The Fruit of The Spirit

Intro- So far this week we have have talked about being born again, or quite literally “born from above, Being born of Water and Spirit. The New life that accompanies the New Birth. Then we discussed last night that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit… Tonight we are shifting our attention to what that means for what that means for us. What does the Spirit of God produce in us?

In order to appreciate this we need to first understand and acknowledge what the Bible reveals about the Human nature.

Genesis 6:5 ESV

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

In the darkest moment in the history of mankind, God looked at man, and He saw that from the inner most parts, the thoughts, the heart, the intentions were just evil.

It is easy for us to look back on these people in this dark time and in our minds distance ourselves from them and talk about how we are glad that we aren’t like THEM.

Fast forward to

Galatians 5:16–17 ESV

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Paul writes to the church in Galatia about “desires of the flesh”. And that these desires of the flesh, are in opposition to the desires of the spirit.

So what we understand from this is that each one of us who are born again, or born from above, and are now God’s children, and are the temple of the Spirit… We have a problem. A constant problem… In many ways, we are at war with ourselves.

We live in the flesh, and we have fleshly desires. There are things that we want to do because they look good, feel good, taste good, and satisfy cravings of the flesh.

Then there are things that we want to do because we are now Children of God, the Temple of His spirit.

Paul writes in about feeling torn from the inside at times and not understanding his own actions. That he finds himself doing things that he doesn’t want to do and not doing the things he wants.

This is the conflict of every Christian.

How do we avoid falling prey to the desires/works of the flesh that tells us that will prevent us from being in the kingdom of God?

Paul tells us in that if we don’t want to gratify (give in to) the the desires of the flesh we need to walk by the Spirit.

How do we know if we are walking by the spirit or living by the spirit? Well, the spirit will produce certain things in us.

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

The fruit of the spirit is singular in nature.

What I mean by that is that the text does not say “Fruits of the spirit” . Meaning that if you are walking by the Spirit that you will have “some of these qualities”… Rather, if you are really walking by the Spirit, you will have each of these qualities. Because collectively, they are the Fruit.

Love

Joy

Peace

Kindness

Goodness

Positive moral qualities

Faithfulness

The state of complete dependability. This is a trustworthy person.

Gentleness

Self-Control

Conclusion-