John 15
I was enjoying a tasty cluster of grapes the other day.
As I picked one off its stem I realized that all the delicious juice inside had passed through that now dry stem.
Then I thought about the seeds contained in the fruit – seeds which can reproduce hundreds of new plants!
And that dry twig? It once was attached to a vine which pumped every drop of life through it to the cluster of grapes (“two or three gathered together”).
My mind took me to John 15:4-5 where Jesus said,
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
More on grapes
As I’ve considered this further, I realize that the stem that reaches the grapes is not the branch. The stem is part of the cluster that is picked along with the grapes. The branch remains for another season to produce more clusters. That’s “clusters“ – plural. My little stem of grapes was a small part of just one cluster among many others picked from just one branch on the vine. As individual branches attached to the vine, we can bear MUCH fruit – many clusters of fruit, stems with multiple grapes – as long as we remain attached to the vine.
The fruit of the spirit is a cluster, not a bunch of separate characteristics that we try to achieve, one at a time. We might try that, but as fruit of the Spirit, they all come together. “The fruit of the Spirit is…” not “the fruits of the Spirit are …”. It’s the work of Christ in us that produces the fruit. We can’t produce full clusters of fruit without connection to the vine.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)
Am I producing the fruit of the Spirit as I interface with the world? Or am I yielding sour grapes?
Are you?
And BTW, shouldn’t we be expecting to see the fruit of the Spirit in leaders who claim to be Christians?
Is that what we’re seeing?
