Any Fruit Today?

The other day as I was sorting through some old boxes, I ran into a book I have had since college days. The book is about fruit . . . the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that is. There are nine of them.

So, I began reading, and a few pages in the Lord said to me, “You need to work on these.”

News flash! My sanctification has not yet been completed.

“You haven’t yet arrived, George,” I said to myself. “You need to work on the fruit of the Spirit in your life.”

Well, working on the fruit of the Spirit in one’s life is not that exciting. It is hard work. You may remember the story of the man who prayed for patience. “Lord, give me more patience,” he prayed. And the Lord sent trouble into his life to give him more patience.

Be careful how you pray!

1 Corinthians 5:17 says,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (NKJV).

What are the things that have become new? Well, if one has been truly born again, his character is going to change. He is going to begin to exude the fruit of the Spirit in his behavior.

“So, what are the fruit of the Spirit?” You might ask.

They are listed in Galatians 5:22,23:

love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness,

goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Ah, wouldn’t it be grand to show a healthy dose of all nine fruit in our character? But that’s usually not the case. Most people, no matter how advanced they are in Christian character, will struggle with at least one or two of them.

An FYI here is that the practice and development of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is what the Bible calls sanctification, which we won’t go into now. That would be a whole other article.

So, the description of someone who is “In Christ” says that old things have passed away and that all things have become new. The new things are the fruit of the Spirit and things associated with the new behavior. The old things are the things we leave behind as a Christian, or at least we purpose to leave them behind. The old nature does not just disappear. The apostle Paul says we are to crucify or put to death the old nature. It must be something we intentionally choose to do and practice in our daily lives.

The things that we leave behind are listed in the paragraph right before the listing of the fruit of the Spirit.

They are the acts of the sinful nature: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like

(Galatians 5:19-21 NKJV).

These are the old things that have passed away, for the Christian. The things that have become new are the fruit of the Spirit, changed character. These are the foundation in a Christian’s life that enable him to do the good works that God has prepared for him to do (Ephesians 2:10).

If there is no change in a person’s life after he has accepted Jesus, there is something wrong. When I gave my life to Jesus as a senior in high school, there was an immediate change. I had been in a rock group and one of the other guys in the group asked me what had happened. When I told him I was changed and would enjoy other things now, his response was, “Well, I hope you’ll still go out and raise hell with us, because if you don’t, it just wouldn’t be the same.”

Well, I had no interest in that anymore and he didn’t understand that, nor did he have any interest at all in having what I had, a relationship with Jesus. In later years, I am so happy to report, he also gave his life to Christ.

If we are truly a Christian we are a new creation; old things have passed away and all things have become new. We will now have new desires. We will desire to be conformed into the image of Christ. The evidence of that is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These will appear in our lives because as a new creation, the living Christ now dwells within us. Our job then, is to actively nurture them, to feed our inner man on the good things proclaimed in the Word of God, to spend time in prayer, and to intentionally choose a lifestyle that will bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

If we do this, we will be one step ahead in our Christian walk.

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine