I've been thinking about something for a while, trying to internalize it and integrate it into the rhythm of my life. Its about change, transformation, and growth.
Let me try to explain.
The fruit of the Spirit is
love
joy
peace
patience
kindness
goodness
faithfulness
gentleness
self-control.
What a great list of "fruit" to grow in our lives, right?
Who doesn't want to feel love?
Who doesn't want to experience joy?
Who doesn't want to have peace in their life?
Who doesn't want to learn to be more patient?
Who doesn't want to be kind and to give kindness?
Who doesn't want goodness in their soul?
Who doesn't want to be a faithful friend, or have faithful friends?
Who doesn't want to experience gentleness?
Who doesn't want to learn self-control of their emotions and responses and reactions?
As the author of Galatians, Paul, writes "against such things there is no law".
Now, take note, as Paul writes about the fruit of the spirit, he writes as if the fruit were a singular thing.
It's not
"fruits of the Spirit",
its
"fruit of the Spirit".
Singular.
I think Paul is trying to communicate that the life that God wants to grow within us, by the Holy Spirit, is an integrated life. By that I mean, a life not lacking in any of the attributes of this wonderful fruit the Spirit wants to grow in us.
We don't get to say "I want joy, but patience is hard, and so is kindness, so I'll just take the joy, thank you very much".
Joy comes with peace and love.
Love develops kindness and goodness.
Goodness leads to patience and faithfulness.
Faithfulness develops self-control and peace.
Gentleness and kindness grow out of love and goodness.
You see?
The Fruit is not a series of individual fruits that we have to grow separately.
The Fruit of the Spirit is not a fruit salad.
We don't have grapes and oranges and apples and berries and bananas and peaches and apricots and plums all mixed together in a spiritual bowl. If that was the case, I'm pretty sure we'd pick out the ones we like, and leave the ones we don't.
What we have is a wonderful, delicious, fragrant, beautiful fruit that the Spirit wants to produce in our lives.
Its a Fruit that takes time to ripen, but as it grows, the flavors join and meld and become not separate notes of various different fruits, but its own unique, flavorful, delicious and healthy fruit, incorporating all the notes of flavors in the Spirit, that benefits everyone who tastes it. A fruit unique to every tree, but grown by the Spirit to be the best fruit the tree can produce.
The analogy Paul uses stems directly from Jesus' observation that you can tell a tree by its fruit.
Jesus taught, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
An unhealthy tree simply won't grow good fruit.
A healthy tree will always grow good fruit.
So, to go back to what I've been thinking about, how do we become healthy trees in God's Kingdom.
If we want to grow in the Spirit and begin bearing the good fruit that Paul describes, we have to develop rhythms and practices that water and feed the tree from which the fruit grows.
See, we are all bearing fruit, of one kind or another.
That's important to understand.
In everything we do, every choice we make, every breath we take (thank you, Sting), we are bearing some sort of fruit on our tree of life that other people can see and taste.
Good fruit or bad, we are all fruit bearing trees.
God made us to bear fruit.
Every farmer plants trees in the hope that they will bear good fruit.
God is no different.
We don't get to pick and choose which or what kind of fruit we produce. We produce exactly the kind of fruit that the health and make-up of our tree has grown to produce.
So, if we want the good fruit, we need to attend to the tree itself, too.
If I'm a tree that produces anger and dissention, but I want to be a tree that grows love and peace and kindness, then not only should I desire those good fruit, but the desire for good fruit needs to lead us to examine the tree growth and find ways to help our tree grow healthier.
And this is where change, transformation, and growth come into the discussion.
One of my very favorite bible verses is Romans 12:2,
"Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect."
"changing the way you think......"
Isn't that exactly what Jesus was doing while teaching is disciples, his apprentices, for three years? Teaching them to change they way they think about.... well..... everything?
I mean, Jesus confronted the behaviors and customs of this world every day with his disciples.
