Day 24

What Rises — The Fruit of the Spirit

Today's Scripture: Galatians 5:22–24 (NLT)

Read those two verses together carefully, because Paul is drawing a connection that we miss when we read them separately. He names the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. And then, in the very next sentence, he says, "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." Why does he put these two thoughts side by side? Because the fruit of the Spirit grows on the tree of a crucified life. You do not produce the fruit of the Spirit by trying to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, and kind. You produce the fruit of the Spirit by being a soul in which the flesh is being daily put to death, so that the Spirit who indwells you has the unobstructed space to produce His own fruit through your branches.

This is one of the most liberating truths in the entire Christian life, because the fruit of the Spirit is fruit. It is not the product of human effort. It is the natural overflow of life in the Spirit, in a soul where the flesh has been put on the cross. An apple tree does not strain to produce apples. It is just an apple tree, and out of its life, apples grow. The believer who walks in the Spirit, who has died to the flesh, does not strain to produce love. The love grows because that is what life in the Spirit naturally produces in any soul that has cleared away the things that would have choked it.

This is why so many believers, when they try to produce the fruit of the Spirit directly — when they wake up and say, "Today I will be more loving, more joyful, more patient" — find themselves exhausted and frustrated by lunchtime. They are trying to manufacture, by effort, what was never designed to be produced by effort. The Christian who is white-knuckling love is not loving. The Christian who is gritting their teeth to be patient is not patient. They are producing a counterfeit fruit, plastic apples hot-glued to a tree that has no real life in it. Real fruit grows. And real fruit grows on a tree where the conditions for growth are present — namely, the indwelling Spirit and the crucified flesh.

This is great encouragement at this point in our month. The work you have been doing — the laying down, the surrender, the daily climb onto the altar, the small obediences, the embrace of hiddenness, the welcoming of suffering — that work is not in vain. It is creating the conditions for fruit. The fruit may not have appeared yet in every place you would like to see it. But the conditions are being prepared. The flesh is being put to death. The Spirit is being given more room. And in due season, you will reap if you faint not (Galatians 6:9).

Now consider, for a moment, what the fruit of the Spirit looks like in a soul where the flesh has been crucified. The love is not strained, performed love that has to be summoned on demand. It is a deep love that flows naturally toward people the old flesh would not have loved — the difficult ones, the ungrateful ones, the ones who cannot repay it. The joy is not the manufactured cheerfulness of religious performance. It is a deep, quiet gladness that does not depend on circumstances and that persists even in suffering. The peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of God in the middle of conflict. The longsuffering is the capacity to remain steady, kind, and faithful through prolonged pressure that would have broken the flesh long ago. The gentleness is a softness in the soul that does not need to crush in order to feel strong. The goodness is a moral consistency that requires no audience to maintain. The faith is the unshaken trust of a soul that has learned, in the dyings, that God can be trusted with all of it. The meekness is the strength under control of someone who could push back but chooses not to. And the temperance is the self-mastery of a soul that has put its appetites under the feet of Christ.

Look at that list. That is what is rising in you. Not because you are mustering it but because the Spirit is producing it in a soil that the cross is preparing. Some of these fruits may be more visible in you than others. Some may still be small green buds. Some may not yet have appeared at all. Be patient. Fruit takes time. The tree that is rushed often produces nothing at all; the tree that is patiently tended produces in season.

Walk in the Spirit. Crucify the flesh. And let the fruit grow.

Prayer

Father, thank You that the fruit of the Spirit is not something I have to manufacture by my own strength but something Your Spirit produces in a soul that walks with You. Where I have been straining to produce what only You can grow, teach me to rest in You instead. Crucify in me the flesh that chokes the fruit, and free the Spirit to bear in me the harvest You have always intended. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Look at the nine fruits in Galatians 5:22–23. Identify the one that seems most evidently growing in you over recent months, and give thanks. Identify the one that seems least present, and bring it to God, asking Him to crucify whatever in you is choking it.

"Fruit is not produced by the branch trying harder; fruit is produced by the branch remaining in the vine, on a tree the gardener has carefully pruned."