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Turn with me to Galatians 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law.
Like father, like son. Like father, like daughter. These phrases aren't just folk sayings—they reveal a profound spiritual truth. When I became a Christian, I received something extraordinary: the divine nature of God Himself.
In John 1:12, the apostle John writes, "But as many as received him, that is Jesus, to them he gave the rights to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of flesh, or of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but they were born of God."
When you say yes to Jesus and put your faith in Him as your Lord and Savior, the Bible says you receive the right to become a child of God. Romans 8:15 declares, "For we did not receive a spirit to fear, of bondage, to fear again, but we received a spirit of adoption by which we cry, by which we say, referring to God, Aba, Father, Father, Father."
The Spirit of God Himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God. Paul reestablishes this in Galatians 3:26: "For you are all children of God." Say it with me: I am a child of God.
Ephesians 4:24 tells us to "Put on your new nature that has been created like God, truly righteous and holy." Peter picks up the same truth: "For by which we have been given exceeding great and precious promises that through these promises, we may become partakers of the divine nature."
When I say yes to Jesus, I become a new creation. I become a child of God created like God. I share, the Bible says, in His divine nature. I have God's DNA—the divine nature of the Almighty.
No living thing can sustainably produce outside of its nature.
The orange tree produces orange fruit because it is written in its DNA that it must produce orange fruit. Jesus said in Matthew 12:33, "Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. For a tree is recognized by its fruit."
The nature of the tree determines the nature of the fruit. If I want to change the fruit, I change the tree. Just as no tree can sustainably produce fruit outside of its nature, no one can sustainably act contrary to their nature. You might pretend for a while, but eventually it catches up with you.
Before Jesus came, the fruit production in God's people was inconsistent. The children of Israel swung between trusting and abandoning God, between peace and worry, gratitude and complaints, joy and depression, faithfulness and idolatry. So what did God do? God changed their nature.
2 Corinthians 5:17 declares, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and everything has become new." When I say yes to Jesus, I am a new creation with a new nature.
Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1:3, "By his divine power, God has given me, God has given you, if you say yes to Jesus, everything you need to live a godly life." God's power did not just come to save me. God's power came to change me—to give me everything I need to live a godly life. His divine power has come to make me like my Father.
The fruit of the spirit is the expression of the nature of God in you. It is the supernatural expression of the character and the person of God on the inside of you. It is the expression of the person and the power of the Holy Spirit in you.
The fruit of the spirit is not just something I do. This is not about behavioral modifications or ethical living or morality. This is not about observing rules and regulations. The fruit of the spirit is the privilege we have, the favor we have to share and express the divine nature of God.
It's about living out the life of God in us. If we have the nature of God in us, then we will exhibit the character of God through our lives. We are able to love because 1 John 4:8 says God is love. We have goodness because Psalm 18:1 says God is good. We have joy because Psalm 2:4 says God rejoices.
What we call the fruit of the spirit is just the expression of the nature of God on the inside of us.
When I was growing up, I was a rascal. My parents went through a lot—I think the devil was trying to stop what is happening now! When I would misbehave, my mom would say, "You're a Ehiemere. You're Dr. Jude's son." What was she trying to say? You're acting out of character. You're acting out of who you are. She was calling out the nature of the person who gave birth to me. "Because you're my son, that is not how we behave."
That's why Jesus said in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruits."
Throughout the Bible, Jesus was very strict with trees that did not bear fruit. In Mark 11, he curses a fig tree because it had no fruit. In Luke 13, He tells a story of a man who had a fig tree he tried for years to produce fruit from, and he wanted to cut it down. When it comes to trees, God wants them to bear fruit.
In John 15:2, Jesus says, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, God takes away. And every branch that is doing well, that is bearing fruit—God wants more." God prunes you to do better. God is passionate about fruit. God is interested in fruit.
You did not get the divine nature of God by the divine power of God to remain the same. It is a waste of the divine nature of God if it is not evident that something has changed on the inside of you.
You can come to God, come to Jesus just as you are, but you best believe He's not going to leave you just as you are. When He transforms your nature, He expects you to live out of this new nature. He expects you to bear fruit.
Matthew 3:8 calls it "producing fruit that is fitting of repentance, in keeping with repentance." If you say you are born again, if you say you have said yes to Jesus and He is your Lord, there has to be proof. It has to be evidence. Your coworkers should be able to tell. Your spouse should be able to tell. Your kids should be able to tell that something has happened on the inside of you.
