The word “fruit” has been misunderstood in many areas. Let me explain.
I remember attending church fellowship one Sunday. An invited guest speaker took centre stage and promptly called a lady to the front to pray for her. Slowly the lady was pushed over backwards and fell into the arms of a deacon who laid her on the floor gently.
The lady started to rise. The invited speaker ordered her to stay down and not get up! Mystified but obedient she stayed there. You could see she felt most uncomfortable with many eyes looking at her.
The “fruit” as described in Galatians 5:22, 23 was not evident. This “fruit” we are talking about is the “fruit of the Spirit” which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control. The fruit displayed by the invited guest speaker was not gentleness, compassion, humility, kindness, patience but rather arrogance, selfishness, rudeness, abruptness, harshness. The fruit we are called to look for (Matthew 7:16-20) was not evident but only bad fruit was evident.
Some of us who understood this principle looked to the Pastor or elders to stop this ungodly work, but to no avail. We endured a while longer and observing still further ungodly fruit, several of us walked out.
Afterwards I asked the lady how she felt. “Highly embarrassed,” she replied.
When approached later the Pastor stated, “Oh, but didn’t you see the “fruit”! They were several healings and a word of knowledge and a soul saved.”
Unfortunately the Pastor misunderstood Scripture. Healings and the word of knowledge are “gifts” of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12: 4-11) not “fruit” of the Spirit. The Bible teaches us that we will recognise the true and false by their “fruit”, not by their “gifts”. God’s gifts are given and not taken back (Romans 11:29). So a person may be in sin and away from God and still manifest the “gifts” of God.
As we grow in the understanding and allow the work of the Holy Spirit to bring about the fullness of Christ in each one of us, the “fruit” of the Spirit will become more manifest. In reality the more of His fullness we have the more of the fruit we have, for God is love, joy, peace etc. God is the fruit.
So our aim of seeing readers grow in the “fruit” is seeing readers growing into the fullness of Christ in their lives, which is part of “the glorious inheritance of the saints” (Ephesians 1:18).
Have a “fruitful” week! – Should you wish to contact us please email editor.faithmatters@gmail.com
Post published in: Faith