Limitless Fruit: Fruit of the Spirit
Russ and I took a quick trip south last weekend to celebrate our first anniversary.
We knew we would be checking in late, and I am all too familiar with the chaos of late check-in. We covered all our bases–we wrote in a note on our reservation that we booked directly with the hotel and even called just to make sure they knew we would be in at midnight so they didn’t give our room away.
To no avail.
We arrived at our destination at 11:30 pm–30 minutes earlier than anticipated even! Ha!
Our room was gone.
Of course.
I’ve traveled quite a bit.
Russ travels all the time for work.
I can honestly say I have never been downgraded from a room I reserved.
Until this.
It was all so bizarre.
We were shown to a small room with no desk and assured the manager would “make it right” first thing in the morning. Normally, I would have just dealt with it, but Russ had to work the next day, so he needed a desk. Instead, he had a very uncomfortable chair in a corner!
He had been working for 2 ½ hours before we decided we should figure out what the heck was going on.
But, here’s where the struggle happens.
We both hate confrontation, neither of us ever wants to come across as a “Karen,” and we had to figure out how to handle this and not be the opposite of Jesus.
I drew the short straw and headed to the front desk prepared to be as Jesus-like as possible.
I politely and apologetically explained our dilemma to the manager at the desk who also happened to be the one we spoke to on the phone and who had written the note to ensure our room wasn’t given away.
I was so overly conscious about not being a jerk I found myself apologizing to him as much as he was apologizing to me.
After a couple more hours, I began referring to this manager as my new best friend, started to think he might have been stalking me (kidding), and managed to get moved into the room we had reserved (with a desk, thankfully).
I could have been a jerk. In fact, I had to practice immense self-control to not be a jerk. It was important to me to not be a jerk, though, and I think much of that has to do with the fact that I’ve been researching and writing about the fruit of the spirit for the last two months! (Well-played, God, well-played).
I had planned on being done with this series until last week when I was writing what I thought was going to be my last post. I found myself getting caught up again and again on this last sentence in this set of verses:
Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless.
Galatians 5:23 (TPT)
As I was writing on strength of spirit/self-control last week, it was like this sentence got cemented in my brain and kept surfacing over and over again.
I just kept thinking that God doesn’t want us to be jerks.
He wants us to be led by the Spirit and have these limitless qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control so that we aren’t jerks!
And, if we miss that message, I just have to think we are completely missing the point.
The Law
I was a teenage Pharisee.
It’s funny for me to look back on my church and theology experiences from my younger years and think about the irony.
We spent so much time criticizing the Pharisees of Jesus’s day because of their adherence to a law and rejection of Jesus, grace, and freedom–while we were living in the exact same way. We might not have been adhering to the Jewish laws, but we were still adhering to our own man-made laws and legalistic ways.
I look back and try to think about the laws we followed–both written and implied–and they look something like this:
If you want to be saved, you have to follow this five-step process.
Dress clothes are required on Sunday mornings.
Women can only teach other women, kids, and males under 18.
Attending church whenever the doors are open is a must.
The Great Commission means you must convert everyone who does not attend this church/church with the same name so they don’t go to he*l.
If you aren’t baptized, you will go to he*l.
God only allows divorce in the case of marital infidelity, but He always wants reconciliation–regardless.
Se* outside of marriage is just a slight step below blasphemy.
Everyone is broken, and only God can fix them.
Appearance of perfection supersedes authenticity.
When bad things happen to you, it’s God punishing you or disciplining you.
If you face trouble, it’s because you’re living outside of God’s will.
Submission to God, but definitely submission to man is what’s important.
Everything is black and white.
This is where it gets really tricky.
This is where the struggle happens for most churches.
It’s very difficult to teach and preach relationship, but it is easy to preach rules like this.
So, that’s what happens.
And, it’s what’s been happening since the Israelites wandered around in the wilderness.
They wanted rules–they just wanted God to tell them what to do.
If we aren’t careful, we can find ourselves in that same situation because, let’s face it, it is easier to follow rules or check items off a checklist than it is to build a relationship.
That’s the crux of this entire thing.
Fruit of the Spirit are innate qualities we cultivate from our relationship with God and guidance from the Holy Spirit that show themselves in mighty ways through our actions.
You can’t have one without the other though:
The qualities have to live in our hearts
The actions have to flow from the heart
Paul specifically tells us we should never place the law (read: rules, regulations, legalism, checklists, etc) above these qualities.
That means that we have to experience a heart change that results in behavioral changes–specifically behavioral changes that drastically affect how we treat other people.
That’s what’s important here–not how well we can blindly adhere to laws or rules without a change of heart.
Limitless Fruit
I think the place where people get triggered in these types of discussions is the idea of “abusing grace.” Theoretically, it’s impossible to “abuse grace” because of the very nature of grace itself, but that’s a philosophical discussion for another day.
Here’s the thing with this argument that is too often overlooked–a heart change, a life lived in the Spirit, has to result in a change of actions–that’s where all these qualities Paul talks about come into play.
Our fruit should be limitless; these qualities in our hearts and our lives should be limitless.
We shouldn’t need a checklist, laws, regulations, etc… because the Holy Spirit should be guiding our hearts and our actions.
That’s relationship.
The reality is that relationship is harder than rules.
Rules are easier for the religious because they have measurable results; whereas, relationship is a more abstract concept.
Rules allow people to check items off their list on a daily basis. Have I:
Read my bible?
Completed my daily devotions?
Prayed for my meals?
Identified three things I’m grateful for?
Gone to church on Sunday?
Attended Small Group?
Taught Sunday School?
Stood up during worship?
Worn modest clothing?
Told that friend I would pray for them?
Those are things we can easily check off of our lists in order to feel good about ourselves, but there is such a danger in living by these rules instead of living a life in the Spirit that is guided by relationship because these things can so quickly become nothing more than tasks to complete.
I get it.
It’s easier to tell people to read their Bibles for 15 minutes a day, to pray before their meals and before they go to bed, to go to church, and to volunteer than it is to guide them to a relationship.
We function better in the literal than we do the abstract.
Living a life guided by the Holy Spirit, though, requires us to put our faith and invest ourselves in the abstract in order to produce literal fruit. Instead of simply going through the motions or checking items off a checklist, we’ll be guided and nudged to let these qualities from our hearts overflow into our actions on a daily basis.
Instead of simply completing a checklist in the morning, our lives will exude limitless:
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Gentleness
Faithfulness
Strength of spirit
And, they will exude those qualities in a myriad of ways because they won’t simply be a routine we walk through every day, but they will be a lifestyle we choose to live by.
And, that was Paul’s point here.
Never set the law, checklists, rules, and regulations above these qualities in our lives. Instead, live in the Spirit and allow the Spirit to guide us to a life where these qualities are limitless in our hearts and actions.
Friend, I understand this isn’t easy. I understand that it’s easier to live by checklists, but I also understand the damage those checklists and laws can cause in our lives. I pray that when you are faced with legalism or a temptation to fall into following rules and regulations alone you will remember Paul’s words to never set those things above the authenticity of a life lived in the Spirit.
Reflections:
Is it easier for you to live a life guided by the Spirit or a life of rules and regulations? Why?
What is one checklist/legalistic practice you need to give up?
How do you think a life lived by the Spirit looks different than a life lived by the law?