Galatians 5:22 lists the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Notice something important: it does not say "fruits" of the spirit. It says "fruit"—one fruit. There's not many fruits. When I hear people say, "I have joy, but God is working on my kindness," I ask: Do you really have joy? Because it's one fruit with many manifestations of one fruit. Many expressions of one.
Matthew 7:20 establishes that through this fruit people will be able to distinguish you. They'll be able to identify that you are a follower of Christ. Our walk with God is not just a heart thing. It has to be evident. It has to be obvious.
I know there are people here saying, "Pastor Victor, I've said yes to Jesus. I'm born again, but I'm still struggling. I'm still struggling with inappropriate thoughts. I'm still struggling with lust. I feel the same way. I think the same way. I act the same way."
Believe me. You're not alone. Everybody in this room is struggling. If you weren't struggling, you'd be in heaven by now. We are all struggling.
We struggle because of something I call the tension of the new birth—the tension of being born again. When we become born again, something instantly happens to our spirits. Our spirit is immediately changed, and we're given the spirit that has the image of God. This happens instantly and instantaneously when you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth.
But here's the tension: your soul and your body remain the same. If you had a pimple before saying that prayer, the pimple is still there. If you had a pot belly, it's still there. If you had anger problems, except for a miracle of deliverance, you still have the anger problem. Your soul and your body remains the same.
The Bible calls this the flesh. When you read the Bible and see "flesh," it means one of three things: the soul, the physical body, or the combination of both.
This unchanged state of the flesh comes with unique challenges. We still have our old habits and patterns we have to contend with. Our flesh wants to keep doing what it was doing before we said yes to Jesus. It's pulling us back into already established habits and patterns.
If your mouth doesn't have control and you say yes to Jesus with that same mouth, you can go out and curse someone out. Why? Because it's a habit. It's an already established pattern. Your flesh wants to keep control even though your spirit has been changed.
There is this war because your spirit with the new nature wants to exert control and your flesh says, "No, no, no. This is how we've done it for the last 25 years. Nobody can raise their voice at us. We are not punks in this place." It's like self-control versus self—what control? Shut up, spirit. Clap back! It's a whole eternal warfare. It's a civil war.
The spirit is pulling in one direction and the flesh is pulling another direction. Paul sums it up perfectly in Galatians 5:17: "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants. And the spirit gives us desires that are opposite to the sinful nature. And these two forces are constantly fighting each other so that you are not free to carry out your good intentions."
Yes, you have good intentions. But there is this sinful nature—this flesh, these old habits and patterns. Romans 7:18 captures it: "For I know that in me, that is not in my spirit but in my flesh, nothing good dwells there. For to will the desire to do good is present. But how to perform what I want to do, I do not find. For the good that I will, I desire to do, I do not do. But the evil that I don't want to do, I practice."
In verse 23, Paul continues: "For there is another law. There's another pattern. There's another habit in my flesh that goes against the law of what I want to do."
There is this constant civil war—the old pattern and the new nature. The Bible refers to these old patterns as the works of the flesh.
Galatians 5:19-21 lists what the works of the flesh are: "The works of the flesh are evident: adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like."
The NLT puts it this way: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger—clapback—selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other such things.
These are the things that the flesh keeps pulling us back to. Many of us in here are struggling because we almost have to choose every hour. And here is the bad news: anytime we yield to the old habits and the old patterns, we strengthen the flesh against the spirit.
Someone once said that there are two dogs, two wild animals in a man. It's the one you feed that becomes stronger. Paul puts it this way in Romans 6:16: "Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey. You can be a slave to sin which leads to death or you can choose to obey God which leads to righteousness."
2 Peter 1:9 says, "He who lacks the fruit of the spirit is shortsighted even to blindness, for he has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins." What is he trying to say? He who doesn't show the evidence of a changed nature has forgotten that they are changed.
It is possible to have the divine nature and not express it. It's possible to have divine power that gives you a divine nature. It's possible to be freed from the power of sin and act like you're still bound. It's possible to be freed from addiction and act like you're still subject to addiction.
When you say yes to Jesus, sin is no more a dominion issue. Before you said yes to Jesus, you could not help yourself. But when you say yes to Jesus, by that divine power and the divine nature on the inside of you, you can say no to sin.
