A follower of Jesus
By ray
Text: Eph 4:1:24
Summary: The goal of ministry is when believers in the Universal Church help one another to achieve full maturity as each of us grows in Christlikeness. Toward that end, prayer is a time when we can exchange our fallen nature with Christ’s divine nature.
By ray
[audio:http://hillcc.org/sermons/SWS08102014.MP3]
By ray
How do we reach Christianity maturity? 3 points.
1) Leaders train.
2) Members minister.
3) Most importantly, all of us have been given the task of speaking the truth in love to one another.
First, leaders train. Pastors, evangelists, teachers – typically, people with these gifts form the leadership of the church. And what do these leaders do. They train. v12 – training of the saints – the word for “train” is to perfect or to prepare or to equip. It refers to taking something that is broken and fixing it up. Like a car that is not running properly, it sputters or the tire is flat or the transmission is out so it needs a tune-up so that it can run smoothly. This is what the pastors and teachers are supposed to do. We could all use a tune-up, right? We are often broken down spiritually. We get stuck in a rut and we need someone to patch us up and give us a push from behind. This is the job of the leaders to train and to fix what is broken.
Through face to face ministry to members, pastors are supposed to provide godly counsel based on the Word of God so that Christians can be restored to spiritual health, fixed, so that the church can move on to spiritual maturity. Spiritual teachers, who by the way, might be excellent preachers but lousy at ministering to people, are to take the Word of God and help the saints apply the Word so that they can be tuned up and ready for ministry. Often, a pastor is the primary teacher at his church and it makes sense. Because even if a pastor has a heart for people, how can he lead God’s sheep if he doesn’t know the Word of God? Obviously, if he doesn’t know the Word, then he wouldn’t be able to teach nor train them as he should. To attain corporate maturity as a people of God, the leaders have to do their part and train the saints.
This leads me to the second point–the saints or the members minister.
Eph 4
12 for the training of the saints in the work of ministry…
Who does the ministry at the church? Is it the pastor only, or only the elders, or only the deacons and deaconesses, or only the staff, we are the ministers? And the rest, sit back and enjoy the show because we, the leaders, got everything under control. Are the saints no more than passive spectators on the sidelines? Many churches operate this way and most of the church members sit in pews and watch a performance. The praise band goes up and they do their thing and the preacher goes up and he does his thing and the rest sit around and watch.
I don’t want this church to be like that. Because that’s not what a healthy, spiritually mature church is supposed to be. Practically, this means if you are a baptized member of this church and you sense God leading to do something, just do it. You don’t have to get permission from me. If Jesus tells you something, you must learn to listen to His voice and obey. Do it and share with others so that we can pray for you and support you, and if needed, the leaders can train and equip you so that you can do whatever the Lord wants you to do more effectively.
We’re in this together. I know I don’t have many gifts. I recognize that I have many weaknesses, but I am confident in the sovereignty of God. He will bring the right gift mix into this community so that my weaknesses are covered over. Whatever I lack, I know God in His time will send the right people with the right set of gifts to complement my gifts.
Brother Matthew and I try to share weekly, if at all possible, and I often think I have good ideas and then I run them by him and he shares his perspective and he raises concerns that hadn’t crossed my mind. This is why we need one another.
To sum up, gifts are given to the church. In particular, prophets, pastors and teachers use their gifts to train and to equip the saints. And then the saints do the work of the ministry. This means that the church is not a performance where a few people are doing everything and the rest are sidelined.
Eph 4:12-13 – all the saints, all Christians, are supposed to be trained in order to do the work of the ministry in building up the body of Christ until we reach unity in the faith and unity in the knowledge of God’s Son and become mature.
Concretely, how do we, the saints at Hill Community, minister to one another? In order to build up the church toward the goal of Christian maturity. How is this accomplished? This leads to the third and final point. Each of us have been given the task of speaking the truth in love to one another.
This last point is critical. If you don’t hear this point, the other points won’t make sense. Please pay attention. Leaders training the saints and the saints doing the works of ministry only makes sense if you keep this final point at the forefront. It is possible to accomplish training of the saints and doing the works of the ministry out of religious duty as long as you are highly committed and disciplined and determined, but that misses the point entirely. The critical ministry and task of the saints without which genuine corporate spiritual maturity is impossible is the ministry of speaking the truth in love. If we don’t know how to speak the truth in love to one another, then we could train and do the works of the ministry all we want, but we will never become spiritually mature.
Now the question remains, what does it look like concretely to speak the truth in love? To answer that, you first have to know what the truth is.
What is the truth? For many years, I used to believe that this verse meant that when I see someone in sin, I should speak the harsh truth to them if I really love them. Truth is on one side and love is on the other. I treated truth and love as if they were polar opposites. Love is like blind acceptance. Sin, what sin? I see no evil and I hear no evil. Speaking truth of your sin, now that’s true love. If you truly love someone and they are in sin, how can you not speak truth to them? To tell someone the truth about their sin is really loving and to love with zero mention of the truth of one’s sinfulness means you don’t love the person at all. This is clearly not what this passage means.
In recent years, my view changed to a slightly more moderate position. Truth and love are not polar opposites. It’s not truth AND love. It’s truth IN love. It is important to speak painful truth about someone’s sin but do it in a loving way. With gentleness. With a smile on your face. Speak truth in love. So love is the vehicle of painful truth. It’s like children’s medicine. The medicine by itself tastes awful so you need to mask it with some fruity bubble gum flavor so that your kids would swallow it. The medicine is like truth. And the bubble gum flavor is love. Wrap painful truth and deliver it in a package of love.
You can definitely interpret speaking the truth in love in this way. You shouldn’t be harsh but rather loving when talking to someone about the truth of their sin. This is not wrong. But over the past few weeks, God has revealed to me that this is not the primary meaning of this verse.
You have to keep reading the context – Eph 4:17-21. [READ]
Truth is not an idea. Truth is a Person. The truth is in Jesus. The truth IS Jesus. He is the way, the TRUTH, the life. If you substitute the word “Jesus” in Eph 4:15, the sentence makes sense. But speaking “Jesus” in love, let us grow in every way into Him, into Jesus, who is the head, Christ.
Christian maturity is to be full of Jesus, filled with the Spirit who points us back continuously to Jesus.
Being full of Jesus or being filled with the Spirit – what does that look like? Please turn with me to Eph 5:18-21. [READ]
Notice what happens when someone is full of Jesus or filled by the Spirit? They speak. Their lips move. They speak to other saints in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. They sing, not in quiet meditation privately, but aloud so that others can hear it. They give thanks verbally.
If you love sports like me, you know that there is no such thing as a quiet sports fans. Maybe golf fans are quiet. Or tennis. Brother Daniel, who is a missionary in Beijing, is a die hard Cal sports fan. If you watch a Cal football game with him, it’s not like a tennis match where you clap properly with dignity between points. Every play, Daniel is shouting either in victory or he’s on the floor in agony. I went to Cal, but I grew up in Philly so I am a die hard Philly sports fan and I am kind of lukewarm when it comes to Cal. It’s weird. I just didn’t focus on sports during my college years. So if Cal wins, I’m like a fan at a tennis match. Good job, Cal. But when I watch a Cal game with Daniel, I get into it because I see Daniel is into the game. There are shouts of “Go Cal!” and high fives and drinks spilling on the floor. It’s not a tennis match. It’s a party. Daniel’s love for Cal is contagious and by the end of a game, I have been transformed into a die hard Cal fan.
Speech is so important. What we say is critical. What comes out of our mouth is essential. Speech is like a thermometer measuring our internal spiritual temperature. If the words that comes out of our mouth are words of gossip, or slander, or bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, negativity – this is a sign of a cold heart and possibly a dead heart. Even if the right words are coming out–yeah Jesus, you are Lord, Jesus died for me, thank you, Jesus–but if it lacks passion and intensity and umph, could it be that our hearts have grown cold?
When you speak the truth of someone else’s sin and that is the dominant thing that comes out of our mouth when we are in the body of Christ, it will not promote corporate spiritual growth and maturity that Paul is talking about. Sin is part of the picture, but sin by itself is like a black hole. If you start focusing on your sin, you will be sucked into the darkness because there is no end to our sinfulness. Repent quickly and turn away from your sin and focus instead on Jesus.
We will grow up into the fullness of Christ, we will grow into a mature body of Christ when all the saints here are speaking the truth in love to one another. Speaking the name of Jesus. Telling one another why we are thankful for Jesus. Singing praises to Jesus aloud, passionately, so that others can hear it. Praise is contagious. Spend time with someone who is constantly praising Jesus and speaking the name of Jesus and you will do the same. When the church is speaking truth about Jesus, cold and dead hearts can be revived.
Let’s be a truthful church. Let’s be full of truth. Full of Jesus. Filled with the Spirit. Let’s speak about Jesus in love.
By ray
To diligently keep the unity, the people of God have to live lives worthy of our salvation. In other words, they have to be true Christians who are humble and gentle and patient and accepting of one another in love. How is unity broken? By taking the completely opposite attitude and behavior that true believers possess. Unity is broken by a lack of humility, a lack of gentleness, impatience and an inability to accept and endure the sins and faults of others.
To hammer this point in, Paul goes on in v4–
Eph 4
4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Here, Paul is talking about the universal church, not the local church. The moment you are saved, you have spiritual brothers and sisters around the world who call upon the name of the same Lord and who have the same faith and who were all initiated into the community of faith by the same baptism. Before we talk about unity at the local church level, we have to let this sink in that God’s design is for the universal church to be one. When Jesus returns and establishes his new heaven and new earth, there won’t be Hill Community or Friendship Baptist, there will only be one church. In the end, the body of Christ will be one body and God will eventually assemble representatives from every tribe and language and people and nation and we will gather before one throne in unified worship.
There are churches in the world who live as if they are the only church. They live cut off from all other churches. They only care about what happens within the walls of their church. Other churches are treated like competitors. Why does this happen? They are not humble, nor gentle, nor patient, they lack acceptance. For Christians, we have our differences, but among people who have been called by God unto salvation, we have much more in common than not because we have the same Heavenly Father.
Even in my family, our children look different. Timothy is looks like me, Jeremiah looks like Jackie and Elijah is a genetic mutation. He’s a hybrid of both parents. Actually, I think he is also part beast, but that’s another matter. The point being our kids look different and they have different personalities and different interests. There is diversity in our family, yet there is still unity because we are one family.
The same goes for God’s family, the universal church. Various churches might be different in terms of style. Some are high church, very liturgical and the priests dress up in robes. Others are low church, casual, like us. Some churches serve the poor, some churches serve the community, some churches are very missional. There is great diversity, but at the same time, there is unity because we share the same Heavenly Father.
If you think about it, could it be any other way? God is infinite so can an infinite God be contained in a little box? Can one local church capture the fullness of who God is? Can one denomination represent fully who God is in all His wisdom, power and majesty? Of course not. One Christian that I know described God as a mountain and you have one Christian looking at him from the North and another from the South and another from the East and another from the West.
When someone gets a clear view of God and they forget that God is infinite, then they can become extremely confident that they have the full view of God. If such a person lacks humility, let’s say, the guy who saw God from the North side, then he will think the other 3 Christians are wrong. Humility is saying I only see God from one angle in 2D, but we need the panoramic view. God is 3D, he’s outside of space and time, so he’s probably fourth dimensional and so not even all 4 perspectives is sufficient to fully describe him. God is infinite. Even if we had an eternity to get to know him, still, we would never exhaust nor be able to fully describe an infinite being.
I am not a mathematician and I am a bit nervous using this example in front of Caltech students. But in mathematics, you can’t put a boundary around the number infinity and say, here is the number. No, whatever number you think of, infinity is greater. Even if you count forever and reach the number you think is infinity, there is still infinity + 1. Meaning, you can never reach the boundary and contain the number infinity.
God is the same way. This means we can learn from the Pentecostal brothers and sisters about the power of the Holy Spirit and prayer. We can learn from certain liturgical traditions about God’s holiness. We can learn from churches in the Reformed theological tradition about the high view of Scripture. People can learn from Baptists about missions and church planting. In God’s family, there is great unity in diversity and diversity in unity. We are one because we have one common source, but we are diverse because God is infinite in his character.
Through Daniel and Sora, whom we love and trust, we met Pastor Lee and his family. And within 5 minutes of getting to know them, I felt unity. Because we have the same Lord, the same faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. It’s the same way I feel toward pastors in our area like Pastor PJ of Crossview Church, a Filipino American, or Pastor Lucious, right here at FBC, an African American, and Pastor Jim who just got hired as the youth pastor of FBC and he’s Caucasian. We look different, we have vastly different backgrounds, yet we are one. We don’t have to spend a lot of time together and we didn’t have to know each other for many years to be one. As long as humility and gentleness and patience and acceptance are present and the Lord is at the center and the Lord is the common goal, unity can be instantaneous.
