And how it leads to real growth
Do you find your spiritual life disappointing?
We are promised new life, abundant life, eternal life. But all you’re feeling is the humdrum of ordinary life. All that “love, joy, and peace”, all that spiritual fruit stuff doesn’t seem to be growing in you.
Maybe your spiritual life shot up like a rocket for the first couple of weeks, months, or years. But now it has fallen back to earth with a crash. And you are confused and disappointed.
Are the people the problem?
Spiritual growth is very much like personal growth. It’s connected to people, to relationships.
Personal growth races forward when new people are introduced into your life. You get a new job or a some new co-workers. You move to a new place and make new friends. You get married. You have your first child.
Introducing new people into your life creates opportunities to sand off the rough edges of your personality, to chip away at unhelpful communication patters, to embrace different kinds of people.
Or these new relationship can deeply hurt us, leaving us disappointed and misunderstood. And when that happens—little by little—we pull away from relationships. We think it’s better to go it alone, or at least to live with a very some group of very safe people.
Going it alone stunts our personal growth. But it also stunts our spiritual growth.
This is the one thing we forget when we think about the fruit of the Spirit—that it’s all about relationship with others.
In other words, the fruit of the Spirit only grows in and through relationships.
To understand this we need to look at metaphor of “fruit” in spiritual fruit.
Fruit Metaphor
What is fruit?
Not spiritual fruit—I’m talking about real fruit.
Fruit is how a fruit-bearing plant reproduces. Fruit is how a plant multiples itself.
Fruit is not for the life of the old plant. It is for the life of the NEW plant. The goal of fruit is not the continued growth of the plant. But to start a new plant, a new tree.
Also, fruit is a sign of maturity. Fruit-bearing trees take a couple of years before they start bearing fruit. And a small berry bush will take a year or so.
So the source of the fruit is maturity (from the roots) and the purpose is reproduction (other plants).
The Thing We Forget About Spiritual Fruit
The thing we forget about the Fruit of the Spirit is that they are all about relationship. They come through relationship (with the Spirit). And they are for relationship (with others).
Relationship with the Spirit.
For the fruit to grow in us we must connect to the source of the fruit. And the source is the Spirit of God.
Too often we choose to follow Jesus—we are “born-again”—but then we go back to the old way of living. The Apostle Paul calls this living by the law (Gal. 3:2-5) or living according to the desires of the flesh. As he says, “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5: 16).
If you are drawing from the desires of the flesh, then you won’t get the fruit of the Spirit.
It is through the Spirit that we have power to live the life of God (Acts 1:8). And if the Spirit is powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead, then the Spirit will grow the fruit in your life (Rom. 8:11).
So the question is, are you living in relationship to the Spirit? Or are you still living by the flesh according to the law?
Only when our roots are drawing from a relationship with the Spirit will our limbs bear the fruit of the Spirit for others.
Relationship with the other people.
For the fruit to grow in us we must live in relationship to other people.
The Fruit of the Spirit reproduce life in others, helping other people to grow and flourish. The fruit isn’t for us. It’s for them. So we have to give the Fruit of the Spirit away in relationship.
So if you aren’t sharing your life with anyone, if you are not in community with others, if you are distant from family, then the Spirit will not be able to effectively grow the fruit in your life.
Are you living in community? Are seeking to bless others with the life of Jesus? Or are you isolated and insulated from others? If so you need to push yourself to connect with people in some way.
The Relational Fruit of the Spirit
Here is a short index of how the fruit connect to our relationships with others.
- Love: the bond of affection in our relationship with others.
- Joy: the high-energy response to our relationships of love.
- Peace: the low-energy rest when all is right in our relationships.
- Patience: the humble overcoming of relational obstacles.
- Kindness: the tender walking with the weakness of others.
- Goodness: the desire to promote the well-being of others.
- Faithfulness: the committed endurance in our relationships.
- Gentleness: the attunement to the vulnerability of others.
- Self-Control: the refusal to overwhelm the other with one’s own impulses or desires.
As Paul say about this fruit, against such things there is no law (Gal. 5: 23).
Check out Dr. Geoff Holsclaw’s FREE 5 Ways to Find God’s Presence by Refocusing Faith checklist. Geoff is a seminary professor and a Vineyard church pastor who has written several books on life with God on mission. To learn more, go to geoffreyholsclaw.net.