In Luke 9:51-56, James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village that didn't welcome Jesus or his group. They were probably thinking of Elijah calling down fire from heaven upon the altar of the priests of Baal, who then had the priests all rounded up and killed in righteous fury (see 1 Kings 18 for the story).
Jesus rebuked James on John. Violence and anger in response to offense is the way they'd been taught, Jesus might of said, but it's not the way of Jesus.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught over and over.....
"you've heard it said..... but I say....."
He challenged his listeners and followers to think differently about life and love and faith and relationships and forgiveness. He challenged them to rethink everything they'd been taught by the world, to instead "seek first the kingdom of God and His (type) of righteousness ", because that's the important thing that leads to a full and abundant life.
A life in the mold of Jesus, seeking first his Father's kingdom.
And here's and example of the crux of what I'm pondering:
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his listeners, specifically, to "love your enemies".
More fully, Jesus says,
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
And this is a conundrum for me.
Go back to growing a healthy tree analogy for a moment.
If I'm a fruit bearing tree, don't get to pick which fruit I grow. I grow what I grow because that's what my tree grows.
Jesus understands that, and he begins to help us to grow a more healthy tree by giving us some fertilizer, if you will.
Love your enemies.
First thought for most folks after hearing that was probably, uh, nope. That's not how the world works.
And they'd be right. The world doesn't work that way.
"Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think...."
You see, its not a new thought for me but it's becoming front of mind for me.
I think the rabbit hole of following Jesus is way deeper than I ever thought.
I think it goes on and on and on, but Jesus seems to promise that if I keep going down the hole, it'll be worth it.
Jesus wants us to "take the red pill", and don't look back, like in the movie "The Matrix".
In the movie, Neo, along with all of humanity, is trapped in a virtual-reality prison designed to enslave humanity in order to use their bodies to provide power for an AI industrial complex. Neo, trapped in this virtual world that looks and feels real but isn't, senses there is something wrong with the VR world he's imprisoned in, and is confronted by a mysterious man who offers him a way to see the real world. Neo is offered a red pill, which if he takes it will lead down a rabbit hole where Neo will find the real world. Neo is given no promises, only that the life will be real. He is also offered a blue pill which, if taken, will return Neo to his blissful VR life with no memories of this inflection point. He can live his life enslaved in ignorant bliss, never experiencing the real life humanity was meant for.
Jesus wants to free us from the illusion we're trapped in. Free us from the lie that the way of the world is not only the best way, but it's the only way there is.
Jesus wants us to find the Jesus Way.
Jesus wants to transform us into His likeness. Like, literally.
Not a little bit of imitation.
Not a little bit of incorporating Jesus teachings into our lives.
Jesus wants to change us. To enliven us. To wake us up to real life in the real world .
Commands like love your enemies, turn the other cheek, don't judge lest you be judged by the same measure, be merciful and just are just the beginning of seeing into the real world, seeing what that real world is like. It's a world that Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.
For me, it's like this: love your enemies is fertilizer.
When Jesus says love your enemies, he is confronting a foundational truth humans have been discipled and taught to follow by virtue of simply being raised in our society. He's highlighting how society has told us the lie that some people are our enemies.
But Jesus is telling us to think differently about who we would consider an enemy.
I can choose not to have enemies, to look at anyone else with enmity.
I can't control what others feel toward me, but I chose how I feel toward others.
What makes someone an enemy I am commanded to love?
Consider this: in commanding his followers to love their enemies, Jesus is pretty much precluding that we consider anyone an enemy.
You simply cannot love that which you hate.
If you hate your enemy, it is not possible to love them.
Love and hate are exclusionary to one another.
They cannot exist in the same space.
We may think they can, but they can't.
So, when Jesus commands us to love your enemies, I think of it as spreading fertilizer to help our tree begin to get healthy. He's giving us nutrients to take in, things to try, experiences to process, so that we can begin to incorporate the fertilizer, the teaching, into our very being. Eventually it becomes a part of the tree trunk, the wood and the bark, feeding the leaves and the fruit as it grows stronger and healthier.
