Over the next three weeks we will be looking at the fruits of the spirit. When I was planning this series of sermons, I thought that it was a nice short series which would give everybody a chance to hear each member of the pastoral team preach and at the same time cover some of Paul’s important teaching.
However after I started researching my sermon, I soon realised that many pastors actually cover the same material in ten weeks. So I’ve unwittingly given myself four weeks of material to cover in one week, so sit back and make yourselves comfortable because it might take a while.
Seriously though I was quite disappointed to think that I’m not going to really get through as much as I would have like to get through, but hopefully that will leave people hungry to hear more.
Let’s read the passage. (Gal 5:16-24)
There are two things that I want to say about this passage before we get into individual elements of the list of nine.
The first thing is how many people note that in v19 Paul talks about the ‘works’ plural vs the ‘fruit’ singular in v22. So the question people ask is ‘are there many fruits or is there only one fruit’? Now technically it could be fruit or fruits, but the most natural reading is fruit.
However for me there are various arguments which indicate that Paul is referring to the one fruit, not many types of fruits. When Jesus talks about fruits, he talks about knowing the kind of tree from the kind of fruit, you get figs from a fig tree and berries from a berry bush, you don’t get strawberries from a big tree. One tree means one fruit. And for me we have the same sort of idea here.
Secondly if we are to describe an apple we can use lots of different adjectives to describe it. A delicious red is generally red, shape like so, sweet, firm texture. All fruits that are red, are not delicious apples. But likewise all delicious apples aren’t exactly shaped the same, they vary within the general description.
For me, what we have here is a general list of adjectives that describe the fruit of the spirit and just as you get all kinds of different delicious apples from the apple tree you can get various subtle differences in how we can describe the ‘fruit of the spirit’. Here Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit is influenced by and relevant to the situation in Galatia, just as all Paul’s letters are influenced by the situation to which he writes.
And just as not all red fruit are delicious apples, so not all who have joy, or love, or self-control show the ‘fruit of the spirit’. And I also don’t think that it is impossible to have joy, love, or self control without God’s spirit, as some imply. Otherwise we are saying that those who don’t follow Christ don’t have real marriages, real loving families, real joy when good things happen and I’m pretty sure I saw some real joy on the face of the tiges when they won last year!
One of the downsides of seeing these as individual fruits is that maybe we start to see them as a list of things to be ticked off. I’ve got some love towards others in my life, now time to work on some joy, OK got that now time to work on some peace. That is part of the idea but not the fullness of the idea.
And so while we can see something of the fruit of the Spirit by seeing these things in people’s life it is by seeing the combination of them together that we really get to see the fruit of the Spirit. And one person where I think we see these things come together in their fullness is in the Person of Christ. Maybe what Paul is saying is the spirit of the fruit is being Christ-like, which makes sense, at least to me.
The second thing I want to say about the concept of fruit is a reminder of what John talks about. He speaks about how vines grow grapes only when they abide in the vine. The vinedresser doesn’t need to worry about branches growing fruit, that is what they do, but he needs to worry about the branches being connected to the vine.
And while the metaphor can’t be pressed too hard, I think that the important thing for us is that it isn’t about focussing on the list, like I said before, but that the fruit will come out of abiding in Christ. The fruit is an extension of our relationship with Christ, as our relationship with Christ grows, so the spirit is able to work more in our lives, and the fruit of the spirit becomes more evident.
And so I think that the idea is not to try and grow each of these fruits in our lives, but that we reflect on the source of these various elements in our relationship with Christ, and I will talk a bit more about that as we go through these first three adjectives, descriptions, or whatever you want to call them.
It is always a bit strange for me to preach on some of the great topics, words of the Bible. It is like I want to touch on these subjects and deal with them, but not in a way that is trite, or just rehashing what others have said, or to try and imitate the great preachers in a way that just isn’t me. And so when come to love, sometimes it can feel a bit daunting to try and deal with it in an adequate way.
However what I want to think about a bit this morning is the concept of love as an action. How do you know when you have been loved? For each of us this will be in a different way, but it won’t just be in ‘I know that person loves me’. How do you know? How do you ‘see’ love, ‘feel’ love, ‘touch’ love?
I suggest that it is through people doing things. Many of you here will have read the book the five love languages. The original book was about how you can express love to your partner, or how you can make your partner feel loved. Now there were five various ways in which people responded to being love, one is the through words of affirmation that is some people particularly respond to being told nice things about them. Other people respond to acts of service. Last night my mother and I put together the new chair Leni bought for herself to study in, now that for me was a very big act of service to show my wife how much I love her. Still others respond to being touched, some to receiving gifts and some to quality time that is sitting down and talking about feelings.
The thing about all these things is that they are doing things, but not just doing things, doing things with a purpose of making the person feel loved. It is no good just buying someone a gift and leaving it in your closet, which seems to happen at our place at Christmas time, so many presents, not all of them get delivered! Those people won’t feel loved, despite the fact that Leni did something to try and make them feel loved.
