Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Mark Daniels: Welcome to Hear the Word of God, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander.

Eric Alexander: This evening is the third in a series of sermons on the theme of the Holy Spirit. So far, we have been looking together, first at the person and work of the Holy Spirit, secondly at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and our theme this evening is the theme of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. And it will be obvious to you that we shall turn to the passage from which we read in Galatians chapter five, where Paul speaks about this theme.

The fruit of the Spirit is just a nine-fold description which we have in Galatians 5:22 of genuine Christian character. It is the result of that inward sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit whereby he changes us from one degree of glory into another, even as by the Spirit of God, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. It is that inward sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit whereby he produces in us true Christ-likeness.

Now, there is no doubt that in all our thinking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we come here to the crux of all that the Holy Spirit's ministry is about. There is no question that God's great priority in all his dealings with us lies precisely here: the production in our lives of genuine biblical godliness.

God pictures himself in this way in Scripture again and again. In Isaiah five, for example, he pictures himself like a vineyard owner coming to his vineyard, that is to his people, and saying he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And we have the picture of God's sorrowing over his people because they did not produce the fruit in terms of a transformation of character for which God was looking.

Jesus pictures God in Luke 13:6 as the owner of a fig tree, and we read he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, "Look, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?" Or in the Authorized Version's more picturesque language, "Why cumbereth it the ground?"

And what God is saying is that the great purpose for which he planted this tree, which again is his people, is that it might bring forth fruit in terms of transformed character. And when it has not done so, he says its purpose in being here has been lost. In John 15, amongst Jesus' last words to his disciples, is this great emphasis on the Father's great purpose and concern to produce fruit in their lives.

"I am the true vine. My father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes it that it may bring forth more fruit. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you except you abide in me." And Jesus is presenting to them the Father's great concern as the vinedresser who is, as someone has said, obsessed with the purpose of bringing forth fruit.

Now, that fruit is not Christian service or the result of it. We frequently speak about people being very fruitful. "He has been a very fruitful servant of God," by which we mean he has gathered many people into the kingdom, as we say. But the picture that is used in Scripture for Christian service in these terms is almost always the grain harvest and not the picture of fruit. And the idea of fruit is universally one of the production of character, a change of life in the lives of God's people.

What this whole emphasis of the ministry of the Holy Spirit boils down to is just this: that it is, above all other things, what I am in my secret innermost being that matters to God. There is basically nothing else that matters so much as that to God as my inward personal character. And as God labors in our lives by his Holy Spirit, it is above all other things to produce this fruit of the Spirit, which the Apostle spells out for us here in Galatians 5:22.

Now, I want to examine with you this whole theme of the fruit of the Spirit this evening. And rather than going through these nine fruits of the Spirit individually and trying to examine them one by one, I want us to look at the theme in five different ways. And let me tell you now how I hope we may approach it together. First of all, I want to speak to you about the character of this fruit. Then I want to look with you at its essence, its essential nature. Thirdly, I want to say something about its origin, fourthly about its development, and fifthly about its growth.

So first of all, let me turn with you to the character of the fruit of the Spirit. And what I want to emphasize in this connection is that the fruit of the Spirit is comprehensive in its character. Let me explain what I mean. When you get an insurance policy for your car, you will probably get what is called a comprehensive policy. That is, it covers everything. Nothing is left out. It is not, in other words, narrowed down to particular circumstances. It doesn't just deal with isolated areas. A comprehensive policy covers everything, every eventuality, every area of your experience as a motorist.

Now, what I mean by saying that the fruit of the Spirit is comprehensive in its character is precisely this: that the fruit of the Spirit covers everything. Biblical holiness does not deal with some narrow area of our life. It doesn't touch some isolated area that is called the spiritual life that we live. It covers everything. There is no corner of life that is left out. And you will notice how this comes out if you look at Paul's list in Galatians 5:22 and 23. It covers every area of life.

They have been divided, these nine fruits of the Spirit, in all sorts of different ways, but let me suggest to you that they can be divided into three groups of three. Love and joy and peace refer principally to life in a God-ward direction. Long-suffering or patience and kindness and goodness refer principally to life lived in a man-ward direction. Faithfulness, meekness, and self-control refer mainly to life in an inward direction. So this is a picture of comprehensive Christian character in relation to God, to others, and to myself. And there is therefore no dimension of life which is left out.

