By Kyle Beshears
Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of Christian Studies, University of Mobile
True Fruit
Galatians 5:13–26
Freed (13–15)
God delights in redemption. People that He redeems worship and bring Him glory in their love for Him and for their neighbors. God called Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt so they could worship Him and love Him with all their heart, soul and might (Deut. 6:5). “Let my people go,” God demanded of pharaoh, “so that they may worship Me” (Ex. 9:1). As believers in Jesus, we are no different. God liberates us from the prison of sin and its condemnation, so that we might glorify God through worship in our new freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul declares over us (Gal. 5:1).
So if sin was our captor and Christ liberated us from sin, why should we want to emulate the enemy who abused us? We are redeemed by Christ — who walked in perfect obedience and bore our burdens — so that we may emulate our sin-conquering hero. Apparently, some believers in Galatia were using their new freedom in Christ as a license to carry on sinning while others were walking the Christian life in isolation, absent true community.
Controlled (16–18)
If we are redeemed emulators of Christ, we ought to walk by the Spirit and be led by the Spirit. Even our obedience in following Christ is a work that God does through us. We can’t do it on our own because there is an internal conflict within us. We are pulled between two competing visions of our future — the Spirit’s vision of our sanctification and sin’s vision of our death. Behind Paul’s command to walk by the Spirit is a promise that the Spirit-empowered walk leads us further away from the captor and into the countryside of God’s kingdom. The question becomes one of control. Are we controlled by our flesh, which leads back to captivity, or by the Spirit, who leads us to life and liberty in Christ?
Abandoned (19–21)
If we are unsure of whether we are led by the flesh or Spirit, we need only look to the works that are present in our life. Paul is careful not to merely compare the works of the flesh to the works of the Spirit, as if he were comparing mirror opposites. Instead, Paul shows us that the flesh and Spirit produce different things altogether. A flesh-led life causes us to perform the works of sin-laden vices. These works are the result of our fallen nature. We are the ones that do the work. The list that Paul gives describes a person whose heart is so bent inward that they sin against themselves (whether or not they realize it), others and God. The fruit of the Spirit, however, is different.
Produced (22–26)
Paul tells us that the Spirit-led life leads to fruit, not works. Just like we cannot cause a tree to grow fruit, we cannot cause spiritual fruit to grow in our lives. This is why the Holy Spirit is so important in the life of a believer.
The Spirit causes fruit to grow in our lives, and we are the joyful recipients of the Spirit’s cultivation of that fruit. Also, it is important to note that Paul says fruit, not fruits. A Spirit-led life is one that bears the fruit of the Spirit (e.g., love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). These are all the fruit of the Spirit; they are not separate fruits. We do not pick and choose some over the others. We are not loving without patience nor faithful without self-control.
To be a Spirit-led believer is to bear the fruit of His cultivation in our lives — every last bit of it.
Share with others: