The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

“If you’re a fish you swim. If you’re a bird you fly. If you’re a Christian you live a life pleasing to God.”

— Dr. Peter Christofides

We please God when we exemplify fruit in keeping with the Presence of the Holy Spirit within us—a fact that the Spirit resides within every person confessing Jesus as not simply their Saviour, but their Lord and King over their lives, too.

Fruit is the product of something, typically of plants, but also of other investments.

If we are filled with badness we will constantly think on the things of vice: greed, anger, selfish pride, etc. Then these will project out of us, because what we think we become.

Just the same, the fruit of our Christian walk are deeds of consistent (though never perfect) goodness because of how we are deploying ourselves, or, more importantly, because of who we belong to. We, like all our resources, belong to God. How thankful we ought to be for every millisecond on this journey of life!

The only barrier to such a bounteous goodness as prospered to us as a gift through the Spirit is the flesh and fear clinging within; those things that constrain us to our sins.

Evidence of the Holy Spirit is Fruit of the Spirit

Think fruit. Think of the product of our devotion. Think not about legalistic duty but of the type of devotion that has us exuding the spiritual energy where the Spirit lays claim to our moments and we accede.

We may be Christian, but it doesn’t mean we’re alive in the Spirit. The Spirit may be dormant as we go through the motions of our lives or, worse, as we rally against the righteousness of God in our sin, unopposed.

Evidence of the Holy Spirit—where we are alive and well, spiritually—is fruit of the Spirit. By devotion to the Lord, we are more grounded in the Gospel; we are more fervently impervious to the world’s overtures; and by the Spirit we grow.

The interesting thing about the fullest measure of the Holy Spirit is we are blessed by his Presence all the more that we submit for the infilling. That’s the surrender we talk about. It’s about giving ourselves to actively practicing the fruit of the Spirit, and, in that action, we are blessed by the infill of the Spirit and others are blessed by the overflow of that selfsame Spiritual fruit.

When we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit with relative consistency, then we are evidencing ourselves as true subjects and slaves of the Lord our God.

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Real Christians believe upon Jesus as their Saviour, Lord, and King over their lives.

The Spirit of God is given to the believer and he is given reign—a two-way transaction. The believer is a receptacle of the Holy Spirit that indwells them, the saved sinner. By such a possession we are granted the Power of God’s grace, made manifest by visible and life-transforming Spiritual fruit.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.