It starts with unity in the universal church. Now we can talk about unity at the local church level.
Eph 4
7 Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah’s gift. 8 For it says: When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people. 9 But what does “He ascended” mean except that He descended to the lower parts of the earth? 10 The One who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. 11 And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…
God doesn’t just say, go, be diligent and keep the unity and then leave us on our own to figure it out. No, to help us, Jesus gives gifts to His church. To describe what is happening in the spiritual landscape, Paul uses the metaphor from the military. In the Old Testament as well as in Paul’s day, a military general would conquer another army and he would steal all of their possessions and essentially the losing side would become prisoners of war. And so this conquering general would return to his nation and distribute gifts to the king, to the soldiers and the people of the winning side while the losing nation would form a train of captives in chains. Paul makes the analogy that the very same thing happened in the spiritual world when Jesus died on the cross and descended into Hades and rose victorious over sin and death. He defeated Satan and his forces of darkness and they were chained up like prisoners of war. And as Christ ascended into heaven after the resurrection, he distributed the spoils of war by giving spiritual gifts to his people, the church.
We all have gifts. The biggest gift by far is the grace of God which saved us. Salvation is the greatest gift. v7 – the word for “grace” and the word for “gift” in the Greek share the same root. Grace is THE gift. The rest of the spiritual gifts are expressions of this primary gift of God’s grace. Some of the gifts are listed in v11 – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.
Is being a pastor or a teacher a calling? Or is it a gifting? I say it’s gifting, but you don’t have to take my word for it. That’s what Scripture says. Our calling is the calling unto salvation. Our gifting are things like the gift of pastoring or shepherding people, the teaching gift, the gift of prophecy, or the gift of evangelism. I left out apostles because I don’t believe there are any present day apostles, but we’ll leave that for another time.
Why does Jesus give gifts to His church? Reason #1 is to help keep the unity relationally that was ushered in when the walls that divided us were torn down by Christ’s death on the cross. A second reason Jesus gives gifts is so that we can reach unity in terms of our faith and in our knowledge of God’s Son, with the ultimate goal of maturity and fullness in Christ.
Eph 4
12 for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.
By ray
Today, I want to talk about Christian maturity. Individual maturity is important, but equally important is the maturity of our church. We have some mature or maturing members of this church, but in my opinion, as a church, we are still immature. How do we become mature corporately as members of Hill Community Church? That’s what I want to talk about this afternoon.
Eph 4
1 Therefore I, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received…
I mentioned this before and it’s worth mentioning again. To put this letter into context, Paul is writing this letter from prison so when he says, I, the prisoner for the Lord, he is literally a prisoner for the Lord. I think the setting makes a difference. If Paul wrote this from the comforts of his study, or while on the beach, or like me from Starbucks, somehow it would have a different feel than if he wrote the exact same thing while chained to a Roman guard. These are not nice, abstract theological principles that he is waxing eloquent about from an ivory tower. How could he write about living for God passionately while he himself is under house arrest? It’s totally illogical, it’s irrational. This makes no sense. A seminary student who took a course on Systematics Theology could not live like this. How could Paul live like this? The only explanation is that Paul must have had a personal experience of God that was so real and so tangible that it drove him, compelled him to speak boldly in the midst of immense persecution and difficulty.
After mentioning that he was a prisoner for the Lord, Paul urges the Ephesians to walk in a manner worthy of the calling they have received. What kind of calling is this? I think there is a lot of confusion in our day about this word “calling.” We are so task-oriented that even in Christian circles, we talk about calling in terms of what we are called to do. We want to be productive. We want to check things off our To Do list. For me, there is a deep satisfaction when clicking the little box on my task manager from a computer or smartphone and you hear that sound effect and like magic, the task disappears. That’s music to my ears! Or you see the task crossed off with a line through the middle. That’s so beautiful to me. Am I the only one who gets satisfaction from getting things done?
In the world, we value people who get things done. For the Christian, don’t we also like to get things done for God? Like running programs, or seeing our membership increase, or making a tangible difference in the world for Christ? These are not bad things, but when we define calling in terms of what we do–i.e. I am called to be a pastor, or I am called to be a missionary or I am called to be a professor on a campus–we will run into one of two dangers.
