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I recently stumbled upon a website called SodaHead.com with a subtitle, "Opinions ... everyone has one." I was intrigued enough to browse through some of the topics and found one that caught my eye - "What's the most important thing in life?"
There were about as many answers as there were people asked. Home. Wealth. Health. Success. Family. Beliefs. Country. Happiness. There were even a couple of people who answered with a spiritual or moral response. What are the essentials for your life?
Jesus was asked a similar concept in a slightly different way. "Teacher,what are the most important commandments?" In other words - what are the most important things in being a follower of God? Jesus answered back,"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. The second command is just like it: love your neighbor as yourself."
As we have looked at the things we are supposed to avoid - the list of sins that Paul brought to us in the last lesson - we must also see that Christianity is not so much a system of prohibitions as it is a lifestyle of freedom. Whether we are looking at our own Christian maturity, or whether we are looking at trying to help someone out of the clutches of a sin infested life, we must not only sweep the life clean of sin, we must replace the emptiness with positive characteristics.
How can we do that? In a very practical way, what do we need to do to develop the kind of love that Jesus was describing in our daily lives? Paul sheds some light at the end of the fifth chapter of Galatians. He tells us that we need to develop the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
Understand that we are facing the same problem as with the list of sins - our tendency still is to lump them all together in a generic way that takes away the potency of the specific application. "Be good - yeah, yeah I got that."
So let's take a look at the fruit that Paul describes. There seem to be three observations that we should make at the outset. First, fruit grows. Whatever place you are in your spiritual growth today, be assured that God can grow this fruit to a greater level. Second, fruit grows best when it is tended. Don't expect the fruit to grow without water, care, weeding, and fertilizer. Finally, the nine fruit that Paul describes find an easy division into groups of three. The first group indicates growth toward God(love, joy and peace); the second group demonstrates our growth toward others(patience, kindness and goodness); and the third group speaks to being driven to be like Christ in our character (faithfulness, gentleness and self-control).
Read more.
Tom May
Discipleship Minister at Eastside Christian Church (Jeffersonville, Ind.)
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