It isn’t just the doing. It is the doing with the explanation, it is the doing with the right attitude, it is the doing with the desire to love someone else. Sometimes the two don’t come together do they. The Classic Hollywood script will have the husband coming home from work saying how he works so hard for the family, so that they can have things, so that they can be loved, but they all want to be loved in another way, with time, with nice words, with touch.
And likewise God loves us. He just didn’t do something, he did something and then he got someone to tell us about it. He sent Jesus to die for us, and then he got four people to write a book about it. He got 70 people to go around telling people about it, he still gets people today to go around telling others about it. He sets up churches, communities where people can come and hear about it, and receive it and believe it.
But here is where the bit I talked about earlier comes in, the bit about not just trying to do the thing, but it coming out of our relationship with Jesus. In one sense we can go around ‘trying’ to love people. Doing the things, and expressing the fact that we are doing to make them feel loved. But often that doesn’t really get to the heart of it. It doesn’t fix the desire. It doesn’t fix the attitude behind the doing.
And this is where focussing on our relationship with Christ comes into it. The more we dwell on, mediate on, or even just receive Christ’s love, the more love that we will have to give to others. The more we receive God’s love, feel God’s love the more we will want to, desire to share that love with others. When the Scriptures talk about the spirit swelling up to be rivers of flowing water, I believe it is about flowing the fruit of the Spirit out of us, and includes the desire, the attitude to really love those around us.
What about Joy? How do we see Joy? When do we experience Joy? I suspect that Joy comes from receiving something good. Yesterday a friend of mine learnt that he could get two tickets for the up coming U2 concert through his friend. He had joy. He received something good, he received something he was looking for. The Tigers had great joy at winning the grand final. They received a ring; they received a date with destiny and a piece of history.
As many of you know Leni’s sister got engaged. There was Joy at the engagement party, they was joy at the announcement of the engagement. It meant that two people had received the knowledge that they had found the one they wanted to marry. The other week my sister-in-law had a baby girl. When Leni and I went down to the hospital to see little Gwen Leni made the comment that you can tell all the new fathers, she said they had this stupid look on their faces. What they had was great joy, so great that they don’t really know how to express it. They had received something very precious, a new life, but they had also received a new role in life, a father, and they had received a new member of the family.
Likewise the source of our joy is about receiving something new. It is about receiving a pardon from our sins. It is about receiving a new relationship, a new position, a new family. When we start to follow Jesus, we have a new relationship with Jesus, with God, a new position as part of God’s family and that will never be taken away.
It is this that under grids our joy as followers of Jesus. It isn’t that difficult situations are absent from our lives. It isn’t that painful situations are absent from our lives. But it is that we have received pardon from our sins, we have an assured access to God – always, and for ever more, and despite the pain, the frustrations, the hurts of this world and life, we can have Joy from the good that we have received from God.
Finally for today we have peace. Often people talk about peace as an absence of conflict and maybe that is right. But I wonder, doesn’t it take two parties to fight? Does it take two parties to take away peace? Can one person have peace even where there isn’t an absence of conflict?
Sure we have peace with God. At Christmas I gave the Tigers’ players a Christmas card and discussed the phrase ‘peace on earth’. How, for me, the phrase is about our peace with God, not an absence of war. But I wonder if our peace is not something more fundamental than that.
Think about Jesus on the cross? Was he at peace with those around him? Was he at peace with those who tortured him? In one sense, they weren’t at peace with him, but I suspect that the story is written for us in such a way as to show that Jesus had peace with those around him, even those who were spitting, and hitting, and crucifying him. He responded, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’.
Likewise with Steven, when he was being stoned. He is a picture of peace isn’t he? He kneels and prays and sees the heavens open. He sees Jesus. He is a picture of peace even though he is being stoned, even though those around him don’t have peace towards him.
Where does such peace come from? Again I suspect that it comes from the peace in our relationship with God. We have been forgiven. We do have peace with God. We can come to him always, whatever we are struggling with, wherever we are in life, he will accept us, and when we can accept that, and many of us struggle to accept that, then we can have peace with ourselves. We don’t need to beat ourselves up about past mistakes, past sins, past errors, past hurts. We can have security in ourselves, that we are OK, because God is OK with us. We have nothing to fear. We can be at peace in our own being. And when we have peace within ourselves then we can have peace with those around us.
We as a community want to become the spiritual heart of Crows Nest. It won’t happen overnight. It won’t happen just because of our location. It will happen if we are showing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Who doesn’t want to hang out with a group of people who have love for each other, who are filled with Joy who have peace in themselves and in their relationships with each other?
It won’t happen by us trying to create these things in our lives, as if it were some law we needed to fulfil. But it will happen by us hanging out with Jesus, drawing from Christ, dwelling on Christ and allow his spirit to produce its fruit in our lives.
