Fruit of the Spirit: the Fruit of Death
I’m spending a little time in the “fruit of the Spirit” this morning, that great list of Christian virtues Paul lays out in Galatians 5: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” I love that self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit, but that’s another thought for another day.
What I’m working on right now is that this fruit is the fruit of death–the results of being joined together with Christ in his crucifixion.
The starting point is to recognize that this fruit is set in contrast with the works of the flesh in the previous verses: sexual immorality, idolatry, witchcraft, disputing and factions, drunkenness and the like. The Spirit and the flesh represent the powers of the “present evil age” and “the age to come”–the latter having broken in with Jesus’ death and resurrection.
And so when Paul gets through with his description of the fruit, he insists: “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Co-crucifixion with Christ means that we have put to death the old humanity, died to the age gone by, and are thereby given new life by the Spirit of Christ’s resurrection. The fruit of our death to the old self? The fruit of the Spirit.
Co-crucifixion, dying with Christ, is the transformative means by which we become capable not only of faith but “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6).
That had never struck me before… but it’s a fascinating thought. Please do tease it out sometime in another post.
While we are re-visiting the biblical doctrine of God in light of Paul and the cross, we need to re-visit the doctrine of the Spirit in the same light. This is a good start.