Un-boxing the Holy Spirit
(1) FRUITFULNESS
- The Christian life is to be a fruitful life, and that happens through a Spirit-led life
- Fruitfulness means the characteristics of Jesus Christ are being produced in you
- Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control, righteousness, praise, wisdom, converts, confessing Christ
- Gal. 5:22-23; John 15:2,8,16; Php 1:11, 22; Mt 7:16-20; 12:33; Luke 3:8-9; Eph. 5:11; Rom 7:4-5; Col. 1:6, 10; James 3:17; Heb 13:15
- Bear much fruit
- Fruitfulness means you are growing, healthy, productive, useful and identified
- Fruitfulness cannot happen when you try to live by your old nature. The old man, the old self, the man in Adam, is unable to bring forth this fruit
- Instead, by abiding in Christ, keeping in step with the Spirit, and yielding to Him we bear fruit
- Warning: Do not become a self-designated inspector of everyone’s fruit around you. You will be more useful to God, and bearable to others, if you concentrate on your own fruit.
(2) FRUIT of the SPIRIT
- Not 9 fruits, but, one fruit with 9 aspects
- I used to roll my eyes when I read commentators stressing this point. I thought they were being pedantic and nit-picky. But in my own reflections on their point, I have come to see an application here that none of them really ever push through to:
- Focus on living by the Spirit, not on a fruit that you think you might need to grow in.
- All these aspects find their Source in the Spirit. If one is growing they’re all growing.
- If you’re not patient you’re not loving. If you’re not self-controlled your not kind, etc.
- IF the Spirit is “winning” with you He increases all His traits in you
- Motorized Cart Pushers: they enable the employee to move more carts than he could have on his own. It offers a power beyond the employee so he can do something by himself he couldn’t do. The Holy Spirit is our Motorized Cart Pusher. He is the divine power inside us and He enables us to manifest these righteous traits that we could never do alone.
(2.1) LOVE
- Agape: not feelings kind of love, not warm, affectionate sensations
- Active Love, love by choice, the determination to do good to someone IRREGARDLESS of their merit, not factoring in whether they deserve it
- This often requires SACRIFICE – it’s love at a personal cost to you
- This is the Love of God, the kind of love God exercises, growing in you by the Spirit
- Love FOR God
- Love FOR Christians (Foundation of ALL Christian fellowship)
- This love is the “more excellent way” (1 Cor. 13), the “new command” (Jn 13:35), the one DEBT left outstanding (Rom. 13:8)
- This love is the guiding ethic, the defining rule of all Christian living
- It is love born of the WILL and it opens the doors for the feelings of love to go where they never could have gone alone.
(2.2) JOY
- Gal. 5:22; 1 Thess. 1:6; Rom. 14:17
- The word means delight, happiness, gladness, joy
- A Spirit-led, Spirit-filled Christian is a delighted and happy Christian
- We can experience the joy Jesus Himself personally experiences right now in heaven. He transplants that joy to us through His Spirit.
- This joy is independent of and transcendent to our circumstances. It’s not experienced by looking to our circumstances or our situations, but, by looking full on to Christ. He is that deep well of joy that never runs out. In Him we find all our delights:
- “The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own dgood estate, but in a direct view of the glorious things of the Gospel.” – Jonathan Edwards
- It is the “inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Pet. 1:8), the “pure joy” even in trials (James 1:2), the joy from trusting in Christ (Rom. 15:13).
- We as Christ’s own must set ourselves apart from the pagans by showing them this glorious transcendent happiness out of their reach so long as they are without Christ.
(2.3) PEACE
- Means “harmony”, the “absence of strife”, “quietness” between people, no hostility, no Antifa-like riots among believers
- Peace starts in your heart “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Col. 3:15)
- When the Spirit’s peace is growing from you that inner peace causes you to relate peaceably to others, “Live in peace with each other” (1 Thess. 5:13).