It is possible to be dead to sin and somehow still keep it alive. It's like losing a spouse. You loved them, but they're dead. They're gone. You come home after the funeral and you're looking at the pictures, watching home videos, smelling their clothes, going to your favorite restaurants, watching your favorite movies. Yes, the person is dead, but somehow your actions are keeping them alive.
The tension of the new birth is that this spiritual fruit has to be lived out through a flesh that wants to maintain old patterns.
For this to happen, the flesh has to be trained to produce fruit. The flesh has to be taught, has to be trained to cooperate with your new spirit and the Holy Spirit.
This training is what Romans 12 calls transformation. The Bible says in Romans 12:1, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God that what do you do? Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Your body means what you do. Let what you do be a sacrifice to God, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
Present your bodies. Renew your mind. Our flesh has to be taught. It has to be trained for it to be transformed. This is not going to be easy. This is going to be hard. You're going to bite your lip. You're going to be upset. You're going to want to respond. It's going to cost you. You will type the text and then delete and then type okay. Just get one K. That's all you get.
Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 9: "But I discipline my body and I bring it under subjection." The King James version says, "I keep my body under." The body has to be wrestled into submission. And it's not going to be easy.
Our flesh must be nurtured by our new nature to produce the fruit of the spirit. Before we go into the individual fruits, understand this: Your flesh is going to do one thing. Your spirit is going to do another thing. Your flesh is going to pull you to the works of the flesh. Your spirit is going to try to bear us the fruit of the spirit. That means we have to fight for the flow of the fruit. Fight for it. Wrestle for it. Bring your flesh under surrender.
Why is this important? The fruit of the spirit is victory over the devil. Greg Stier says in his book A Call for Character: "There is not a situation, trial, or temptation that a child of God will face that one of the fruit of the spirit will not enable him to overcome."
So the fruit of the spirit is how we overcome the temptations of the devil.
The fruit of the spirit is God's system of cancelling out the pull of your flesh. It's how God keeps you functioning in His mercies, in His grace. How God keeps you pleasing Him.
The expression of the fruit of the spirit is victory over the devil. When the devil wants you to hate and you love, love becomes victory over the devil. When the devil wants you to be anxious and yet you choose peace, that is victory. Kindness becomes victory. Goodness becomes victory. Faithfulness to my wife, to my spouse, to my friends, to my objectives becomes victory. Self-control becomes victory over the enemy.
The fruit of the spirit is victory over the enemy. And in order to maintain perpetual victory over the enemy, we must produce perpetual fruits. There can be no breaks. There can be no breaks.
To produce perpetual fruit, the fruit of the spirit has to be developed. This requires two tests: a written test and a practical test.
To pass the written test, we must know the written word. We must read our Bibles. There is no shortcut to it. How will you know what the word of God says? How will you feed your spirit? The word of God feeds your spirit. It strengthens your spirit. It sharpens your spirit. It shows you what is possible in this new nature.
How do we know what is possible if we don't read our Bibles every day?
When your word level drops, your fruit production stalls. Every time you have given people a piece of your mind, you had stopped reading your Bible two or three days before. Your quiet time and your devotional life were like, "Ah, you know what I mean? Just hurry." And then somebody just—your head is hot. Have you noticed your head is like hot? That's because the level of the word of God in you has dropped.
Psalms 119:11 says, "I have thought much about your words. I have stored them in my heart that it would hold me back from sins." We cannot take our daily reading of the Bible for granted. That's how you win over your flesh. The word of God energizes your spirit and catalyzes the work of the Holy Spirit on the inside of you.
When the devil comes to tempt you, do what Jesus did in Matthew 4. He said, "It is written." He spoke the word of God to the devil. If you don't have the word of God stored, when you get tempted, it doesn't work like that. It has to have been on the inside of you already. Store it up in your heart. It's the word you store up in your heart that kills off the vulnerability to your flesh.
I remember when I was going to be vulnerable, and my pastor told me, "You're not kind." You can imagine my first reaction. That was a pride moment because I didn't want to prove her right. But I went back during my quiet time and I prayed, "God, your daughter said I'm not kind. Can we come together and prove her wrong?" Then I went to the word of God and I read about being kind, tender-hearted, and I took those words and I began to say them to myself. I am kind to people. I say kind words. I think kind thoughts and I do kind things. I said it and said it. Hopefully I'm kinder, but I'm still saying it.
Why? Because I have to store it up to strengthen my spirit against the flesh.
