A few weeks ago my friend’s father reminded me that, the fruit of a tree indicates its health. You can be an apple tree but if you aren’t producing fruit or the fruit you are producing is rotten — something needs to change; you aren’t healthy. 

Now my friend’s dad is not an arborist or a farmer nor was he actually talking about trees at all. 

He was referencing Matthew 7:17-20 in which Jesus says, “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” It’s a sobering reminder really, if you think about it. A call to look at what fruit we may be bearing in our own lives. 

Now I think in our hyper-productive culture our first reaction to that is — what am I doing? But fruit isn’t about the groups we lead, the mentees were discipling, or even whether we’re praying daily. Fruit is about our hearts. It’s about being with Jesus and being transformed by Jesus (which is definitely aided by daily prayer time and Scripture reading but checking off boxes does not equate transformation). 

Galatians, which is the book of the Bible that houses the well-known, “Fruits of the Spirit” was written as a response to the early church adding circumcision back to the requirements of Christianity. In fact, chapter 5 literally begins with, “Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.” Galatians is a book warning us of the dangers of legalism and adding things to the Gospel as well as finding our justification through law-keeping rather than grace. It’s actually got some strong language mixed in with the Sunday School lessons. Paul literally tells the Galatians that he hopes those who have told them to mutilate their bodies (via circumcision) would mutilate themselves. And people think the Bible is boring and Christians are chaste! Paul’s basically telling the people who are distorting the Gospel to go...themselves. And the reason is, Paul cares. He doesn’t want the Gospel to be distorted. He wants people to live in the freedom that Christ won for them on the cross. Why? So they can go do whatever because, yay grace?! No. Obviously not. It’s not about trading one ism for another. It’s about loving others. I know. Isn’t it wonderful? The lynchpin of the whole book of Galatians is about loving other people and God. It’s almost like that’s a main theme of the Bible. The Gospel is basically this, that Jesus loved us so much that he defeated death so that we could be set free from our sin to love and serve Him and others. It’s not rocket science, it’s love. 

Which brings me to the next part of Galatians 5. The part that reminded me of what my friend’s dad said. The part that sobers me daily and breaks my heart. Its Galatians 5:15. But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another. Paul is writing this to a group of Christians who are clearly fighting; he's telling them to beware. It’s a caution against discord. And I think it’s a caution that Christians in 2021 in the United States of America could heed. Because hot take, I don’t think Paul would care one iota which political party we support or if we’re pro Enneagram or not. And while he may have comments on women in leadership, abortion, and homosexuality, I think his ultimate concern would be how his brothers and sisters were treating one another. I think he’d be concerned about the fruit we’re bearing. 

Because an apple tree can still be an apple tree and fail to produce fruit. It can wither and die. It can produce fruit that’s not able to be consumed. It can fail to do its job and so can we. And we all know that if we speak in tongues of men and angels, can prophesy and understand mysteries, give up everything we have to the poor, and have mountain-moving faith but don’t have love, we are nothing. Let me say that again, we can do all sorts of “Christian” things but if we do them without love we are nothing but gongs and noise. And if you need a refresher on what love is, I suggest reading 1 Corinthians 13. It’s not just for married people, it’s actually meant to apply even to your enemies! But we’re not here to talk about love, though I am glad I snuck it in. We’re talking about fruit. So what do unhealthy and healthy fruit look like?

Unhealthy fruit looks like, sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. I think some Christians can look at the first few and be like, oh well I don’t do that, so I’m fine. Obviously my fruit is pure. But that would be wrong; we all do all of these in one way or another. For example, I’m prone to hostility, quarreling, outbursts of anger, and selfish ambition. And I think all of us struggle with idolatry, whether in the form of our marriages and families or even the idolatry of our religious institutions. I think we’ve all been envious or jealous at one time in our life as well. So while you may have “saved yourself for marriage” you’re not exempt or more holy than your brothers and sisters who didn’t. We’ve all produced and can produce and still produce bad fruit. 

So what does good fruit look like? What’s the kind of fruit we should be producing? And how do we get there? Good fruit comes only from the Holy Spirit. And it’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We can’t read our Bible into this kind of fruit. We can’t even recite prayers until we have this kind of fruit. The only way to be this kind of fruit producing person is to spend time with God, to dwell in His presence and allow the Holy Spirit to transform our lives! That’s the beautiful part about it. It’s not about effort or striving or doing certain things. It’s about being still and resting in the presence of God. It’s about Him molding and making us more like Him. Him pruning our trees as needed so we can produce beautiful, life-giving fruit. Fruit that really would make this world a better place.

Imagine a world where people were agape-loving, joyful, peacemakers, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and had self-control. It would be incredible and absolutely breathtaking and that’s essentially the Kingdom of God. And while I don’t necessarily see it happening anytime soon, we could at least work towards being people who create small pockets of the Kingdom in the places we dwell, work, and live. Since that’s kind of what we’ve been called to do. 

So sisters and brothers, let’s be known not for our dissension, division, envy, anger, jealousy, etc. Let’s be known for our sacrificial love, our joy in Christ despite circumstances, peacemaking instead of peacekeeping, patience beyond belief, kindness especially towards those who dislike us, goodness and seeking the good of the world we live in, faithfulness towards God and one another, gentleness in everything we do and showing self-control not just with anger, etc., but also with boundaries — understanding that we cannot control others; we can only control ourselves and our responses. 

Let’s watch our fruit, allow the Holy Spirit to prune us as necessary, and bring the Kingdom of God into the world around us.