Read Galatians 5:22-26
So what does a Christian have to do? Obey the law? Get circumcised? Worship on the Sabbath? Participate in the feasts established by the Lord?
When we think freedom in Christ, what do we think? Are we free to do somethings and not others? Is everything permissible for us? Paul said yes, but it’s not all profitable. Not everything that we are free to do produces good fruit.
First century believers—mostly those who had come from a pagan background—wondered how much of this Jewish culture would they have to adopt now that they professed Jesus as Lord. They wondered how much of the Hebrew religion they would have to abide in to be real Christians.
Paul’s messages were clear. It’s all about Christ. He is the beginning of your salvation. He is the completion of your salvation. He is the sine qua non of your salvation. Without Jesus, you have nothing.
But that did not mean that Jewish Christians did not pressure new believers to continue old ways. For the Hebrew believer, that’s one thing. It’s your history and culture and very much who you are.
For the believer who came out of the Gentile world, those things seemed imposed upon someone who professed Jesus as Lord.
Rules and practices and events seemed to overshadow the greatest gift in all of history. Jesus had made humankind right with God. Receive the gift and pass from death to life.
But what about the rules and the thou shalt nots?
While the law was a gift from God and given for the people’s own good, it was nothing compared to the glory of Christ. Our suffering is nothing compared to the glory we will know with Christ in all eternity. Our wrestling with our human nature as we navigate a world in which we will have trouble is nothing compared to what is in store for us.
Eye has not seen and ear has not heard what the Lord God has in store for us. It is all about Christ.
But what about the rules?
Paul told the Galatians, I’m not answering this question by playing by the world’s rules. Here are some things that there are no rules against. Here are things where rules don’t matter. Live this way—by God’s Spirit—and this is what will come of it:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
We have talked about peace for a few weeks now, but we need to understand that peace keeps good company. Peace is a natural companion of joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Peace is one of the natural products of our life when we live by the Spirit and not in the flesh. But peace is not the only fruit. How about joy? Do we not desire joy in our lives as we follow Christ?
We will have trouble in the world, but the trouble of the world is not the end of the story. Jesus has overcome the world and we should live with joy in our hearts.
God loves us so much that he alone took away our sin, so we could spend eternity with him. That should be cause enough for joy.
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart but it’s not staying there. It’s coming out all over me because God’s Spirit lives in me and I’m not holding his Spirit back anymore.
Peace also keeps company with patience. Many of us have found that we really need peace while learning patience because our human nature is fighting hard against this whole concept of patience. Our culture says that we want it and want it now and we don’t care what it is. It might be offensive to God and man, but we want it and we want it now.
When we live by the Spirit, our covetous nature gives way to patience. God has so much in store for me—an eternal inheritance—I don’t have to have everything right now and I surely don’t need the ungodly things of this world.
We will lose this battle when we live solely in the flesh. Our carnal mind says, I can handle everything. Jesus said the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Perhaps we see this most clearly in the area of patience. Patience and peace make excellent companions.
The next running buddy of peace is kindness. I think that we get that. The world has enough trouble and hate and discord that we don’t need to add to that. In our dealings with people, we should be kind.
That does not mean that we water down the truth. We speak truthfully and with the utmost integrity and we do it kindly. We practice kindness at every opportunity because that’s who we are. That is God’s Spirit flowing out of us.
There are Christians in this world who don’t get this. They think that we should be on the warpath proclaiming God’s wrath. We can speak truth and good news without withholding our kindness.
And then we come to goodness. People should taste the goodness of the Lord when they encounter us. We are the salt of the earth. Our saltiness should reveal God’s goodness. How can we do that?
The fruit of having God’s Spirit running the show in our lives is that his goodness cannot be contained. It will come out and people will taste and know that the Lord is good.
Goodness is a good companion to peace.
Then we come to faithfulness. That’s a horse of a different color. That’s a mountain that’s too high to climb. God is always faithful but people strikeout more than they get on base. Hey! It’s World Series time so one baseball analogy is surely mandatory.
We may think that we are faithful in many things but that’s because we seldom examine ourselves deeply. We should only be a friend of God but too often we are a friend of the world. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
We cannot win this battle, but God’s Spirit can. Being faithful to God and each other in the many things that we do with our lives, requires us to be faithful in one thing first. We must surrender to the Spirit that lives within us and let the Spirit keep us faithful.
We must acknowledge that the Spirit that lives within us is the Spirit of the sovereign Lord. He reigns not only from heaven but within us. He reigns. God is always faithful.
We are faithful to acknowledge that and abide by the Spirit who lives within this holy temple that is a fleshly frame but governed by the Spirit of God. Then we enjoy faithfulness.
Then peace and faithfulness walk hand-in-hand in our lives.
