New Year 2023: the Fruit of the Spirit

 

Photo credit: Bru-nO | Pixabay

It is the New Year once again.   It's a time often marked by fresh starts as we emerge from our cheese-induced fog and look with hope on the New Year - taking stock of what we have, looking forward to where we want to go, and thinking about what we need to do to get there.  

This time last year I was just starting this blog, and writing about the certain hope of renewal that is in Jesus, regardless of where we get to with our new years' resolutions.  This year, the hope still stands, and I'm looking at how I should go about my new year.  It's certainly a year with prime opportunity for making resolutions, setting targets and examining each area of my life in detail.  It's a year in which I will be moving onto a new chapter that, in human terms, is as yet undefined (although I know that God has a plan) and so I am in many ways 'starting afresh'.   There certainly will be prayerful brain-storming, list-making, planning, and new routines to develop.

And yet, my biggest prayer for this year, perhaps my number one priority, is not for a plan or a ministry, but for the fruit of the Spirit.

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. (Galatians 5:22-24)

My homegroup recently studied Galatians and it was pointed out that the 'fruit' of the Spirit is singular.  Images of trees bearing different individual different fruits such as as love, joy, peace etc are not an accurate image of what is being conveyed here!  There is one fruit - the outward working of the Holy Spirit to that changes those who are in Jesus.  If we are going to think metaphors, then we could think Paul's list of love, joy, peace...etc as either components of the fruit (e.g. juice, pips, skin, etc) or characteristics such as textures, tastes and smells.   We cannot separate love from patience or joy and faithfulness, or gentleness and self-control.  They each manifest out of each other, and all stem from faith in Jesus, the assurance of his promises, the worship of the loving God opposed to futile idols, and the humble dignity that results.

Love is not just the first in a long line of fruits - it is first in this list of characteristics of spiritual fruit because it is the centre and most important.  Mere sentences before he talks about the fruit of the Spirit, Paul refers back to the teachings of Jesus and writes in his letter to the Galatians: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14).   And then if we leap over to his first letter to the Corinthians, we learn that:  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)   It's clear that Paul is talking about the same thing here!

And so, whilst we may go to the gym (and by 'we' I don't actually include myself there!) and maybe focus our routines around strengthening or toning certain parts of our bodies (glutes, abs, etc), there's no such personalised spiritual workout where we can work on the 'fruits' where we are weak.  Not only is the fruit a complete package, but it is also only through God working in us that we bear this fruit.  We cannot change ourselves - we need him, and I can think of at two interrelated reasons:

• 1)  Only God is good enough to replace our idols:  I lose patience with my children when my desire for comfort, order, control or a tidy house is greater than my desire to serve God and raise faithful disciples.  I fail to find joy and respond with thankfulness when I forget that the creator of the universe loved me enough to die in my place.   I do not respond with kindness and goodness when I am too full of my own priorities, because I do not trust God enough to give me everything I need.  It is only when we gaze at God enough that his power pushes those idols back into irrelevance.

• 2)  If we seek to improve ourselves, we only become self-centred:  Someone who believes that they and they alone are responsible for every good thing they have cannot be overflowing with thankfulness.  And it is that thankfulness that produces joy, and knowledge of our own weakness that produces patience with others and kindness towards them.  

And so, the only thing we ourselves can 'do' ourselves is to continue, each day, to fix our eyes upon him, and to pray - because when we pray, God answers.  It is only when we have the humility to stop focusing on our own ability and come to God in our lack that he is able to cultivate the fruit of his Spirit in us.  And he will - in his perfect timing, as Paul promises the Christians at Philippi: And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

Why is this my number one priority?  Because all my work will be in vain if I am not bearing the fruit of the spirit.  In fact, I would take things a step further and say that bearing the fruit of the Spirit is our work and purpose as God's ambassadors.  Paul starts his discourse on love with this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

If I feed my children nutritious meals and do everything to foster their education and hobbies, but do not teach them how to love, I have failed.  If I stand up for God's truth where others may disagree with me, but do so without love, then no one will listen and I will have made enemies of those that God loves so much he died for them.  If I busy myself with work and acts of service, but do so without focussing on the love of God which compels, I will become proud, burnt out and bitter.

I would say that my New Years' Resolution this year is to pray for the fruit of the Spirit every day, but I know that I will fail in that before the week is out.  However, the great thing is that God uses even the tiniest and most insignificant of faith.  Even when we don't know what to pray for, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26).   I will resolve to pray, but I will trust in him to make it happen, in his perfect timing, grace and wisdom.