Fruit of the Spirit: Love

Galatians 5:22-26
Rev. Terry Minchow-Proffitt

Throughout the Season of Pentecost, we’ve been looking at different ways that God’s Spirit enables us to live a deeper and more free life. Jesus’ beatitudes, I trust, gave us a renewed sense of the kind of life Christ makes available to us. They stretch us. They’re a reach. But they also reveal to us how much deeper and farther our lives can grow in Christ.

This morning, we begin a new series of sermons that explore what the apostle Paul calls “The Fruit of the Spirit.” By fruit, Paul’s not referring to apples and oranges. He’s not setting up a roadside stand of the Spirit. If he were, then strawberries would surely be at the top of the list! Instead, Paul’s listing for us nine different character qualities of the Christian life. Let’s see, what are they? Love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Over time, with discipline, our lives can be marked by these traits as we root ourselves in and trust Christ’s Spirit. Just as importantly, our church can become a community known by such gracious qualities.

Paul may not be talking about apples, oranges, or strawberries, still I love that he refers to these as the “fruit” of the Spirit. The fruit of a well-lived life comes from the root of God’s Spirit. Too often, when it comes to personal growth, or even church growth, our attention falls on the fruit rather than the root that produces the fruit. For Paul the Spirit of God is the tap root. In fact, some would say that the Spirit is the defining mark of the Christian. That’s because the Spirit is the life of God that dwells in each of us. Paul says in Romans 8:9 that we “are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, assuming that the Spirit of God does indeed dwell in us.” Let’s paraphrase Paul: The more deeply rooted we are in the Spirit, the more apt we are to live a fruitfully gracious life. It’s beautiful how he refers to these nine different fruits in the singular: “fruit.” They are in a real sense, one. One in their unifying purpose. One in their life-giving power. And one in their source: they are all rooted in the one Spirit.

Being a Christian, then, is to be utterly beholden to God’s Spirit. And this means that we must each wrestle with the habits, attitudes, and temptations that get in the way of bearing the Fruit of the Spirit. Paul’s way of describing this internal struggle is helpful. He speaks of the battle in us between the flesh and the Spirit. We are constantly being forced to choose between “living according to the flesh” and “living according to the Spirit.” Now, be careful. When Paul says “flesh” he’s not referring to the human body. Our bodily desires are not evil to God. Spirit and flesh can affect the body and the soul equally. Paul means here by flesh an attitude of living as if God does not exist, a life where we ourselves are the center of the universe. When he refers to Spirit, he’s talking about a life centered in God, a life that lives at the mercy of the Spirit. So, we have two ways we can live: centered in ourselves or centered in God’s Spirit. If we live in self-centered ways, we’ll produce “works of the flesh,” stuff like fornication, idolatry, strife, quarrels, anger, enmity. If we act in Spirit-centered ways, then we’ll bear gracious fruit like joy, love, gentleness. The fruit stems from the root. Basically, we become more like Jesus.

What was that Yogi Berra said? “When you see a fork in the road, take it!” (That’s one of my favorite Yogiism, right up there with “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”) But here we can’t just “take the fork.” We must choose. Then choose again. Each and every day, we must do what we can do to calibrate our living by our life in Christ. We must choose to live our lives “according to the Spirit” if we are to bear the Fruit of the Spirit.

Way back in the Stone Age, I was kicked back in my dorm room as a freshman. I answered a knock at the door to find a high-spirited campus evangelist who wanted to talk to me about my faith. He asked a really simple question: “Do you call yourself a Christian?” I said yes, that I was a baptized Baptist. He was happy to hear this and soon moved on, eager to “witness” to someone who needed “saving.” But his question stayed behind. If I considered myself a Christian, what difference did it make? I decided then that I’d try to be what I professed to be. I say, “I decided.” It was more like I was moved to this. They even had a word for this in my Evangelical heritage: rededication. I rededicated myself to following Jesus during the fall of 1975, forty-five years ago. And the very first spiritual insight I was taught and chewed on like a bone was the difference between living life “according to the flesh” and “according to the Spirit.” I continue to wrestle with this vital antagonism between the two. Paul did too.

Friends, here’s where it all begins, or begins again. We can choose to live “according to the Spirit.” This means to do all we can to be led by God, to be moved by God, to trust God, to allow the Spirit to do all it can through us. Oh, I’m sure there is so much you have done already and will do in the future. You can do quite well all alone. But grace can do more, much more.  Our life is not our own, and we’re not on our own. We are called to live a “with God” life according to the rhythms and radiance of grace.

And that’s what began to happen to me. Grace. I continued to be the same bonehead in so many ways, but God’s Spirit began to grace me, to place joy in my life, and most of all, God began to bring some beautifully fruitful people in my life: patient people, people who could put up with me, forgive me, and encourage me to grow in love. And gradually, one day, I looked out, and on one of my branches, I saw the fruit of Joy where I had been deeply sad. I saw Peace budding where there had been only nail-biting anxiety. And way off, on one of the top limbs, shining like a pear in the sun, I saw Love beginning to form in my competitive and insecure heart.

The other fruit continue to come in slowly over the years, thank God, especially Patience, and Kindness toward enemies, but even that gives me a good chance to work on the fruit of Gentleness. To live a life “according to the Spirit” we must fertilize ourselves with a smidgen of what we hope to bear, and we must pray for God to grace us with more of the same. So be gentle. Gentle with yourself. Gentle with others. Even as you bear the fruit of Honesty.

Know this: we can trust the Spirit. We do not have to grow these fruit by ourselves.  We can’t “make” ourselves more patient or generous. We surrender our way to the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. We surrender our way forward. God provides the growth.  God’s life-giving Spirit gives the energy. We can only live increasingly at the mercy of the Spirit, one surrendered step at a time.

Trust the root to provide the fruit. Trust God for the growth we seek. Gradually, God’s love will become our deepest nourishment. Gradually, we will no longer find ourselves living at the mercy of old habits and attitudes. We will begin to trust freedom. We will be more apt to trust the fullness of God’s Spirit. We will know the blessed life of being fruitful in Christ. Amen.