You see, when we talk about the gifts of the Spirit, some have some gifts, others have others. But that is never how we are to think when we think about the fruit of the Spirit. True Christian character changes a man's life in every direction. It begins by changing his relationship to God. It goes on by changing his relationship to others, and it changes also his relationship to himself in terms of self-control and self-discipline and self-denial and so on. But true Christian character changes every area of our life. So the fruit of the Spirit is comprehensive in its character, and it cannot be emphasized too strongly that genuine biblical holiness is universal in its application throughout the whole area of our life. There is no compartment of your life which may be excluded from this purpose of God by his Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit.

Here is the second thing that needs to be said and it's this: the fruit of the Spirit is not only comprehensive in its character, it is Christ-likeness in its essence. So the essence, the essential nature of the fruit of the Spirit that Paul is here describing is Christ-likeness. And the two phrases "the fruit of the Spirit" and "likeness to Jesus" are almost interchangeable.

It is the Spirit's ministry, as you will know, to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, that is to set him forth in all his infinite beauty. That is what the Holy Spirit does. He makes the Lord Jesus glorious in the eyes of men. And do you see how the Holy Spirit does this? My Christian friends, this is one of the great mysteries of Christian experience, that God the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus by setting forth his beauty in the lineaments of our character.

So that when the fruit of the Spirit appears, the Lord Jesus is being glorified, and men will take knowledge of you and they will say, "What is it that makes so-and-so like that? What is it that we see in him that we don't see elsewhere?" And the answer is, it is Jesus. And the fruit of the Spirit is likeness to Jesus displayed in your character.

And you will have noticed what a perfect description of Jesus this nine-fold list of the fruit of the Spirit provides. Indeed, it's almost impossible to read it without thinking of him. Do you notice it is his love to the Father, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit? His concern is that my joy might be in you, and he prayed the Father that my joy might remain in them. His legacy to his disciples is "My peace I give to you."

So the love of which Paul speaks as the first fruit of the Spirit is the very love that Jesus has for the Father and which he has for us. It is that love which he sheds abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is that that makes us like Jesus. The first evidence therefore of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is that the love of Christ, that love with which he loved his Father, is exhibited in us.

The joy is the joy that Jesus has in doing his Father's will. The peace is Jesus' experience of peace. Think of long-suffering, kindness, and goodness. The long-suffering, the patience of Jesus is something that clearly captures Peter's imagination. I could imagine it is largely because Simon Peter found that so unnatural to him. It was something that was strange to his impulsive nature, his quick reactions to situations.

And he sees in the Lord Jesus one who, being reviled, was not, reviled not again. He sees him as one who in suffering was patient. And Peter enlarges upon this because he recognizes that it is possible for this to reappear in his character. "He has left us an example," he says. And that's not an example like the example that discourages us and brings us into despair because it is a standard we can never reach. It is the purpose of God the Holy Spirit to reproduce the patience of Jesus in you.

Oh, my dear friends, isn't that wonderful? And the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus that kept him utterly trustworthy. Now, I say to you this evening, when we know something of the weakness and fickleness of our own hearts, when we know how easily faithlessness grips us, and that faithfulness of which Paul speaks is not the faith by which we trust Christ, but the faithfulness by which we invite others to trust us. And when that is something that is so poor and weak in your heart, to think that God the Holy Spirit can make you like Jesus in this. That's what the Apostle is saying.

Think of the kindness of Jesus. The kindness and love of God our Savior has appeared. His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, Paul speaks of it. The meekness of Jesus, his very nature is this. Have you ever thought of that? He who created the universe, for whom everything that was made was made in order that it might honor him, walked through this world with a meek and lowly spirit, ready to set all self-interest aside and bowed utterly to the Father's will.

There is never anything more beautiful in all Scripture than that picture of him who said, "I am meek and lowly in heart. Come," he says, "come to me and you will learn and find rest to your souls because I am meek and lowly in heart." And God the Holy Spirit can make you like Jesus in this.

Where did you ever see self-control like the self-control of Jesus? You say, "I could never be like that." Even in the face of the devil's fiercest blasts, he is in perfect self-control. And the Holy Spirit of God can make you like that, like Jesus. Do you see then that this perfectly balanced, beautiful wholeness of character which we see in Jesus is the fruit of the Spirit? It is its very essence.

