God’s Orchard (Part 2)
Galatians 5:22-24

In John 15:16 Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. . . “ He was serious, for the following reasons:

1. Fruit displays God’s character (5:22-23a)
2. Fruit fulfills God’s Law (5:23b)
3. Fruit trumps our flesh (5:24)

Only God can make a seed grow. In His creative order He has built into the seed how that makes it happen. We cannot make the Spirit’s fruit. Often we try, New Year’s resolution type things: “This year I’m going to be more loving or this year I’m going to be more humble.” We can’t make the Spirit’s fruit happen. It’s deliberately worded this way. This is the fruit of the Spirit. Read: This is God’s fruit. This is what God looks like when He lives through us. We can’t make the fruit. All we can do is contribute toward the condition to optimize the production of the fruit.

These are well known verses to many Christians. The fruit of the Spirit is being contrasted with the works of the flesh. Paul, of course, is favoring the fruit of the Spirit. We said a week ago and will reiterate and build on this today that God’s people will bear God’s fruit. We talked about that weak, anemic engine I had in my Suburban and how it wouldn’t do anything. It wouldn’t pull, wouldn’t pass and wouldn’t get good gas mileage. It was old, tired and worn out and when we replaced it with a factory 350 everything was different because there was something new under the hood.

In the very same way when the Spirit of God comes inside an individual who previously did not house Him, He will make things different. God will make it happen. It’s a throw back to Ezekiel 36 where He says, I will put a new heart in you. I will take out your old heart. I will put My Spirit in you. I will cause you to change. God promises that as part of the terms of His covenant.

That’s good news. Faithful is He who calls you, who also will bring it to pass. He who has begun a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. Christ in you, the hope of glory. It’s Him in us, not simply a matter of us determining to do better and then becoming frustrated when it doesn’t happen.

Last week we itemized the fruit of the Spirit. We said that the fruit is available to everybody. It isn’t that one person gets to have faith and another gets to have love and another person gets to have patience, as it may be with the gifts of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is considerably different. The fruit of the Spirit, all of it, goes to all believers because the Spirit of God isn’t parceled out. You get all of Him and all that He has to offer.

Today we want to go to the second half of verse 23 and to verse 24. The second half of verse 23 reads, speaking of the Spirit: “against such things there is no law.” If you look at the works of the flesh, a few verses earlier, there are plenty of laws against those. Against the fruit of the Spirit, the apostle says, there is no law, which is another way of saying the law actually favors the fruit. The law actually contributes toward the production of the fruit. We will see how that works.

One thing we need to understand: We say the fruit fulfills God’s law. God’s law represents what God wants of His people, behaviorally. This is what God wants to see. If that is seen, if God’s law is lived out, then God’s people look good, thereby making the God who indwells them look good.

You’ve probably heard that under the Old Testament economy, God’s people were to keep His law. This was the design, to honor and worship and serve God in the land that He had given them. Thus they would receive God’s blessing, and as a nation, they would look so good, so attractive, so prosperous, so at peace, so blessed, that other nations would want to come to them just to learn about their God.

It happened a couple times, marginally, in the history of the nation, particularly in the early years of Solomon. That’s why when King Solomon was on the throne in his early years he was honoring God and God was honoring him. The borders of the land were at their greatest extent, the land was at peace, all was well, and the queen of Sheba came from a distance. “How does this happen, Solomon?” He pointed her to his God.  That’s the design. God looks good when His way is kept and His law is honored.

We need to recall what’s going on in the whole book of Galatians too. The apostle had come in, he had preached to these people that salvation, a right relationship with God is by grace plus faith plus nothing. All my trust in Jesus only. We don’t have to keep rules, we don’t have to push buttons, jump through hoops, none of that. We simply put all our trust in Jesus only and He gives us new life. He changes us from the inside out.

That was the pure and simple gospel they had received, but after Paul left, others came in with a different message. They said all that faith stuff is great, but you have to add to it. You have to do this work. You have to keep the Jewish rules. They confused the people. Part of their approach was this. If you don’t keep the rules, how in the world will you not just run amok? If you don’t have rules to keep you in line, you’ll look terrible! You’re going to be out there sinning and committing all sorts of transgressions. You have to have rules.

The apostle said, “No, because if God is in it, it’s not necessary.”  If God lives through His people, He will look good through His people without them having to make a whole list of do’s and don’ts.  He will take care of it on a personal basis. They’re saying if all you have is grace then we’re going to have lawlessness. You have to have rules. Paul said you don’t need rules. He said you need fruit; then he explains how this works. They say if you just engage the flesh and decide to keep the rules, you’ll be ok. Paul says no, if you engage the flesh, actually the opposite will happen. You’ll end up not looking like God at all. Paul says the flesh is actually the culprit, not the cure. God’s Spirit is the answer. Our energy in the flesh, he says, is not.

Fruit fulfills God’s law

Here’s the process and how it is that fruit fulfills God’s law. God’s character, who He is as God, is what has given us God’s Law. When I say God’s Law, just think of the Ten Commandments. In other words, God says you shall have no other gods before Me. That’s a rule, that’s a law. The reason He says that is because there are no other gods. His character determines His law, His rule.

The reason He says thou shall not murder is because He is the God of life and He embodies it, He’s the fountainhead of it. Murder isn’t just a bad thing; it doesn’t just break the rules. The fundamental reason murder is a bad thing is because it goes crosswise with God who is a God of life.

The reason theft is a bad thing isn’t just because somebody loses something they used to have and somebody else steals it. The reason theft is wrong is because it violates the character of God who owns everything. It comes back to His character. God’s character determines His law. Therefore, God wants His law kept so His character is seen. As God’s law is kept, God’s character is seen – because God’s law reflects God’s character.

We, people created in the image of God, are naturally incapable of keeping God’s law. Does that mean every time we open our eyes or our mouth or breathe air, we’re violating God’s law? No, not necessarily. What it means is we do not have a natural inclination to keep God’s law. Paul talks all about this in the book of Romans in great detail. In Romans 3 he says, “There is none who does righteousness.” There is not even one. Together they have turned aside. They have all become useless. Destruction and misery are in their paths. There is no one seeking God, there is no, not one. And thereby he puts the entire human race in the same sad spiritually dead boat.

As a matter of fact, what Paul says is that when I see the law (he’ll go on to say this later in the book of Romans), what it does is to excite within my natural self a desire to break it, because it’s my enemy’s law and I’m not naturally inclined toward it.

He says in Romans 7, I didn’t even know about coveting until I read the law. It says, “Thou shall not covet.” I immediately started coveting, because my flesh became excited by the Law. Sin, he said, took hold.

So we have a problem. We are naturally incapable of keeping the Law. That doesn’t mean we don’t try. Everybody does. What happens when we try? Let’s create a couple scenarios. One individual may decide he wants to go to heaven and the only way is to be a really good person. So this individual may join a church or get involved in a religion or perhaps come up with his own standards and say, “I’m going to do this: I’m going to go to church every Sunday. I’m going to sing in the choir. I’m going to get baptized. I’m going to be nice to people, not kill anybody, not steal anything. I’m just going to be the best person I can be and I’m going to go through life that way. Then at the end of it all, God just has to let me into His heaven because I’ve been such a good person.”

This particular individual will go through life perhaps doing a pretty good job of being a pretty moral person. It can happen. Where does that lead? Upon what or whom is this person trusting for eternal life? Self! “I have done it.” The Bible says that if you break the Law even once before a holy God, you are guilty. If you break one rule you might as well have broken them all. You will be rendered guilty before a holy God.

At the very best, you’re going to have a life with minimal litter and a prideful person at the end saying, “I did it my way.” What can happen when we try? When we think we can do it? Legalistic pride! That would include, of course, trust in self rather than trust in the God of heaven, the God who sent His Son. It can also involve deception. We can actually convince ourselves that we are ok. We do this by looking at the other person. We do this by watching the news and saying, “I’m not as bad as that person.” We can deceive ourselves into thinking that just because we don’t seem to be as bad as that person outwardly, therefore God must accept me. I’m not that bad. And we will play games in our head and we’ll be wrong.

