Reimagining the Fruit of the Spirit

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Galatians 5:19-26

Teaching about the Fruit of the Spirit always feels like a conundrum. Paul gives this killer list about what a follower of Jesus looks and acts like, he brings it back to the cross, and gives us this beautiful picture of fruit being grown - not forced out with white-knuckle effort.

That’ll preach.

But then we get to the action step…. because we’ve got to give everyone something to do, right? Some clear way to start living out what they just learned. BUT, we just got done saying that fruit trees don’t force out their own fruit. It’s a byproduct of… something else.

So what do we tell them to DO, without telling them to just DO the things that are supposed to naturally grow when we walk with the Spirit?

Unfortunately, we usually fall back on the go-to answers for all things spiritual growth.

Read your bible.
Pray.
Do more Christian stuff so you can stop feeding that nasty flesh that you keep feeding and can’t seem to stop… (*read as* “do better and stop sinning”)

Seeing the problem?

Obviously, we wouldn’t say it all like that - we would say that the point is that we’re all just branches, and we should do what it takes to stay connected to the vine! And that sounds much better.

But how do you do that…?

Bible…
Pray…
Stop doing bad stuff…
Come to church…
Get better friends…

There is a big WHAT and HOW hole in this story, and the neuroscience of recovery will help us reframe both.

• • • • • • • • • •

First, we have to reframe the WHAT.

It seems like Paul is grabbing this fruit metaphor from Jesus in John 15 and fleshing it out.

“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. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

This image of complete oneness is beyond powerful - it pushes much further than our language’s weak version of the word “love”.

Jesus doesn’t want us to love him like Rose loves Jack or I love nachos… In fact, he’s hardly telling us to do anything! Our oneness seems more like a gift from Jesus TO us, and we’re just instructed to NOT move.

Jesus seems to be painting the perfect picture of the most powerful force that he hardwired into our brains: attachment.

Neuroscientists and psychologists literally can’t quantify or understand yet just how powerful attachment is. It seems to be the strongest force in a human being. It defies logic, produces unbreakable loyalty, and leads to incredible joy.

A lack of it can cause a brain and body to physically under-develop, and a full dose of it doesn’t even seem possible - there’s always room for more. 

Attachment is so much better than the word love! Our relationship with God isn’t a theological exercise or a passive understanding of the logistics of our faith. Jesus is pointing us toward an intimate, raw, experiential attachment with each of us.

But there’s more to the what, and it comes from all of Paul’s context in Galatians 5.

All of Paul’s examples and surrounding comments are all about horizontal relationships.

• he warns to not “indulge the flesh,” but do the opposite and serve one another humbly in love

• every “act of the flesh” leads to relational breakdown and isolation (hatred, discord, selfish ambition, jealousy…)

• he encourages to restore others caught in sin and carry each other’s burdens
  

So the fruit of the Spirit isn’t just about my oneness with God - it’s about God’s desire for my oneness with others.

If I’m not deeply attached to God’s people, I won’t fully experience my attachment to God.

So our new vision of “walking in the Spirit” is a deep attachment to both God and His people.

• • • • • • • • • •

With our new what, we can reframe the HOW.

With a new vision for WHAT the fruit of the Spirit really looks like, we have to provide a new action plan. And if life in the flesh leads to relational wounding, then life in the Spirit should lead to relational healing.

We have to stop thinking about the fruit of the Spirit as “my holier actions” and reframe it as “restored trust with God and others.”

What does that look like practically?

With God, it looks like honest, painful conversations with Him about my sin, my wounds, my fears, and my pain; uncovering and inviting Him into the places that are unresolved, still hurting, and the most shameful. Those are the parts of our hearts that we protect and avoid the most because they hurt the most. So naturally, that would be the place that He’s most interested in securely attaching Himself to.

And with others… it looks very similar. God gave us each other to be His physical presence on this earth. That’s why Paul was so insistent on giving horizontal instructions right after talking about the fruit of the Spirit! Attachment is a gift we give each other. We can’t choose to be fully loved by someone else, but we can all choose to fully love someone else.

And when we each make that choice, everyone gets what they need. Everyone experiences the fullness of their abiding attachment with God.

To make it even more practical, we have to realize what makes FRUIT such a perfect metaphor. Fruit is vulnerable, and so are all of Paul’s examples.

Love is vulnerable because I might not be loved back.
Gentleness is vulnerable because I could get walked on.
Peace is vulnerable because my enemy might make war.
Forbearance is vulnerable because I’m leaving justice to God and not taking it for myself.

The Fruit of the Spirit makes me vulnerable. I’m no longer protecting myself because I believe God will protect me and that the way of Jesus is worth it.

Learning to trust again is the hard work of spiritual formation, and it’s what healing actually looks like. Choosing to act like the vulnerable humans we are and get our needs met by others in relationship instead of on our own is a willful return to God’s original Eden design: naked and unashamed, “one” as Jesus and His Father were one as he walked the earth with us.

It all comes down to a simple idea:
the Fruit of the Spirit is evidence of a healed heart, not of good intentions or even healthy behaviors. So let’s make sure to trust in an action plan that leads us to that healing we all so desperately need.