|
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law”(Galatians 5:22, 23).
This quarter we are going to look at the “fruit of the Spirit”; that is, we are going to look at what happens to those whose lives are surrendered to God and who thus allow the Holy Spirit to work in them.
The fruit of the Spirit is like a precious jewel with many facets. Each facet is a characteristic of Jesus and represents a quality that He wants to produce in our lives.
The fruit of the Spirit is not a theory, though we have made it a study. It is not a lifestyle, though a person who is cultivating the fruit of the Spirit will not live as he or she did before. Instead, the fruit of the Spirit is a change of being. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
The purpose of this quarter’s lessons is not to focus on how we can become more patient or more loving or more gentle or more faithful, but on how we can let the Holy Spirit make us more like Jesus, who is patience, love, gentleness, and faithfulness personified.
You will be challenged to cultivate the graces of the fruit of the Spirit at all times, but especially at home. We will see that the key is surrender, a willingness to die to self and live for God and for others. Finally, we will see that all that we do, we must do under the realization that we are sinners in need of the covering grace of Christ, who loves us whether the harvest seems plentiful or sparse. We must never forget that the fruit of the Spirit is just that—the “fruit,” the result of salvation, not the means.
* Please note that the remaining lessons for fourth quarter 2009 are still on the ABSG Web site. Click on the purple button below for the edition in which you are interested. The fourth quarter lessons can be found directly underneath the listing for the first quarter lessons by simply scrolling down the page.
|