I remember an illustration I’ve always appreciated that touches on that very point. When someone is concerned about going to heaven, keeping the rules to get to heaven, and how are you going to get there, here’s a good question to ask. Let’s just pretend we could line up the whole human race in order of niceness. At the head of the list has to be Mother Theresa, on the good end. On the bad end is Hitler. Then between Mother Theresa and Adolph Hitler, in order of sinfulness, we work our way.

Let’s just say it’s time for judgment and God shows up to judge the human race. Here we are all standing in a long line.  God decides to come to a certain point and says, “OK here’s where I’m drawing the line. Everybody on this side of the line -- to the lake of fire and on the other side of the line, you get to go to heaven.”

What if I’m just one person away from where the line is drawn? I say, “Excuse me, but I honestly don’t think I’m that much worse than that person. Maybe God would say, “You’re right, let’s draw another line.”  Now everybody here goes to heaven and everybody here to the lake of fire.” But then, what about this person? “Wait a minute, I’m not that much worse.” She has a point. Where do you draw the line? The Bible tells us where the line is drawn. God goes to the end of the line, the other side of Mother Theresa, and draws the line, and says, (Romans 3) “There is none righteous, no not one.” So what are we left with? Trying it in our own strength? It won’t work.  That is a quick way to self-deception. That’s one avenue. Keep the rules.

Here’s another scenario. “I’ll make up my own rules and I’ll work my way to heaven. I’ll decide what’s good and what’s not. I call this the rule of selective boundary. We’re good at this. I don’t have a problem with this particular sin and therefore I feel I’m fine because I have a total victory over this area of my life. So I must be a pretty good person. Don’t talk to me about that area of my life. I’m ok there. I’m no worse than most people there, but in this area I really shine.”

We can create in our own minds categories of life and can camp in them. We say, “I’m fine as long as I’m here.” That’s a narrow, limited, shortsighted way of viewing my moral or spiritual self. I have had Christian people tell me, “If I don’t rebel against God with high-handed rebellion then it’s not a sin. The wages of sin is death so anything short of that is not that big a deal.” This professing Christian had bilked business people out of money and had been inappropriately behaving with other people’s wives. In his mind “that’s no big deal because it’s not sin.” Which is precisely why God goes to the front of the line, draws the line, renders every human ever born guilty in His sight and says, “You’re all guilty but you all have access to My solution. That’s Jesus.

What happens when we try? Legalistic pride or selective boundaries or how about this: We read the Bible and say it looks like God has pretty high standards. Indeed He does. You can’t break even one of the Ten Commandments. That’s tough. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” At one point in my life, perhaps I’ve put something ahead of God. Ever done that? You’re guilty.

“I’m going to try again and do better next time. I’m not going to steal and I’m not going to kill and I’m not going to commit adultery and I’m not going to covet and I’m not going to bear false witness. We try to head through life that way but if we are honest and if we’re sensitive, we’re going to get really frustrated, because we’re not going to go very far before we say, “I’ve blown it again.” And then we read the gospels and it gets worse because now we find that it isn’t just the adultery, it’s the intent. Now it’s not just the outward act, it’s the inward disposition of adultery or murder or hatred. I realize I’m in deeper weeds than I knew.

I think about keeping these rules and I determine to keep them and the further I go and the more I try the more frustrated I get. I face guilt because I know I’m guilty. Not just because some pop psychologist said I had guilt feelings. I’m guilty before a holy God and I know it, so I realize I’m defeated. I tried to keep those rules. They’re pretty clear to me. But in all honesty I’m saying no, it isn’t happening.

What happens when you’re defeated? You run up the white flag. In this scenario trying to keep the rules leads, as it ought, to surrender to the One who made them, and surrender to the One who will enforce them. Surrender to Jesus.

He’ll say, “You can’t do it, can you?”

“No, Jesus, I can’t.”

“Good. I’m glad you figured that out. I did it for you. I have fulfilled the law for you. And I’ve gone beyond a perfect life in fulfilling the law for you. I have died for all those sins you committed in trying to keep it. I have paid your way to heaven and I have lived a perfect life in your behalf and I make Myself available to you.”

