Fruit
About this series
The aim of this series is to present some of the Bible’s teaching about The Holy Spirit in order to raise expectations of life in the new covenant. If Jesus said, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7), we want to ask: In what ways do these Scriptures show that The Holy Spirit being with us is “for your good”? Our expectations should certainly be raised!
Hopefully this series will help us grow in both our understanding and our experience of The Holy Spirit - personal, powerful presence of God with his people.
About this talk
Jesus promised that faithful disciples will be fruitful disciples, which means evidencing a Christ-like lifestyle. Our part is to “remain” in him (John 15:1-17); his life flowing through us will then ensure that we are empowered to be like him. It is the life of the vine itself that is the fruit which is produced by the branches connected to the vine.
The ethical qualities spoken of in Galatians 5 are certainly not simply good characteristics that we must try hard to exhibit. Rather, they are the result of living by the Spirit; they are spirit-produced qualities. It is to this that we need to continually point people in their desire to be fruitful - to a focus on both Jesus as our model and on the Spirit’s power to make us more like Jesus.
Counterintuitively, this session on fruit therefore needs to be careful not to concentrate too much on the fruit itself, but on remaining in Christ and living by the Spirit. Consider the following:
What does it mean, in practice, to “remain” in Christ? What practical habits can we try to grow in?
What does it mean to “live by the Spirit”? What does it not mean?
The practical battle not to live by the Spirit (fruit listed in vs 22-23), and not by the flesh (fruit listed in v 17)
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