Then we have the practical test. James 1:21 says, "Get rid of every filthy habit and every wicked conduct and submit yourself. Accept the word of God which is able to save you. Do not deceive yourself by just listening to the word. Put it into practice."
Psalms 119:9 says, "How can a man stay pure? By reading the word and following it. Practice it."
To develop the fruit of love, you're going to have to choose to love when every fiber of your being wants to choose resentment. To develop the fruit of self-control, you almost have to tie yourself. Call a friend. Tie me down. Take this phone from me. Some of you need your bank accounts to be taken away from you.
Sometimes we have to take the L in order to grow the fruit. Sometimes you're right and you know you're right, but because of the fruit you're trying to grow, you take the L. Just keep quiet and say, "Okay, I've heard you." Because you're trying to grow fruit.
Because we become masters at what we practice. You become a master at anger when you choose to consistently practice anger. You remain an amateur at self-control because it is what we practice that we master. We become pros by practice. Practice makes pros.
Fruit is developed and produced by frequency. You keep doing it.
Here is the danger of not being consistent with fruit production: the devil attacks the area you're deficient in. The devil knows you've developed self-control, so he attacks your joy because you've relegated joy and stopped your joy fruit production. Because you're an introvert and you don't really like to show emotions—well, if I gave you a billion dollars, that introvert would fly out of the window! But even extroverts have to develop self-control. Sometimes self-control means you don't always have to talk. When you come in the room, we don't have to know you came in. We don't have to point out things that were happening before you came.
Yesterday, I went for a walk. I was outside stretching after the walk and my son comes out of the house and stands beside me without saying a word and began to imitate my actions. I wanted to see if he was making fun of me or if it was for real. My heart just exploded with joy because nobody crossing there would mistake the fact that he's my son.
God is looking for people who nobody would mistake the fact that you're a child of God. When you're at your office, when family reunion comes, when Thanksgiving is coming, nobody will mistake that something has changed in you. And that something, the evidence of that change, is what Paul calls the fruit of the spirit.
God is looking for people who are like Him.
I am like my father. I was created in His image. So I act like my father. I have my father's nature. The more I act like my father, the more like him I become. The more fruit I produce, the more like my father I am.
I think like my father. I speak like my father. I act like my father.
Turn with me to Galatians 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law.
Like father, like son. Like father, like daughter. These phrases aren't just folk sayings—they reveal a profound spiritual truth. When I became a Christian, I received something extraordinary: the divine nature of God Himself.
In John 1:12, the apostle John writes, "But as many as received him, that is Jesus, to them he gave the rights to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of flesh, or of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but they were born of God."
When you say yes to Jesus and put your faith in Him as your Lord and Savior, the Bible says you receive the right to become a child of God. Romans 8:15 declares, "For we did not receive a spirit to fear, of bondage, to fear again, but we received a spirit of adoption by which we cry, by which we say, referring to God, Aba, Father, Father, Father."
The Spirit of God Himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God. Paul reestablishes this in Galatians 3:26: "For you are all children of God." Say it with me: I am a child of God.
Ephesians 4:24 tells us to "Put on your new nature that has been created like God, truly righteous and holy." Peter picks up the same truth: "For by which we have been given exceeding great and precious promises that through these promises, we may become partakers of the divine nature."
When I say yes to Jesus, I become a new creation. I become a child of God created like God. I share, the Bible says, in His divine nature. I have God's DNA—the divine nature of the Almighty.
No living thing can sustainably produce outside of its nature.
The orange tree produces orange fruit because it is written in its DNA that it must produce orange fruit. Jesus said in Matthew 12:33, "Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. For a tree is recognized by its fruit."
The nature of the tree determines the nature of the fruit. If I want to change the fruit, I change the tree. Just as no tree can sustainably produce fruit outside of its nature, no one can sustainably act contrary to their nature. You might pretend for a while, but eventually it catches up with you.
Before Jesus came, the fruit production in God's people was inconsistent. The children of Israel swung between trusting and abandoning God, between peace and worry, gratitude and complaints, joy and depression, faithfulness and idolatry. So what did God do? God changed their nature.
2 Corinthians 5:17 declares, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and everything has become new." When I say yes to Jesus, I am a new creation with a new nature.
Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1:3, "By his divine power, God has given me, God has given you, if you say yes to Jesus, everything you need to live a godly life." God's power did not just come to save me. God's power came to change me—to give me everything I need to live a godly life. His divine power has come to make me like my Father.