Trust Him. That’s it. All my trust in Jesus only. We get new life. The Bible talks about new life in Christ.

I sat in a jail cell once, visiting a guy who had just made one dumb choice after another and he knew it. I said, “Conrad, you haven’t done a whole lot of things right, have you?” He said, “No.” “You’re life hasn’t amounted to a whole lot then, has it? How would you like to have a better life? How would you like to get rid of your old one?” He liked that.

“So what do you do, Conrad?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about you trade your messed up life to Jesus for His perfect one. Give him yours and He’ll give you His.”

I don’t know what he ever did about it, but that’s a simple scenario. We give Him ours. We surrender. He gives us His. He begins a changing work in us. Let me give you a couple verses that underscore this from John’s gospel.

John 4

³⁴Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.

What do you suppose that would involve? Could it involve keeping the law? Absolutely! That’s what Jesus did. In John 8, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees:

John 8

²⁹"And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him."

Can you imagine that? I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. We couldn’t begin to understand that. Jesus said I always do. Jesus alone keeps the law; He’s the only One who can. And yet He comes to live in us when we surrender and through us begins to do a work that involves keeping the law in His strength, through His opportunity, in His way.

Jesus comes to live in us by the Spirit. By the keeping of the law He does, in a nutshell, produce the fruit of the Spirit. That’s His life in us. His keeping the law through us produces the fruit of the Spirit. We don’t run out and say, “I’m going to be patient today,” or “I’m going to be loving today.”

Romans 8 is so timely here. I believe it will speak for itself. God gets the fruit He wants. That’s what it’s saying, not by you and me turning over new leaves, but by His Spirit living through us.

Romans 8

¹Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
³For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
⁴so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Christians keep the law? Yes, Jesus keeps it through us. That’s not the same as saying if we keep the rules we go to heaven. When we surrender our lives and give our hearts to Him, He lives through us and over time, as He works in us and changes us, we see God’s law kept. Only He’s the One doing it because He’s the One working change in our lives by His grace. That’s why keeping the law will lead to the fruit of the Spirit, because it’s Him doing it, all the way.

Fruit trumps our flesh (5:24)

How God wins, how God actually makes this happen. Before we go there I want to remind you of what Galatians 2:20 says. In a way, Galatians 2:20 talks about the rest of Galatians. This is Paul saying:

Galatians 2

²⁰ "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

In some sense I have joined Jesus on the cross. There’s a sense in which I’m dead, but Jesus lives in me. The old me is gone and He is alive in me.

There’s an interesting dynamic happening in every Christian. I’m alive, yet He is alive in me and He makes a difference in me. The life I live in the flesh, what you see here, I live by faith in the Son of God by trusting Him and He makes the difference in the way I live.

Fruit trumps our flesh, first of all, theologically what has happened?

II Corinthians 5:17

¹⁷Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

How is it that if I’m in Christ, old things are gone, new things have come? I think a good answer is in Romans 6:

³Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

Baptize means placed into. All of us who have been placed into Christ Jesus have been placed into His death.

⁴Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Old things are passed away. All things are become new in order that we might walk in newness of life.

⁶knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

¹¹Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,

¹³and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

He’s saying here that with new life, Jesus has come in and made a radical change. When we face choices we now can choose righteousness. It all depends on what we want to do with our members, the parts of our body that determine what we do, what we think and where we go. He breaks it right down to the physical practical reality. He does in Romans 3, talking about eyes and ears and feet and mouths. These are our members. These can either be instruments of sin, as they would have been in the old life, or instruments of righteousness as Christ intends them to be in the new.

Theologically, what has happened is that we now have Jesus inside and now we have a choice for righteousness.

Practically, here’s how it works. If we want to see the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, I have three simple steps. They involve several principles, the first one I’ve already emphasized from Romans 6.

1. What do we know?

Does that mean we can exhaustively plumb the depths of the mind of God and determine His sovereign will? No. What we can know, though, is as we surrender our lives to Jesus, He puts His Spirit within and we are new people. Do we know that? Or to us is being a Christian just a matter of identifying with a different church, keeping a slightly modified set of rules and our noses clean all at the same time.

