LIFE BYTHE SPIRIT—CHAPTER 2--GOD’S PERSONALITY

Last week I introduced a series of post I titled LIFE BY THE SPIRIT. I trust you have had the opportunity this past week to examine Galatians 5:16-21 and have received confirmation that you have indeed walked away from those things listed there. This week I’d like to draw your attention to Galatians 5:22-23. This is a very familiar verse to a lot of us. There are nine elements listed here which are as a group called the fruit of the Spirit.


22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.


These are two very special incredible verses that tell us that God the Father wants to transmit and impart nine specific fruits of the Holy Spirit into our personalities. We as Christians often try and measure our spiritual condition by the manifestation of these nine elements in our daily lives. We often are pleased when we find evidence that any one of these elements has altered the way we respond in certain trying situations. That is not a bad thing but I’m afraid many of us miss the real implications of what these fruits represent.


Before we can examine these nine fruits in detail I’d like for us to consider what these fruits represent. Geneses 1:26 tells us that we are created in the image of God. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and verse 27 says So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. We were indeed created in God’s image. We also know from scripture and from our own personal experience that our salvation was also a creative act of God. When we placed our faith in Jesus as our Savior we became a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!


So you ask, “What has being created in the image of God got to do with the fruit of the Spirit?” It has everything to do with it because the nine elements listed in our focus verses are each an attribute of God. They are descriptive of God’s personality. When we placed our faith in Jesus we were once again created in the image of God. Our focus in this series is to understand what God wants us to “put on” and what God wants us to try to “put away”.


In our focus verses God has purposely isolated and spelled out nine qualities that come directly from the Holy Spirit. While there are similarities between these attributes they are different from the Gifts of the Spirit; the Gifts of the Spirit equip us with supernatural abilities for the purpose of building up the church. I believe since God has purposely isolated and spelled out these nine attributes of His image He is letting us know the extreme importance of these fruits.


22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.


Before we get into a discussion on each individual fruit lets notice a couple of things about verse 22.

• The word “Spirit” is with a capital “S” – which means these 9 fruits are coming directly from the Holy Spirit, not from us. While we were certainly able to exhibit these personality traits before we were saved they were void of the power of the Spirit.


• What this means is that God’s love, God’s peace, God’s joy and God’s goodness can be transmitted into our personality. These are His attributes and personality qualities that move into the core of our personality.


• Think about the ramifications of this – that God the Father Himself is allowing us to share in a part of His divine nature by allowing His Holy Spirit to transmit and impart these nine divine qualities into our soul and personality!
  

This is why God the Father is specifically telling us in this verse that these nine fruits are coming directly from His Holy Spirit – so that we can all fully appreciate the magnitude of such an experience.

Jesus has already told us that He is the vine and we are the branches. The branches draw their life from the vine, not vice versa. Just as the branch draws its life from the vine, so too must we draw our life directly from Jesus. Jesus will release His life directly into us through the Holy Spirit in the exact same way that the vine will release the life of the tree into the branches.
In one short, but incredibly powerful Scripture, God the Father is giving all of us an incredible revelation on what can go on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm for those who are willing to walk away from the things listed in verses 16-21 and allow Him, through the work and power of the Holy Spirit, to change our personalities by living LIFE BY THE SPIRIT.
To be continued….
Tommy—one counted among the redeemed