Fruit Bearing

I’m thankful for fruit. Strawberries are the best. In fact, any berries are good. Apples, bananas, peaches, and grapes. They are all to be enjoyed. We know that each kind has a different seed and a different tree or vine. No one expects apple trees to provide oranges for us. The metaphor of fruit bearing is used many times in the Bible to express how we cannot be someone we are not without Christ. What is plain is that who we are is rotten. It is also plain that He is perfect.

This verse was stated in a prior post listed with several other verses:

When you produce much fruit [spiritually], you are my true disciples. John 15:8

One way to say the last clause is that you “prove” to be my followers. Prove sounds like proof. You’ve heard it before “the proof is in the pudding.” How about some banana pudding!

In a way, the world will “taste” what Christ is like through interacting with Christ followers. So what type of fruit proves someone is His own? In all the statements before and after the verse above, Christ teaches that knowledge of Him in the sense of knowing Him intimately, loving Him in the sense of obeying Him, and loving others in the sense of sacrificial service is bearing fruit. It is both morals and unification.

Many people can do signs and wonders or manifest their gifting. Yet, their heart can be far from God. It can be a charade as if it were a magician or illusionist on display. No one, however, can fake sacrificial love. This is especially true over a long period of time.

The fruit of or effect of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers a lot of ground. It is so important to realize that manifesting these characteristics is not very significant when all things are going well. Anyone can appear to have joy or patience when the sky is blue, food is on the table, and they just got a raise at work. Can they produce these characteristics when all hell breaks loose in their life, their health, their finances, and their relationships? When, over an extended season, they manifest these qualities during adversity, it reveals their true colors. It shows that there is something or Someone within beyond this world. The list of fruit above cannot be manufactured even by someone that has an easy going disposition when they are betrayed or facing injustice. We are not born free to patent these traits based on our personality and even good examples by parents. It is a heart issue, a soul issue, and inevitably a spiritual issue.

In this passage, Jesus Christ speaks of being connected to Him as a branch is to a vine. So to bear fruit means to mimic His lifestyle and attributes through the staying connected. This unity with Christ doesn’t occur just from cognitive belief in Him. A response and effort are made. The relationship is not earned, but it is not without effort. Both individuals pursue each other to form the relationship. That is how the world will know someone follows Him. Over time they see a change that is evident and looks, feels, and smells like the Savior of the world. Are you bearing this type of fruit? Producing rotten fruit in a rotten world is easy. What about being kind, faithful, and good to others in a corrupt society? Want to know more?