Being a Christian means having Jesus inside. Do we know that? Knowing this, he says, that our old body of flesh was crucified together with Christ. We do not understand how that works but in the mind of God we joined Jesus on the cross in a spiritual sense. He paid our debt in our behalf at that point. Even as his old self was crucified, so was ours. Do we know that?

The book of Romans, the 6^th chapter is all about that. So we have to know it.

2. Are we renewing?

What are we feeding ourselves to know? Paul says in Romans 12 if you want to be transformed, that is, if you want to understand, live in and enjoy the new life that God provides, we absolutely must be renewing our minds.  Are we renewing our minds? Are we regrooving our brains with eternal truth, sure truth from God or are we continuing to fool ourselves through some other worldly or fleshly avenue? What is our habit for renewing? Reading the Bible through is part of renewing our minds. Seeing life, seeing the world through chapter and verse eyes. Are we moving in that direction? Do we have a daily time in God’s word? Do we know theologically what has happened? Are we renewing our minds?

3. It’s all about choosing.

Let me illustrate from the 4^th chapter of Genesis. The 4^th chapter starts out with Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve. Abel was a keeper of flocks. Cain was a tiller of the ground.

³So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground.
⁴Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering;
⁵but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.
⁶Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?
⁷"If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

You must choose well, Cain. And if you don’t, you’re toast. Cain did not choose well. He had a decision to make. So do we. As we go through our day we make choice after choice after choice. What we will hear. What we will say. What we will think. What we will do. Where we will go. We have to choose. We are faced not just with temptations. What also comes our way every day in the sovereignty of God is opportunity and we must choose yes or no on temptation, yes or no on opportunity. That’s how life is every single day.

Choosing poorly, sometimes we do that. Maybe it’s because we have a bad habit, so we make a poor choice. Maybe we’re being pressured and so we choose the expedient because we’re caving in to somebody or something. Maybe we’re ignorant and I would suggest that happens. Maybe I’m just so locked into doing things my way that “I’m just going to do it.” Maybe we’ve adopted that little adage, “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” Maybe I’m looking for a source of satisfaction in a way other than God’s way and I just want to be somehow satisfied.

One way or the other, if I choose poorly, my members are betraying me. Maybe it’s my eyes, my ears, my feet, my mouth, but I choose.

When we choose poorly, remember first of all that since we have sinned, that is why Jesus died. If we were people who didn’t choose poorly and didn’t sin, Jesus would not have had to go to the cross. He died because we’re sinners. We need to understand that’s our lot. He died for sin, therefore we need to confess it, agree together with Him that, “yes, I just sinned.” Read Psalm 51, Psalm 32, excellent places that illustrate confession.

We confess to Him that we have sinned. We renew to Him our desire not to do that any longer. Sometimes we need to make a change, maybe take a different route, choose a different friend, change a schedule. Maybe we need counseling, maybe we need accountability. We need something.

Then the key –we get so sick of the sin and we wonder why we don’t get the victory. What’s the problem? Regardless, once we’ve sinned, once we’ve confessed, pick up and move on. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Don’t surrender to the flesh. Pick up, renew, and move on. God is in the business of receiving and restoring. There is no sin so heinous or committed so many times that Jesus says, “My blood didn’t cover that. Sorry.”

How many of your sins were future when Jesus died on the cross? Every single one of them. His blood is sufficient. Confess and move on. Get back on track. Get counseling. Get accountability. Make some changes. But pick up and move on.

God wants us to choose wisely and this is how that works. We make a choice, we pick up on an opportunity, an open door, an avenue that God provides. We want to resist the temptation and move in a righteous direction. That’s good. That’s a wise choice. Wise choices, when made in sequence, as they outnumber the foolish, become habit. Habit becomes behavior. Behavior becomes character and character is God’s and that’s His fruit. That’s how it works.

If you think we’ll go out today and all of us be mature orchards with no worms in our apples, I think we’re living in the wrong world. The fruit of the Spirit is born over time as we yield ourselves in temptation and in opportunity to what God wants. As that choosing becomes habit which becomes behavior which becomes character, then we get the fruit. We’ll know at that point, it isn’t me. It’s Him through me because I know my flesh so well.