The Bible makes it abundantly
clear that salvation is exclusively by grace through faith in Christ and not of
anyone’s works (Eph. 2:6-9, Rom. 3:19-26). Sadly, many people still hold to,
practice and preach a salvation by works deceiving themselves into thinking
they can earn their way to heaven despite the teachings of Scripture that
salvation is in Christ alone (John 14:6).
While salvation is not by works,
biblical salvation certainly produces works. In a sermon Tim Keller says, “We
are not saved by fruit but by faith and not fruitless faith.” In Ephesians 2,
Paul argues that we were all dead in our sins and were therefore unable to
awaken ourselves but thanks be to God who made us alive in Christ Jesus. He
further states that the result of God saving us from our sins (making us alive)
is that we will fulfil the purpose we were created for, namely his workmanship,
created for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in
them.
It then becomes clear that where
salvation has taken place fruit is produced. The farming analogy is quite
replete in the Bible. The righteous are often likened to a tree that bears
fruit while the wicked are the fruitless plant. Salvation brings life, and life
produces fruit that is in keeping with living organisms. That therefore means
that this fruit is real and organic as opposed to fake and mechanical. Fruit in
keeping with salvation is not mere behavioral change or conformity to a system.
This fruit comes about because there has been a radical transformation in a
person’s life. They were once dead, but now they are alive; they were blind,
but now they see.
The Bible speaks of different
kinds of fruit that believers should be producing in their lives. It speaks of
leading others to faith (Rom. 1:13-16), righteous behavior (Phil. 1:11), offering
praise to God (Heb. 13:15), and godly attitudes/graces or the fruit of the
Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). It is the latter of these fruits that I intend to focus
on in the coming weeks. A few notes of introduction will suffice for now.
It is important to notice in
Galatians 5 the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the
Spirit. Work of the flesh carries the idea of strain, toil, draining effort and
being dead. While on the other hand fruit carries the idea of freshness,
beauty, attractiveness and life. Secondly, the fruit of the Spirit is a present
continuous idea, meaning it is ongoing. In other words we should continuously
produce the nine virtues of the fruit of the Spirit. The third point of
introduction is that the fruit of the Spirit is singular, it is the fruit and not fruits. Finally, the nine
virtues must be true of each one of us. We are not meant to pick and choose as
we please. The fruit of the Spirit produces nine virtues not two or three. The nine make one, and therefore these graces
should be true of each one of us as believers.
I will leave you with the
Galatians passage to meditate on.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is
no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires (Gal. 5:22-24)
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