gentleness. The two words balance each other.
At some point in my life someone described me as ‘driven’ and ‘determined’. I take that as a compliment. Later, I was in an interview and the interviewer asked me about this. She asked, ‘Do you think this is fair comment? How does this affect your relationships with those around you?’ It’s a reasonable question. A person might be given a task. It’s a tough task and the person needs to be driven and determined to make progress with it. He could force things through, not considering what other people want. But faithfulness shouldn’t be like that. We aren’t called to be bulldozers, thoughtlessly pushing other people out of the way. Faithfulness must be balanced by gentleness.
SELF-CONTROL
The third story is again from the United States. It’s more of a personal testimony than a story. It comes from a book called ‘Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible and Brain Science.’ It’s written by someone called Drew Dyck who is a Christian speaker and author. I haven’t read the whole book but I read the opening part of it. Dyck starts off by talking about New Year’s resolutions. He writes that he regularly makes resolutions about how he’s going to exercise or lose weight or manage his budget better. He also makes spiritual resolutions, for example, he’s going to pray for 15 minutes every morning.
Does this sound familiar? Do we make resolutions? I make resolutions from time to time. Dyck is the same as me. He doesn’t stick to his resolutions.
Dyck then went to say that his brother had a heart attack. So, he decided he should pay more attention to his health. He got his running shoes out and started running round the block. He gave attention to his diet. But the result was the same as his New Year resolutions. He couldn’t keep it up. Within two weeks, his good intentions were starting to lapse. Instead of running, he found himself watching TV and eating a bowl of cookie dough ice cream.
Dyck recognized that he had intentions but he wasn’t following through on them. But he also realised something else. He saw that self-control was even more important than he thought it was. He saw that almost every other virtue requires self-control. He asks, for example, ‘Can you be faithful to your spouse without self-control?’ Clearly, you can’t! He quotes other theologians who say the same. Self-control is foundational for other virtues.
God has lots of self-control. That is evident in Jesus’ life. People said all sorts of things that must have made Jesus extremely angry. But we never see him acting in a fit of passion. He must have been afraid of what lay ahead of him in Jerusalem but he ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem.’ He knew what he needed to do and he went through with it.
God wants us to demonstrate the same kind of self-control. The Book of Proverbs talks about self-control in the areas of lust, of spending, of ambition, of eating, of drinking, and of anger. One person will struggle with one area; another person will struggle with another. The Holy Spirit wants to produce in us this fruit of self-control, an inner strength to do what we know we should.
CONCLUSION
Over the past month or so we’ve looked at nine qualities that Paul lists as the fruit of the Spirit. They are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. They are qualities that God has in great measure – and we don’t have much of.
But the Holy Spirit is seeking to produce this fruit, these qualities in us.
Organizations often have vision statements. Tesla’s vision statement is ‘To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.’ Oxfam’s vision statement is ‘A just world without poverty.’ People who work for Tesla or Oxfam know what those companies want and they work towards those things. God made us in his image. He wants us to be like him. He wants us to have his character. That’s his vision for us.
When we produce these qualities of character, there’s a very good result. Jesus said, ‘By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples’ [John 15:8]. Bearing fruit brings God glory. And it proves that we are Jesus’ disciples! They are both things we want.
So, let’s keep these nine qualities firmly in view and work with the Holy Spirit to produce them.
PRAYER
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 10.30 a.m. service, 6th August 2023