And beside it, and the result of sowing to the flesh and producing the works of the flesh, is that disorder and decay and disintegration which marks what Paul is speaking about from verse 19 onwards. And by contrast, says Paul, the fruit of the Spirit is that wholeness and beauty that is in the character of Jesus. It is comprehensive in its character. It is Christ-likeness in its essence.

And thirdly, will you notice the fruit of the Spirit is supernatural in its origin? That is, it is only the Holy Spirit who can produce this fruit. And that is part of the reason that the metaphor is so suitable. We can no more make ourselves Christ-like than we can make ourselves Christians. Left to ourselves, we will produce the catalogue that Paul lists in verses 19 to 21. Think of these relationships, for example. Left to ourselves, we turn away from God, we resent other people, we indulge ourselves rather than disciplining ourselves.

But the glorious thing about being a child of God, and this is the encouragement of this truth, the glorious thing about being a child of God is that what I become as a Christian is not the result of any natural phenomenon of temperament or environment or upbringing. It is the fruit of the Spirit. Now, that does not mean that God is going to cancel out my upbringing or an environment or anything else of the kind. But what it does mean is that I am not the victim of anything that will prevent me displaying these fruits of the Spirit in my character. And that is true whoever you are and whatever your background or history may be, because the fruit of the Spirit is not natural in its origin. It is supernatural.

And that provides a warning for us. There are some people who do try to produce this kind of fruit without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and it would be a very strange thing if in a congregation like this this evening, there were not some of us in this situation. The language that they frequently use is language like this: "I try hard to be a Christian. I try hard to keep up certain standards." And what they are speaking about, you see, is seeking to live a Christian life from a natural basis.

But my dear friends, we need to underline for ourselves again and again that the origin of Christian character and of all Christian experience in its specific essence is supernatural and not natural. That is, it begins with a work of the Holy Spirit regenerating you into newness of life and continues with a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit who changes you from within.

Now, I say there is a warning there. And the warning is a warning against attempting to live the Christian life without having the life of Christ in you to live that life. And I am bound to pause and ask you, could that possibly be a description of you? That what you are doing is seeking to live the Christian life without this supernatural work of the Spirit of God to change you and make you a new man or woman and then produce in you what only the Spirit of God can produce.

But it also is an encouragement because some of us have discounted the mighty work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives or in the lives of others. It's a very important thing for us, those of us especially who deal with other people a great deal and are concerned to help them, that we should never imagine that there is anything too hard for the Lord. And it's so easy for that, naturally at a natural level, thinking in worldly terms, it is possible for us to give up with all kinds of people. And I tell you, my dear friends, there is nothing that is too hard for God, who by the power of his Holy Spirit is able to take the most ordinary common clay and transform it into a vessel in which the glory and beauty of Jesus is seen.

Nor must we give up with ourselves. And so often we can imagine that it's all right for other people and that God can do all kinds of things in the lives of others, but not in mine. And what Paul tells us about the fruit of the Spirit is that it is the Holy Spirit himself who produces it and is ready to do it.

Here is the fourth thing about the fruit of the Spirit that we need to deduce from this teaching. It is that the fruit of the Spirit is not only comprehensive in its character and Christ-likeness in its essence and supernatural in its origin, it is also conditioned in its growth or development. Let me explain what I mean. It would be quite easy for us to think, well, now if this fruit of the Spirit, this Christ-likeness, is all the work of the Holy Spirit and is supernatural and is something that God does in the lives of his people supernaturally, then we must simply sit back and wait for him to do it. And why doesn't he do it in me?

But that's exactly what Paul contradicts in verses 24 to 26, do you notice? There are two conditions in which the fruit of the Spirit appears and grows. First, we must crucify the flesh, verse 24. "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." What does that mean? Well, do you notice that it is something we have done? Paul is not speaking here of the same thing that he speaks of in Galatians 2:20, which is something which has happened to us: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me."

It was Jesus who used the image of crucifixion to speak about self-denial, and this is what Paul is speaking about here as I understand him. He says those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. When we first followed Christ, what we were doing was putting self on the cross and Christ on the throne. And crucifying the flesh daily is daily doing precisely this. It is saying in every situation, "I choose Jesus."