The fruit of the spirit is the expression of the nature of God in you. It is the supernatural expression of the character and the person of God on the inside of you. It is the expression of the person and the power of the Holy Spirit in you.
The fruit of the spirit is not just something I do. This is not about behavioral modifications or ethical living or morality. This is not about observing rules and regulations. The fruit of the spirit is the privilege we have, the favor we have to share and express the divine nature of God.
It's about living out the life of God in us. If we have the nature of God in us, then we will exhibit the character of God through our lives. We are able to love because 1 John 4:8 says God is love. We have goodness because Psalm 18:1 says God is good. We have joy because Psalm 2:4 says God rejoices.
What we call the fruit of the spirit is just the expression of the nature of God on the inside of us.
When I was growing up, I was a rascal. My parents went through a lot—I think the devil was trying to stop what is happening now! When I would misbehave, my mom would say, "You're a Ehiemere. You're Dr. Jude's son." What was she trying to say? You're acting out of character. You're acting out of who you are. She was calling out the nature of the person who gave birth to me. "Because you're my son, that is not how we behave."
That's why Jesus said in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruits."
Throughout the Bible, Jesus was very strict with trees that did not bear fruit. In Mark 11, he curses a fig tree because it had no fruit. In Luke 13, He tells a story of a man who had a fig tree he tried for years to produce fruit from, and he wanted to cut it down. When it comes to trees, God wants them to bear fruit.
In John 15:2, Jesus says, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, God takes away. And every branch that is doing well, that is bearing fruit—God wants more." God prunes you to do better. God is passionate about fruit. God is interested in fruit.
You did not get the divine nature of God by the divine power of God to remain the same. It is a waste of the divine nature of God if it is not evident that something has changed on the inside of you.
You can come to God, come to Jesus just as you are, but you best believe He's not going to leave you just as you are. When He transforms your nature, He expects you to live out of this new nature. He expects you to bear fruit.
Matthew 3:8 calls it "producing fruit that is fitting of repentance, in keeping with repentance." If you say you are born again, if you say you have said yes to Jesus and He is your Lord, there has to be proof. It has to be evidence. Your coworkers should be able to tell. Your spouse should be able to tell. Your kids should be able to tell that something has happened on the inside of you.
Galatians 5:22 lists the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Notice something important: it does not say "fruits" of the spirit. It says "fruit"—one fruit. There's not many fruits. When I hear people say, "I have joy, but God is working on my kindness," I ask: Do you really have joy? Because it's one fruit with many manifestations of one fruit. Many expressions of one.
Matthew 7:20 establishes that through this fruit people will be able to distinguish you. They'll be able to identify that you are a follower of Christ. Our walk with God is not just a heart thing. It has to be evident. It has to be obvious.
I know there are people here saying, "Pastor Victor, I've said yes to Jesus. I'm born again, but I'm still struggling. I'm still struggling with inappropriate thoughts. I'm still struggling with lust. I feel the same way. I think the same way. I act the same way."
Believe me. You're not alone. Everybody in this room is struggling. If you weren't struggling, you'd be in heaven by now. We are all struggling.
We struggle because of something I call the tension of the new birth—the tension of being born again. When we become born again, something instantly happens to our spirits. Our spirit is immediately changed, and we're given the spirit that has the image of God. This happens instantly and instantaneously when you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth.
But here's the tension: your soul and your body remain the same. If you had a pimple before saying that prayer, the pimple is still there. If you had a pot belly, it's still there. If you had anger problems, except for a miracle of deliverance, you still have the anger problem. Your soul and your body remains the same.
The Bible calls this the flesh. When you read the Bible and see "flesh," it means one of three things: the soul, the physical body, or the combination of both.
This unchanged state of the flesh comes with unique challenges. We still have our old habits and patterns we have to contend with. Our flesh wants to keep doing what it was doing before we said yes to Jesus. It's pulling us back into already established habits and patterns.
If your mouth doesn't have control and you say yes to Jesus with that same mouth, you can go out and curse someone out. Why? Because it's a habit. It's an already established pattern. Your flesh wants to keep control even though your spirit has been changed.
There is this war because your spirit with the new nature wants to exert control and your flesh says, "No, no, no. This is how we've done it for the last 25 years. Nobody can raise their voice at us. We are not punks in this place." It's like self-control versus self—what control? Shut up, spirit. Clap back! It's a whole eternal warfare. It's a civil war.