You see, I think Jesus is nudging us toward a life where the Spirit is fully incorporated into our lives in such a way that we not only consider loving our enemies (someone we hate), but to a point that we love so freely that we consider no one to be an enemy.
By which I mean, Jesus is guiding us to an abundant life, indeed a life with the life of Christ within us, empowered by the Spirit of God, where we love our neighbor as ourselves so well that we enmity toward no one.
He's guiding us to a life where we have love toward all, because that's what love does, loving just as the God the Father does when He lavishes his sunshine and rain on the righteous and unrighteous, the good and the bad, our friends and our enemies alike.
Jesus tells us "be perfect therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect".
I use this analogy.
When trying to lose weight, eating carrots and celery is a good way to curtail caloric content while taking in fiber and filler. They are healthy foods.
So, in a sense, my dietician may tell me to "love your carrots and celery" and eat them because they're good for you.
So, even though I don't like them, I'll eat them. I'll try to learn to love them because my dietician says its a good thing to do.
But I don't want to live a life eating food that I don't like, even if it's good for me.
I don't want to go through life eating food that I hate, just because I was told it was good for me.
What I want is to become a guy who enjoys and likes eating carrots and celery.
I want to be transformed from a person following a rule, to a person in whom the rule is fully incorporated as a part of my being.
At that point its not a rule for me. It's just me being me.
I don't just want to think about loving carrots and celery in order to eat them, I want become someone that likes carrots and celery and enjoys eating them.
I don't to think about loving my enemies just because its a command of Jesus (even if its for my good and the good of others).
I want to love others in my heart in a way that I don't consider anyone an enemy to love.
I simply want to love.
Everyone.
Because its become a natural part of my existence.
I think that's what Jesus means when he says be perfect like our Heavenly Father. God in his nature loves. That's the essence of the being of God.
God never looks at someone as an enemy and makes a choice to love them.
You may have been told that in order to love or forgive you, God looks at you through Jesus colored glasses.
Or maybe you've heard God looks upon Jesus on the cross in order to love and forgive you.
Maybe you've heard that God turns his back on you when you sin or do something you think God doesn't like.
Those are lies. Every one of them.
God loves because that's who God is. God simply loves.
He's can't "not love" anyone or anything, because that that's not God's nature.
It's not a choice for God to love or not. God simply loves.
You've may have heard it said that mankind is an enemy to God.
I say to you, God has no enemies, because He loves us all.
Anyone God loves is not God's enemy. God loves the world, so no one in the world is outside of God's love. No one is God's enemy.
We may have thought we were God's enemies, or even that God was our enemy, but that was just from our perspective, from what we thought in our minds.
Colossians 1:21 states "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior."
This is how God loves, and what I think Jesus is trying to fertilize in us.
Romans 5:8-11 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."
God has no enemies. He has only love.
Jesus had no enemies. Even those that persecuted him and nailed him to the cross, were not his enemies.
"Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing."
What Jesus and the Holy Spirit are spurring in us not a life that follows rules as a way to follow Jesus, although learning the ways of Jesus and his commands is a good start.
The commands are fertilizer for the soil in which we grow.
Jesus and the Spirit are spurring a life surrendered to the Spirit, so that we are freed to simply be people that love the way God loves, and the way Jesus loves.
We are being freed to be fully human, the way God made us, to be people of love.
Of course, its a journey, and the Apostle Paul gives us all sorts of insight that tells us this life of becoming like Jesus is a long slog. Paul says he beats his body into submission. He trains like an athlete. He runs the long race.
But Paul also says its worth it.
So does Jesus.
"Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
"Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.
"My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life".
God has told me (seriously, I heard these words in my head just New Years Eve this year), "This is your journey, Mike, not anyone else's. Don't make any judgements on how anyone else follows me. You follow me."
So, I write this not to tell anyone else what to think, but to tell the world what I'm thinking.
If you find it helpful, then praise the Lord.
If you find something to think about, then I thank God.
If you read all the way to this point, I am fully astonished and amazed.
Thank you.