The Fruit of the Spirit - Christlikeness

I’ve been thinking about the two lists in Galatians 5 this week and how they should be lived out in the Believer’s life. The sins listed in verses 19-21 are clearly contrary to the character of God, while the fruits of the Spirit in verses 22-23 fit perfectly with His character. I find it interesting that whenever we are commanded to do something it always fits with Christ’s character. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, Christians are supposed to look like Christ! Anyway, I’d like to spend some time today looking at a few of the fruits listed in this passage.

Love — John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Christ died for his enemies! Wow, that is just mind-boggling! If Christ died for His enemies, than surely it’s not too much to ask that we treat those who are unkind to us with love and kindness.

Joy — In order to have joy we must have the right perspective - God’s perspective. We are commanded to count it joy to when we experience trials (James 1:2), and we can do this when we have the perspective that glorifying God is the most important thing because we know that trials make us more like Christ. It doesn’t matter what’s happening to us, we are not important; God and others are. When we are focused on God’s glory and others best good, as Jesus was, we can have joy, just as He did.

Peace — Vine’s defines this use of the word “peace” as “The harmonized relationship between God and man, accomplished through the gospel.” This peace is only found when we are living to glorify God and in obedience to His will. We must have the attitude of Christ, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” When we are willing to do whatever it take to glorify God, repenting and forsaking sin whenever God brings it to our attention, putting off whatever would prevent us from having fellowship with God, and putting on it’s righteous opposite, then God is glorified and we can have peace with God.

Longsuffering — My pastor likes to tell us that longsuffering comes from a big Greek word that means to suffer long. This one is really quite simple to understand, but it’s a hard one to actually practice. We don’t like suffering, it is not enjoyable, and we would rather have it end as soon as possible. But that is not the way God acts. He is very patient and longsuffering with us. Exodus 34:6 is just one of many passages that tells us about God’s longsuffering nature. He put up with us for a long time, waiting for us to come to repentance, and now He commands us to be like Him and put up with others. We need to remember that no one is perfect and we shouldn’t treat others unkindly when they do something that is sinful. By all means go to them and plead with them to repent. But we must remember to bear with one another in love, just as God lovingly put up with us.

Kindness — As I arrived at kindness I realized that I didn’t really have a good definition of kindness, so I began to look through various dictionaries, but I haven’t had much success. As Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary puts it. “The main problem in understanding kindness is the fact that it is one of a series of terms that are overlapping and not clearly or consistently distinguishable in meaning.” So I am going to move on and come back to this one next time.

Goodness — “Moral and spiritual excellence.”1 We are commanded to be like Christ, and He is the standard of morality. He defines what is good. Mark 10 tells us that only God is good. But we are still commanded to be like Him as much as possible. And we know that He will help us, because whenever he commands us to do something he also enables us to do it.

I think I will stop here for now and when I come back we’ll look at kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, a few more ways we can reflect the character of God and glorify Him more—that’s what we’re here for!

---

1 MacArthur Study Bible notes on Galatians 5

A Christlike Attitude

Something has been bothering me for a couple of weeks. I’ve been thinking about it and I believe the root problem is attitude. Last month a small group of teens went out to a town about an hour away for a teen night at another Baptist church. Two unsaved teens came out with us and I was very disappointed as I watched how my friends were treated. When we arrived we were greeted by the pastor, youth pastor and a few adult helpers, but I did not see one teen greet these two or do anything to make them feel welcome the whole evening. I’ve been thinking about that, and I think the problem is an attitude problem. We’ve been taught to be “good Christian teens” and stay away from those who aren’t. While it is important to be careful who we hang out with and who we allow to influence us, we still need to remember what Paul said in II Corinthians 5:19. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation. We cannot show the love of God to others or tell them of their need for a savior if we don’t actually spend time with them. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners and He is our example. When we treat unbelievers as if they aren’t there, we do a great disservice to the cause of Christ. We give Christianity a bad reputation, which then reflects on the reputation of Christ. We don’t want to do that, so we must be careful in our attitude towards unbelievers and our treatment of them. We need to remember that we are all sinners; the only difference between them and us is that we are forgiven and we have God’s help to live in a God-glorifying way. Don’t look down on them for their sin, or get the “I would never do that!” attitude, it is only because of the grace of God that we don’t do the same things that they do. Reach out to them in love, pleading with them to repent and turn to Christ, but don’t look down on them.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” Put on the mind of Christ, and be loving and humble, be obedient to God and continue this ministry of reconciliation. In this way we can reflect His character and bring Him more glory—That’s what we’re here for!

Truth and Love

I was reading Ephesians 4 this week, focusing especially on verses 14 and 15. “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ” Over the last couple days I’ve been thinking about that phrase “speaking the truth in love”. So often we go to one extreme or the other. Either we speak the truth without love, or in an attempt to be loving, we ignore the truth. But God desires us to be both loving and truthful. That can be very hard to do, but it is necessary. When we speak what we consider to be truth without love, we hurt many people, and when we try to be loving by ignoring the truth, we are really doing people more harm than good. I’m not suggesting we all go out and say everything that pops into our head, but there are times when it really is most loving to share the truth (in a loving manner), no matter how much it hurts. For example, if an unsaved friend comes to me and asks how to be saved, it is necessary for me to help her understand that she is a sinner! If I conceal from her the fact that she is a sinner because I don’t want to hurt her, I haven’t been truly loving to her. If she doesn’t realize her need for a savior, she will not turn to the Savior. God commands us to be loving and truthful, both at the same time. And whenever He tells us to do something, he always enables us to do it.

But it seems that so many people, especially those of us in the Fundamentalist circles are so zealous for the truth that we just say what we believe and don’t care who we hurt in the process. This doesn’t sound like it glorifies God! In 2 Timothy 2:22 Paul says to pursue love! And if we look down to Verse 25 we see that the servant of the Lord must correct those in opposition with Humility. In Galatians 5:22-23 we are told that love, kindness and gentleness are fruits of the spirit. 1 John 4 talks all about love, John goes so far as to say that if we don’t love, we don’t know God (.8), and in verse 20 he says if we say we love God, but don’t love one another, we are liars. In 1 Timothy 4:12 Paul tells Timothy to be an example of love and in the very next verse he tells him to give attention to doctrine. Truth and love fit together perfectly! We don’t have to choose one and ignore the other. God desires us to have truth and love. Why? I believe it is because of who He is. As we just saw in 1 John 4:8, God is love, and John 14 tells us that God is the truth, Exodus 34 tells us that He is longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth! If He is love and the truth, we should also seek to be loving and truthful, as He has commanded us! So let’s be careful to speak the truth with love, so that we will glorify God in everything we say. After all, that’s what we’re here for.