The spirit is pulling in one direction and the flesh is pulling another direction. Paul sums it up perfectly in Galatians 5:17: "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants. And the spirit gives us desires that are opposite to the sinful nature. And these two forces are constantly fighting each other so that you are not free to carry out your good intentions."
Yes, you have good intentions. But there is this sinful nature—this flesh, these old habits and patterns. Romans 7:18 captures it: "For I know that in me, that is not in my spirit but in my flesh, nothing good dwells there. For to will the desire to do good is present. But how to perform what I want to do, I do not find. For the good that I will, I desire to do, I do not do. But the evil that I don't want to do, I practice."
In verse 23, Paul continues: "For there is another law. There's another pattern. There's another habit in my flesh that goes against the law of what I want to do."
There is this constant civil war—the old pattern and the new nature. The Bible refers to these old patterns as the works of the flesh.
Galatians 5:19-21 lists what the works of the flesh are: "The works of the flesh are evident: adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like."
The NLT puts it this way: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger—clapback—selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other such things.
These are the things that the flesh keeps pulling us back to. Many of us in here are struggling because we almost have to choose every hour. And here is the bad news: anytime we yield to the old habits and the old patterns, we strengthen the flesh against the spirit.
Someone once said that there are two dogs, two wild animals in a man. It's the one you feed that becomes stronger. Paul puts it this way in Romans 6:16: "Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey. You can be a slave to sin which leads to death or you can choose to obey God which leads to righteousness."
2 Peter 1:9 says, "He who lacks the fruit of the spirit is shortsighted even to blindness, for he has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins." What is he trying to say? He who doesn't show the evidence of a changed nature has forgotten that they are changed.
It is possible to have the divine nature and not express it. It's possible to have divine power that gives you a divine nature. It's possible to be freed from the power of sin and act like you're still bound. It's possible to be freed from addiction and act like you're still subject to addiction.
When you say yes to Jesus, sin is no more a dominion issue. Before you said yes to Jesus, you could not help yourself. But when you say yes to Jesus, by that divine power and the divine nature on the inside of you, you can say no to sin.
It is possible to be dead to sin and somehow still keep it alive. It's like losing a spouse. You loved them, but they're dead. They're gone. You come home after the funeral and you're looking at the pictures, watching home videos, smelling their clothes, going to your favorite restaurants, watching your favorite movies. Yes, the person is dead, but somehow your actions are keeping them alive.
The tension of the new birth is that this spiritual fruit has to be lived out through a flesh that wants to maintain old patterns.
For this to happen, the flesh has to be trained to produce fruit. The flesh has to be taught, has to be trained to cooperate with your new spirit and the Holy Spirit.
This training is what Romans 12 calls transformation. The Bible says in Romans 12:1, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God that what do you do? Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Your body means what you do. Let what you do be a sacrifice to God, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
Present your bodies. Renew your mind. Our flesh has to be taught. It has to be trained for it to be transformed. This is not going to be easy. This is going to be hard. You're going to bite your lip. You're going to be upset. You're going to want to respond. It's going to cost you. You will type the text and then delete and then type okay. Just get one K. That's all you get.
Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 9: "But I discipline my body and I bring it under subjection." The King James version says, "I keep my body under." The body has to be wrestled into submission. And it's not going to be easy.
Our flesh must be nurtured by our new nature to produce the fruit of the spirit. Before we go into the individual fruits, understand this: Your flesh is going to do one thing. Your spirit is going to do another thing. Your flesh is going to pull you to the works of the flesh. Your spirit is going to try to bear us the fruit of the spirit. That means we have to fight for the flow of the fruit. Fight for it. Wrestle for it. Bring your flesh under surrender.
Why is this important? The fruit of the spirit is victory over the devil. Greg Stier says in his book A Call for Character: "There is not a situation, trial, or temptation that a child of God will face that one of the fruit of the spirit will not enable him to overcome."
So the fruit of the spirit is how we overcome the temptations of the devil.
The fruit of the spirit is God's system of cancelling out the pull of your flesh. It's how God keeps you functioning in His mercies, in His grace. How God keeps you pleasing Him.
The expression of the fruit of the spirit is victory over the devil. When the devil wants you to hate and you love, love becomes victory over the devil. When the devil wants you to be anxious and yet you choose peace, that is victory. Kindness becomes victory. Goodness becomes victory. Faithfulness to my wife, to my spouse, to my friends, to my objectives becomes victory. Self-control becomes victory over the enemy.
