Free to Bear Fruit

This week we will close out our exploration of the Transformational Good News.  Our new hearts, as new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) are now free to shift focus from not sinning to being obedient and loving. This then takes us another step. We are now free to bear fruit. Our healthy hearts are unencumbered and therefore able to bear good fruit.  Matthew’s gospel states:

“So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” (Matthew 7:17-18 ESV)

If you ever consider becoming a viticulturist you will undoubtedly need to study up on how to produce the best grapes. Exploring this subject, you will learn that obtaining a good harvest takes both care and knowledge.  Some liken it to parenting. The vines require soil rich with the correct ratio of nutrients as well as the right amount of water. Too much water and the plants drown before the fruit is ripe.  Too little means the vines wither leading to small or shriveled grapes. The amount of sun and wind also play significant roles in grape production.  Good, long exposure to the sunlight is ideal, but too much can scorch.  Wind is necessary, but desired in moderation.   The wind keeps the plants and grapes from growing bacteria and molds from too much moisture.  However, heavy winds can rip the fruit from the vines or the vines from their trellises. The balance of these factors is critical.

Can we see the parallels?  Is it any wonder that Jesus likens Himself to the vine and us to branches?

So with our transformed hearts, we have this ability to produce good fruit by living out our new natures through the work of the Holy Spirit. But our natures can need careful tending. That is the job of the Spirit working in us to bear fruit. And that fruit is:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 ESV)

Bill Tell in his book, Lay It All Down (p. 161) suggests that the phrase “against such things there is no law” is referring to the inner qualities that direct our behavior.  These cannot be legislated, unlike our behaviors. As new creations we are free obey, free to love and free to bear fruit in the form of these inner qualities. May we continue to realize all are our transformed hearts have available and be fruitful.

Free to Love

In recent weeks we have been considering the Transformational Good News of the gospel.  With changed hearts we now better grasp obedience and our freedom within that obedience. Now let's explore another facet of this Good News....love and the freedom to love.  We have heard and understand that this love is not just a feeling.  Consider Galatians 5:6. It says,     

 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Gal. 5:6 ESV)

This verse encapsulates the theme of the book of Galatians: we are right with God by faith, not by human rituals or performance—including circumcision, the food laws, and/or moral living... It is Spirit-motivated love (after salvation) that sets the standard of conduct for believers and gives the ability to obey. It is the new covenant, a new heart and new mind (Utley, Study Guide Commentary Series, New Testament, Vol. 7. )

Herein lies the difference between the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission. Jesus stretching out His arms in love on the cross gives us our standard, our marching orders and our freedom. We're not to love others as we love ourselves, we are to love them as Jesus did and continues to do. This is faith in action motivated by the author and demonstrator of love.

“But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. It's a love that operates more like a sign language than being spoken outright.” (Goff, Love Does)

This is freedom...that we look into the Word of God and recognize all He has done to set us free and model our love for others on that standard. Let's be extraordinary in the way we love! Let's make it count!

Loving God deeply

from Spurgeon's sermon, "LOVE'S LOGIC" To feel love to God we must tread along the 'road of faith'. Truly, this is not a hard or perilous way, but one prepared by infinite wisdom. It is a road suitable for sinners, and indeed saints must come that way also. If you would love God, do not look within you to see whether this grace or that be as it ought to be, but look to your God, and read his eternal love, his boundless love, his costly love, which gave Christ for you; then shall your love drink in fresh life and vigor. Beloved, there are few of us who know much of the depths of the love of God; our love is shallow; ah, how shallow! Love to God is like a great mountain-- The majority of travelers view it from afar, or traverse the valley at its base: a few climb to a halting place on one of its elevated spurs, whence they see a portion of its sublimities: here and there an adventurous traveler climbs a minor peak, and views glacier and alp at closer range; fewest of all are those who scale the topmost pinnacle and tread the virgin snow. So it is in the Church of God-- Every Christian abides under the shadow of divine love: a few enjoy and return that love to a remarkable degree: but there are few, in this age sadly few, who reach to seraphic love, who ascent into the hill of the Lord, to stand where the eagle's eye has not seen, and walk the path which the lion's whelp has never trodden, the high places of complete consecration and ardent self-consuming love. Now, mark you, it may be difficult to ascend so high, but there is one sure route, and only one, which the man must follow who would gain the sacred elevation. It is not the track of his works, nor the path of his own actions, but this, "We love him because he first loved us." John confessed that in this way he attained his love for God. For the highest love that ever glowed in human bosom there was no source but this- God first loved that man. Do you not see how this is? The knowledge that God loves me casts out my tormenting dread of God: and when this is expelled, there is room for abounding love to God. As fear goes out, love comes in at the other door. So the more faith in God the more room there is for soul-filling love. Our soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness when we know that the whole heart of God beats towards us as forcibly as if we were the only creatures he had ever made, and his whole heart were wrapt up in us. Love to God produces a desire to be with him; a desire to be like him, a longing to be with him eternally in heaven, and this breaks us away from worldliness; this keeps us from idolatry, and thus has a most blessedly sanctifying effect upon us, producing that elevated character which is now so rare, but which wherever it exists is powerful for the good of the church and for the glory of God.