Nine weeks, nine fruit. Patience, goodness. Joy, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, peace, gentleness, love. As we finish this journey I want to remind you that the goal was never to complete a series about fruit, the goal is transformation! When Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit, he isn’t giving us nine spiritual merit badges to collect.
He’s describing what begins to happen when ordinary people increasingly live under the influence of the Holy Spirit. We become more patient, goodness becomes visible, joy becomes deeper than our circumstances. We become faithful and kindness changes how we treat people.
Self-control changes how we respond, peace steadies us, gentleness changes our accent, attitude, and actions, and love becomes the current flowing through it all. Put all of that together and what do you get?
A LIFE THAT LOOKS MORE LIKE JESUS. That’s what the Holy Spirit has been doing all along. God isn’t trying to create a slightly improved version of you. He’s forming Christ in you, but transformation usually doesn’t happen all at once. Fruit grows slowly. Then suddenly it shows up in places where we don’t recognize it until life puts us under pressure and suddenly we realize: I didn’t respond the way I used to. That’s fruit! That’s evidence that something real has been happening inside you.
Throughout this series we’ve said: Fruit reveals influence. So maybe the best way to finish isn’t by asking whether you’ve mastered all nine fruit. Maybe the better question is: Does my life look more like Jesus than it did before? Am I loving people differently, or responding differently? Am I learning to carry strength with gentleness? Is my joy becoming less dependent on what happens around me? If the answer is yes, even imperfectly, thank God, the fruit IS growing.
But Jesus says something else about fruit in John 15. He doesn’t merely say He wants fruit, His desire is, much fruit! So we’re not finished, there is still more growing to do. That means more surrender, more abiding, more transformation and more Jesus.
Maybe there’s even more than fruit!