But what about gentleness? Does living by the Spirit mean that I am a doormat. I know that I promised some car wreck analogies, but those will come later. You get another Marine Corps example here.
As a commanding officer, sometimes I help disciplinary hearings for my Marines. I didn’t like to. That’s why you have noncommission officers—sergeants, first sergeants, sergeants major. They all get a chance to get a wayward Marine back on track.
Occasionally, I would have a Marine brought before me for what is called nonjudicial punishment, knowing that I would not impose punishment on him. He just needed an extra nudge to get back on track. Just for the record, I can give a good chewing out. I can peel the paint off of the walls. I even turned a black Marine white once. That’s probably a politically incorrect way to phrase it these days but it happens to be the truth.
I didn’t take his money or his rank, but he just about passed out from my admonishment. He turned pale and collapsed to his knees. That sort of upset me because I was just getting warmed up.
What’s that got to do with gentleness? Maybe Tom doesn’t understand the concept of gentleness.
Or maybe he does. There were times, when the only just thing to do was take a stripe. In the Marine Corps rank did not come easily. Reducing a Marine in rank was a big thing. Taking his money for a week or two or even a month had an impact as well, but not like taking that stripe away.
So when I did this, I did it gently. The punishment itself was painful enough. My words were gentle. My voice was not raised. I tried to leave the Marine with hope that one day he might earn that rank again and if he learned from his mistakes, might go on to greater things.
My words and attitude were gentle. The Marine had enough trouble in the world at that moment. Raising my voice would be mute compared to taking the stripe.
We can say “no” and do it gently. We can speak the truth with gentleness. We don’t need to carry signs and yell at people telling them they are sinners or that they have a one-way ticket to hell. We will speak the truth that all will stand before God and give an account, but we don’t need to be crude or angry or harsh. The truth and the Spirit of God will do the heavy lifting.
We will be gentle if the Spirit of God lives within us. Here’s the thing. The Spirit of God does live within us and the fruit of gentleness is part of our character as a new creation. Gentleness is part of living in the Spirit and makes a great companion to peace.
And then we come to self-control. If I had self-control, then I wouldn’t need so much help from the Sprit! Shouldn’t this be an oxymoron? In Christ I am free to live, but I must exercise self-control! What?
Is it freedom or self-control?
What we often don’t understand is that living in the freedom of Christ with the Spirit at the helm is probably the only time where we could have self-control. When we no longer wrestle with the flesh, self-control is our natural countenance.
Why? It’s the new self that governs, that does no harm, that regards others more highly than we think of ourselves.
The Law of Moses, rules, decrees, directives and the like work from the outside-in. The Spirit works from the inside out, if we surrender to God’s Spirit.
Do you want a litmus test for whether the Spirit or the flesh governs in this area of self-control? Drive in traffic—heavy traffic. I’m talking Dallas, Houston, or Atlanta traffic. Do you wave with your whole hand or just selected fingers?
How’s your vocabulary? Do your external circumstances govern your internal bearings? If the Spirit governs, you don’t have to communicate that you don’t like the way some of these yahoos drive.
I’ve been there. Some guy passes me at 90 then swoops in and matches my speed two feet in front of my bumper. I don’t signal him digitally, but I think if he thinks two feet is ok, then let’s try one foot. That was when I had my truck and it had 10 years’ worth of dings. Now that we have a new car, I’m sure I’ll be more receptive to the leading of the Spirit and exercise better self-control.
We have to surrender to the Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Peace and self-control go together naturally in this born-again person we have become.
Peace keeps good company: patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Some have noted that I left one out. Love is listed first among the fruit we have discussed. We spent over half a year on love. Love is at the center of everything.
Because punctuation wasn’t really a thing when the Bible was written, scholars have speculated that today, there might be a colon after love. That means that we would read Paul’s words as:
The fruit of the Spirit is Love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are manifestations of love.
Knowing what we know about love, I think that’s a viable interpretation. But love is also its own fruit that keeps company with the others.
There is a thinking tool called RAD. It stands for Recognize, Analyze, and Divide. You recognize things you already know, analyze them, then divide them into logical categories. It’s a good tool but sometimes it’s also counterproductive.
While we talked about each of these qualities and attributes of the Spirit separately, they are surely fruit. They all go together. They are natural companions of each other.
What’s not natural is the flesh and the Spirit. The desires of each are in opposition, but we know to please God, we must let his Sprit rule in us. We must produce the fruit that he desires.
We have examined peace for several weeks, but we need to understand that the peace that comes from God keeps good company.
The covenant of peace that we live within also bears love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Against these things there is no law or rule or system to suppress them. They are our new nature. They are the fruit that we produce because God’s Spirit not only lives within us but governs as the sovereign Lord intends.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As a born again believer, a new creation, a follower of Jesus, we are to produce this sort of fruit.
My prayer is that we have a bumper crop this year.
Amen.
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