Fruit Inspections Needed

In my October Creekside Connection article, I told the story of helping my oldest son with a leaf project when he was in junior high school.  In that experience, if it wasn't for someone far smarter than me labeling the trees, I would have had a hard time looking through leaf book pictures to find the exact leaves of particular trees. However, if we were determining fruit trees, the task might be simpler since fruit is produced in the fall for most non-tropical fruits.  I could have just looked at the fruit and forgotten all the various leaf structures.  In the physical world if you just wait long enough, a healthy tree will produce a fruit.  This fruit may be in the form of a seed, pod, cone, nut, or fleshy seed carrier like an apple.

In the spiritual world this waiting principle also applies to the evidences of a person's spiritual life.  Paul refers to the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 as something that is evident to those that come in contact with it.  He says the same is true for the "acts of the sinful nature."  They are easily seen in people.  The life that neglects the things of God stands in complete opposition to the life-producing the virtues of God as seen in the fruit of the Spirit.  The end result for our vices is the forfeiture of the kingdom of God.  "Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:21) Yet to those living and expressing the fruit of God's Spirit, there is no law to condemn them.  Who can place a law against divine love expressing itself in the virtues of joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?

Paul reminds us that those who belong to Christ have crucified the vices of the sinful nature and now live by the Spirit of God.  Have you inspected your spiritual fruit lately?  What might others be seeing?  How can we be sure the fruit of the Spirit is showing in our lives?

Come see us Sunday.  We will talk about that.
Pastor White