Now, I often say to people, this is something that we're accustomed to think of saying at the beginning of our Christian experience: "I chose Jesus." But my dear friends, if you chose Jesus fifteen, ten, five years ago, but in the daily experience of your daily life you're choosing self, that means very little. The real issue is, in every situation of your daily life, is this what you're saying: "I choose Jesus here"? Paul is saying those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh. Listen to John Brown, great commentator on Galatians of many years ago. "Crucifixion," he says, "produced death not suddenly but gradually. True Christians do not succeed in completely destroying the flesh while here below, but they have fixed it to the cross and they are determined to keep it there."

Now, it is this radical attitude to sin which Paul is urging upon us if we would fulfill one of the conditions for the production of the fruit of the Spirit. And it is simply pointless for us to ask, why is it that the fruit of the Spirit doesn't appear in my life if we are not ready to be radical with sin. Jesus says if your eye offends you, pluck it out. If your hand offends you, cut it off. There is a radical attitude that we need to take with everything that displeases and grieves God.

But here is the other thing. We must not only crucify the flesh, we must walk by the Spirit. Verse 25, "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." That is, we turn from self and sin deliberately day by day and give ourselves to the things of the Spirit. We set our minds, as Paul says elsewhere, on the things of the Spirit. We sow to the Spirit, and the Spirit will lead us and we are to walk according to the gracious ministry of bending our minds and wills to the mind and will of Christ. That is walking by the Spirit.

Now, I often have pointed out that in this same section of Galatians, in chapter six, Paul goes on to speak about the work of sowing and reaping. Chapter six, verse seven, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. He who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." Now, you see what Paul is saying. He is saying holiness is a harvest. It's as simple as that.

Holiness is not some kind of sudden appearance of things in somebody's life inexplicably. "My goodness, look how they have changed! How has it happened? Nobody can tell. There's no reason for it." There is a reason for it, my dear Christian friends. The reason is that they have been sowing to the Spirit. You reap what you sow, says Paul. Now, it's entirely possible, of course, for somebody to pretend to be sowing one thing and actually to sow the other. Entirely possible for the farmer to pretend to be sowing corn but actually to be sowing barley. But when the harvest time comes, when the shoots rise and the harvest is visible, it will be evident because God is not mocked. This is a principle that is never, in the end, broken. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap.

Now, that's true in our Christian character. What are you sowing into your life day by day? What are you sowing in the way you invest your time and energies and thought and emotion? What are you sowing into your life day by day? You young people, what are you sowing just now? Because I tell you in the name of God, you will reap the harvest of it in years to come. And as you sow to the Spirit, you will reap to the Spirit of the things that belong to everlasting life. But if you sow to the flesh, you will from the flesh reap corruption. Of that, there is no question, because God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. And holiness is a harvest, and you will never reap what you haven't sowed. It's as simple as that.

So what are you sowing, may I ask you again, in the secret private places of your own heart and life? What are you sowing? Are you sowing to the flesh, or are you sowing to the Spirit? I suppose that these things could be likened to three areas which are obvious horticulturally for producing a harvest. One is sowing, the other is feeding, and the third is pruning. Now, if you're going to produce fruit, these are the three things that you need to be sure you do. You need to be sure that you sow, and that you sow the right seed, and that you sow it in the right place, and that you sow it sufficiently abundantly. He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows liberally will reap liberally, says Paul. You need to sow.

The second thing is you need to see that the young plant is fed. That's walking by the Spirit, giving yourself to the things of the Spirit. You feed the rising plant. But you also need to prune. And you will discover that this crucifying the flesh is the very thing that Paul is speaking about when he is thinking of pruning back things that are going to hinder growth. And you will know that, that there are things that hinder growth and things that hinder fruit.

We happened to have the television on the other evening late, and that likable fellow in the Beechgrove Garden was on showing us his vine. I don't know if you saw it, but his vine was a proper mess and the result of the wrong kind of care, apparently. But the one thing that he needed to do was to prune it back. Amy Carmichael has got some lovely things that she says about pruning back the vine in the hands of a tried and trusted husbandman. She says there is not one random stroke in it all, nothing taken away that it would not have been loss to keep and gain to lose. And when God touches something in your life and says, "Deal radically with that, my child," it's because he wants to produce fruit in you.

So the fruit of the Spirit is comprehensive in its character. It is Christ-likeness in its essence. It is supernatural in its origin. It is conditioned in its growth. And finally, the fruit of the Spirit is gradual in its development. The metaphor of fruit implies this, and the Bible uses and chooses it, of course, for this very reason. Sometimes the fruit is slow in coming and long in ripening, and so often we have to wait for a long period to see fruit appearing.

