The Bible makes it abundantly clear that salvation is exclusively by grace through faith in Christ and not of anyone’s works (Eph. 2:6-9, Rom. 3:19-26). Sadly, many people still hold to, practice and preach a salvation by works deceiving themselves into thinking they can earn their way to heaven despite the teachings of Scripture that salvation is in Christ alone (John 14:6).
While salvation is not by works, biblical salvation certainly produces works. In a sermon Tim Keller says, “We are not saved by fruit but by faith and not fruitless faith.” In Ephesians 2, Paul argues that we were all dead in our sins and were therefore unable to awaken ourselves but thanks be to God who made us alive in Christ Jesus. He further states that the result of God saving us from our sins (making us alive) is that we will fulfil the purpose we were created for, namely his workmanship, created for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
It then becomes clear that where salvation has taken place fruit is produced. The farming analogy is quite replete in the Bible. The righteous are often likened to a tree that bears fruit while the wicked are the fruitless plant. Salvation brings life, and life produces fruit that is in keeping with living organisms. That therefore means that this fruit is real and organic as opposed to fake and mechanical. Fruit in keeping with salvation is not mere behavioral change or conformity to a system. This fruit comes about because there has been a radical transformation in a person’s life. They were once dead, but now they are alive; they were blind, but now they see.
The Bible speaks of different kinds of fruit that believers should be producing in their lives. It speaks of leading others to faith (Rom. 1:13-16), righteous behavior (Phil. 1:11), offering praise to God (Heb. 13:15), and godly attitudes/graces or the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). It is the latter of these fruits that I intend to focus on in the coming weeks. A few notes of introduction will suffice for now.
It is important to notice in Galatians 5 the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. Work of the flesh carries the idea of strain, toil, draining effort and being dead. While on the other hand fruit carries the idea of freshness, beauty, attractiveness and life. Secondly, the fruit of the Spirit is a present continuous idea, meaning it is ongoing. In other words we should continuously produce the nine virtues of the fruit of the Spirit. The third point of introduction is that the fruit of the Spirit is singular, it is the fruit and not fruits. Finally, the nine virtues must be true of each one of us. We are not meant to pick and choose as we please. The fruit of the Spirit produces nine virtues not two or three. The nine make one, and therefore these graces should be true of each one of us as believers.
I will leave you with the Galatians passage to meditate on.
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 (Gal. 5:22-24)
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