Roots & Fruits
I don't know about you, but I absolutely love fruit. Cantaloupe, blackberries, bananas, apples, you name it, I love it. Vegetables, on the other hand, are not my first choice, (unless they are cooked with a solid 1 to 1 ratio of butter to veggies, then I like them just as much as the fruit) but that is an entirely different topic.
Why am I talking about fruit? Well, you see, growing up around the church I heard about some particular "fruit" quite often, and I was perplexed. What is this fruit, you may ask? It's the fruit of the Spirit. Now, if you aren't familiar with them or need a quick refresher, here they are:
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Patience
- Kindness
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Gentleness
- Self-Control
After I got past the initial misunderstanding that these weren't supposed to be actual fruits to eat, I began to look at them as tasks to accomplish. I began to take one fruit at a time and focus on it. Take "joy" for instance. I would wake up in the morning and pray that God would give me joy as I went into my day. Then, as I went throughout my day, I would grade myself on whether or not I had joy. I'd then move on to "patience" and follow the same process. I was striving to obtain each of the fruits. After all, that's what the Bible says, right?!
Not exactly.
You see, in Galatians 5 (in my particular Bible), there are 33 lines in the section talking about walking in the Spirit, but only 3 of those actually contain the fruits. If we're not careful, we focus too much on the 3 and miss the other 30.
What do those other 30 lines say?
There's A LOT, but I'm going to keep it short and hone in on one verse that flipped this whole subject on its head for me. Before the passage talks about the "acts of the flesh" and the "fruit of the Spirit," we find this verse:
"For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself." Galatians 5:14
If we aren't careful, we chase after the fruits, when we should be looking for the root that produces the fruit! If I wanted a delicious Honeycrisp apple (the best apples known to man), it wouldn't just appear in my hand, no matter how much I prayed about it or focused on it. That apple has to come from a source: a tree with a healthy root system. Without that, the apple would never exist.
The same is true with the fruit of the Spirit. There is nothing wrong with having the fruit. That just shouldn't be where our focus resides. Instead, it should be on the source (the roots) that makes such fruit possible. What is the root of the fruit? It's the command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Following this command will consequently produce the fruit of the Spirit. Instead of having to keep track of NINE different fruits, we are given only ONE command to follow. Those nine fruits are just for our reference to check in and see if we are following the command. If we are, then we will see the fruit in our lives.
Work on the root, not the fruit.
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