And in the day in which we live, when we are impatient in that sense to wait, when we live in the generation that everything has to be done in the instant and we pull a lever or press a button and suddenly it's there, we're impatient of this kind of process. But I want to say to you this evening that when the Bible is speaking about the production of Christian character, it always speaks in horticultural and biological terms and never in mechanical terms. That's not because there was nothing mechanical in those days; there was. But it's simply because the metaphor that fits is the horticultural and biological one. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. First babes, then food, then growth, then maturity, then full manhood. This is the kind of picture that God gives us in Scripture of maturing Christian godliness.

And it takes place slowly and gradually. Sometimes, of course, much more quickly in some than in others. It's never instantaneous, but in some, there is a development that puts those of us who are older and longer on the way to shame because you can see the development of a true godliness in the character of some who have not been on the way half the time of some of the rest of us.

But nonetheless, it's important for us neither to be discouraged with ourselves nor impatient with others, because true fruit of the Spirit is gradual in its growth. Michael Hennell, in his book "John Venn and the Clapham Sect," tells the story of Charles Simeon, who paid a visit to Henry Venn at the beginning of last century in his home in Clapham. Charles Simeon was by nature a hot-tempered, proud, and impetuous young man, apparently, and many people had some experience of this. And those who were in the house when Simeon visited them were rather intrigued by what he was like and disappointed in him and talked a little to each other rather impatiently about this young clergyman.

And then Venn took his family outside into the garden and asked them to pick one of the green peaches from his tree. And he held it up and said to them, "It is green now, and we must wait. But a little more sun and a few more showers and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon." And so it proved to be, and so it can be for us.

The fruit of the Spirit is gradual in its development. That means that God will take years with us, my Christian brothers and sisters, in order to produce that fruit in your life. It means that God will go to any length to produce this in you. It means that God will be ready to set other things aside because he has his heart set on this.

And it also means that whatever you're doing with anybody else, whatever your ministry to other people, whether it's praying for somebody else—and that's the only ministry you have, as if that weren't the greatest one—but if that is the ministry God has given you, you will set everything else aside because that will be what you know God wants. And you will be ready to pray on and to go on until it's seen in them.

Some of you will know that the journal of my brother, who led me to Christ and died very soon afterwards, has meant a great deal to me. There's a passage in it where he is expressing from his heart what he prayed for for someone else, who eventually went to the mission field and served God with great fruitfulness in the other sense. And in the course of that prayer, he says, "Deliver me from ever being content with anything less than the beauty of Jesus in him." That's what God is after in you. And I tell you, he will not be content until the Lord Jesus sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied with that.

Now, let me summarize and conclude. If the fruit of the Spirit is comprehensive in its character, we then need to be balanced in our view of the Christian life and think in terms of this all-inclusive comprehensiveness, which is biblical holiness. If the fruit of the Spirit is Christ-likeness in its essence, it is essentially this that we should be asking the Holy Spirit to do in us and looking to the Holy Spirit to produce in us: the likeness of Jesus that will glorify him, and not things that might gratify us merely.

If the fruit of the Spirit is supernatural in its origin, then we need to be full of humility about ourselves and full of hope about others, and aware that the place where lives are changed is at the throne of grace. Have you ever given yourself to pray people on? My dear friends, many of us give ourselves to praying people into the kingdom. But have you taken up the ministry with some poor, broken, needy Christian soul and prayed them on? Because that's one of the implications that the fruit of the Spirit is supernatural in its origin.

If the fruit of the Spirit is conditioned in its growth, we need to be disciplined and careful in our living. If the fruit of the Spirit is gradual in its development, we need to be patient with others and with ourselves. In God's great mercy, he has given us this glorious prospect that we may be changed. And my longing and heart's desire this evening is that we might be content with nothing less than this. Let us pray together.

Our blessed Lord, we thank you that you have designed such glorious purposes for our lives, that you might even set forth the beauty of Jesus through such common clay as we are. And we marvel that you have had it in your heart to do this. Be pleased to fulfill all your good pleasure in us and grant us to become what you mean us to be. For the glory and praise of our Lord Jesus Christ we ask it. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hearthewordofgod.org, where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hearthewordofgod.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.