The fruit of the spirit is victory over the enemy. And in order to maintain perpetual victory over the enemy, we must produce perpetual fruits. There can be no breaks. There can be no breaks.
To produce perpetual fruit, the fruit of the spirit has to be developed. This requires two tests: a written test and a practical test.
To pass the written test, we must know the written word. We must read our Bibles. There is no shortcut to it. How will you know what the word of God says? How will you feed your spirit? The word of God feeds your spirit. It strengthens your spirit. It sharpens your spirit. It shows you what is possible in this new nature.
How do we know what is possible if we don't read our Bibles every day?
When your word level drops, your fruit production stalls. Every time you have given people a piece of your mind, you had stopped reading your Bible two or three days before. Your quiet time and your devotional life were like, "Ah, you know what I mean? Just hurry." And then somebody just—your head is hot. Have you noticed your head is like hot? That's because the level of the word of God in you has dropped.
Psalms 119:11 says, "I have thought much about your words. I have stored them in my heart that it would hold me back from sins." We cannot take our daily reading of the Bible for granted. That's how you win over your flesh. The word of God energizes your spirit and catalyzes the work of the Holy Spirit on the inside of you.
When the devil comes to tempt you, do what Jesus did in Matthew 4. He said, "It is written." He spoke the word of God to the devil. If you don't have the word of God stored, when you get tempted, it doesn't work like that. It has to have been on the inside of you already. Store it up in your heart. It's the word you store up in your heart that kills off the vulnerability to your flesh.
I remember when I was going to be vulnerable, and my pastor told me, "You're not kind." You can imagine my first reaction. That was a pride moment because I didn't want to prove her right. But I went back during my quiet time and I prayed, "God, your daughter said I'm not kind. Can we come together and prove her wrong?" Then I went to the word of God and I read about being kind, tender-hearted, and I took those words and I began to say them to myself. I am kind to people. I say kind words. I think kind thoughts and I do kind things. I said it and said it. Hopefully I'm kinder, but I'm still saying it.
Why? Because I have to store it up to strengthen my spirit against the flesh.
Then we have the practical test. James 1:21 says, "Get rid of every filthy habit and every wicked conduct and submit yourself. Accept the word of God which is able to save you. Do not deceive yourself by just listening to the word. Put it into practice."
Psalms 119:9 says, "How can a man stay pure? By reading the word and following it. Practice it."
To develop the fruit of love, you're going to have to choose to love when every fiber of your being wants to choose resentment. To develop the fruit of self-control, you almost have to tie yourself. Call a friend. Tie me down. Take this phone from me. Some of you need your bank accounts to be taken away from you.
Sometimes we have to take the L in order to grow the fruit. Sometimes you're right and you know you're right, but because of the fruit you're trying to grow, you take the L. Just keep quiet and say, "Okay, I've heard you." Because you're trying to grow fruit.
Because we become masters at what we practice. You become a master at anger when you choose to consistently practice anger. You remain an amateur at self-control because it is what we practice that we master. We become pros by practice. Practice makes pros.
Fruit is developed and produced by frequency. You keep doing it.
Here is the danger of not being consistent with fruit production: the devil attacks the area you're deficient in. The devil knows you've developed self-control, so he attacks your joy because you've relegated joy and stopped your joy fruit production. Because you're an introvert and you don't really like to show emotions—well, if I gave you a billion dollars, that introvert would fly out of the window! But even extroverts have to develop self-control. Sometimes self-control means you don't always have to talk. When you come in the room, we don't have to know you came in. We don't have to point out things that were happening before you came.
Yesterday, I went for a walk. I was outside stretching after the walk and my son comes out of the house and stands beside me without saying a word and began to imitate my actions. I wanted to see if he was making fun of me or if it was for real. My heart just exploded with joy because nobody crossing there would mistake the fact that he's my son.
God is looking for people who nobody would mistake the fact that you're a child of God. When you're at your office, when family reunion comes, when Thanksgiving is coming, nobody will mistake that something has changed in you. And that something, the evidence of that change, is what Paul calls the fruit of the spirit.
God is looking for people who are like Him.
I am like my father. I was created in His image. So I act like my father. I have my father's nature. The more I act like my father, the more like him I become. The more fruit I produce, the more like my father I am.
I think like my father. I speak like my father. I act like my father.
