Living the Fruitful Life - Be Fruitful
[This is the 2nd lesson in this series]
In the Jewish Scriptures, it is written that a handful of times
the God of Creation has told specific people to be fruitful. In the excerpt we read above, God was speaking to Adam and Eve.
The other notable times God has said this was to Noah and his sons when they were restarting their new life, and to Jacob when He renamed Him Israel.
For God, a new life means a fruitful life.
New Life in Christ
God through Christ gave us new life and in the same way, He is also telling us to be fruitful.
But He is not merely speaking about tangible fruit but also about having Spiritual Fruit -- the fruit that lasts.
God's gifts are everlasting, they are eternal, as God is eternal. God wants our new life in Christ to bring forth everlasting fruit, here and in heaven. Christ brought down heaven so we can have a foretaste of it.
Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—against such things there is no law.
Love Not Law
Our new life in Christ is based on love, God's love.
A new life in Christ will bear the fruits of God's Spirit. These fruits, like fruits from fruit trees, come from within.
These fruits are not made in manufacturing factories or learned in schools. Spiritual fruit come from the Holy Spirit -- the Spirit of God, who takes up residence in a believer.
The Spirit's fruit will take some time to mature and develop inside the believer and these fruits will most likely manifest themselves not during the best of times but during the worse times.
Tines of Trials
We never know what our fruits are until the going gets tough. God knows, but we ourselves will only find out once we go through trials and hard times.
In our old life, we would normally show bad fruit during the worse of times. But in the new life in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit will come out and it will even surprise us.
Trials
This is why James wrote:
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1 :2-4
Peter and Paul essentially said the same thing in their letters preserved in the Christian Scriptures -- bear fruit that lasts as we go through trials. Believers will know they are believers this way, through the fruit they bear.
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