Daily devotion – Wednesday 4th August 2021
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Paul has been describing the difference between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. He gathers up the whole truth into this one brief sentence.
Paul teaches us that fruit is the method of Christianity – the Fruit of the Spirit is love!
Secondly Paul explains that the dynamic of Christianity is seen in the word Spirit.
Lastly, he tells us that the issue of Christianity is love!
The Fruit of the Spirit is Love.
Fruit is always the picture of life – there can be no fruit apart from life. The word fruit also indicates cultivation. Fruit only comes to perfection with the touch of cultivation. Fruit is life in that it is food.
When the word ‘works’ is used it suggests factory whereas the word ‘fruit’ suggests garden.
Works – the works of men, are always operations in the realm of death and decay.
Fruit is always an operation in the sphere of life, containing within itself the power of propagation.
The very best of works that man can achieve are all in the realm of death. Take the dwelling in which you are housed, it could not be erected, save as man handled dead materials. The timber from the tree in the forest must die before man could begin his work. In all of man’s work, his best efforts, it always contains the elements of break-up. No sooner is a dwelling completed than nature begins to wear and pull it down. As quickly as man works, his work crumbles and passes.
The finest thing a man can do within his own self-centred life is a thing of decay and break up, which perishes and passes with time.
This week are you busy working with that which will eventually rust, perish, crumble with the elements, or is the Spirit of God active in your life and bearing fruit?
The Christian life is a just that, a thing of life!
But there can be no perfection of fruit without cultivation. Let the tree in your garden run wild, never use the pruning knife, and all the fine quality of the fruit will pass away from it.
The fruit of Christianity, which is love, comes to perfection only by the process of cultivation, not your cultivation, but Jesus’.
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser….. John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
Maybe today you are passing through the fire, you are overwhelmed with sorrow. You may feel as though God has forgotten you. Why this pruning, why this buffeting?
The perfection of the Christian life only comes by cultivation by pruning but know that the shears are in the hands of He who loves you.
Heb 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Fruit is God’s work and in it are the properties of perpetual life. – Gen 1:29
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.”
Love which is the final fruitage cannot be manufactured; it must grow, and it must grow out of the work of life that God fills you with by His Spirit.
May God’s love be filling your life, be outflowing from your life and be seen by others in your life, that you are indeed a child of God – the God who is Love!