Either we run the risk of reducing the Christian life into good works that we must accomplish in order to feel good about ourselves. Whereby faith is reduced to performance. Even without a vibrant relationship with Jesus, hey, I’m faithful. Look at the things I have accomplished for the Lord. As long as I am fulfilling a specific task or vocation that God has given to me, then I can feel good. That’s one pitfall Christians fall into. The other pitfall occurs when your “calling” is not clear. And because there is a lack of clarity, there of many Christians are just waiting on the sidelines for God to speak to them and they have a convenient excuse, I’m waiting for my calling.
I haven’t done an extensive study on the word “calling,” but in this instance for sure and in most cases that at least I have encountered thus far, Paul uses the word “calling” to refer to our calling unto salvation. As true, born again believers, we have been called by God to be children of God, chosen and predestined before the foundation of the world to be adopted into His family. Now because of our salvation, Paul urges the Ephesians to walk in a way that is worthy of this calling, or worthy of being saved.
How are we to walk in a worthy manner?
Eph 4
2 …with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, 3 diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us.
Why does it say “keeping the unity of the Spirit?” It implies that we already had unity prior and since you had unity, now keep it, hold on to it, maintain it. To understand this better, we have to back up a couple of chapters and read Eph 2:11-15. [READ]
Before God saved us in Christ, we were enemies of God. We were slaves to sin and we lived in obedience to Satan and disobedience to God. We were objects of wrath. The wrath of God was upon us, but God had mercy. He loved us by sending His Son to die on a cross so that we could be forgiven and escape the penalty of sin. The wrath of God that we deserved was poured out on Jesus down to the last drop as he hung on the cross. And God raised him from the dead and he became our peace. The dividing wall of hostility that separated sinful humanity and a Holy God was torn down. Not only that, the dividing wall of hostility that separated sinful man from his fellow man was also torn down.
In Christ, there is no longer separation between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, black and white, all walls of racism and sexism and socio-economic stratification, these walls have been torn down as Christ’s flesh was torn on the cross. Jesus’ death and resurrection, the gospel, creates unity.
Yet why does Paul urge the Ephesians in Eph 4:3 to diligently keep the unity of the Spirit? Because unity in the body of Christ is a fragile thing. You can have unity today and by tomorrow, the whole thing can come crashing down. You got to be diligent. You have to be vigilant. Life is a spiritual battle. You have to fight to keep the unity.
With what attitude should you and I walk in a way that is worthy of our salvation and how do you diligently keep the unity of God’s church?
Eph 4
2 …with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love…
You can think of humility and gentleness as a pair and patience and accepting one another as a pair. Humility is an inner character and from this inner disposition, what gets expressed externally in relationships is gentleness. Humility is like the root and gentleness is like the fruit. Humble people are gentle in their dealings with others. Show me a gentle person and humility will not be far behind.
Likewise, if a person has the inner character of patience, it will get expressed externally as he relates with others in an accepting way. Why does it require patience in order to accept one another? Mother Teresa was accepted by Catholics, Protestants, Christian leaders. Even secular leaders, dictators and communists accepted her. Despite many differences that people might have had with Mother Teresa, accepting her came so naturally.
Why then does it takes such patience to accept one another? Simple. Because you and I are not Mother Teresa. All of us are works in progress. We have rough edges. Egos, pride, selfishness. We have tempers and we get easily annoyed by people. We may be really good to a few close family members and friends, but there are many in a church you just don’t click with. Another way to put “accept one another in love” is to endure one another. Have you met certain people whose personality really tests your patience and it takes an incredible amount of patience to endure being in the same room with that person? Show of hands? Yes? Well, look in the mirror because there’s probably someone in your life who needs incredible patience to deal with you.
I know I am not always the easiest person to be around. My family knows that. I am far from perfect and when I am moody, they have to endure me. When I snap at them and I am not accepting them nor enduring of their quirks and faults, then I am getting a window into my soul before God. Not being to accept people and not being gentle are not minor flaws. These are serious sins that point to root problems. A Christian’s life is built on the foundation of humility and patience because God has been so gentle and accepting toward us. A lack of humility and a lack of patience are serious, serious root-level or foundational issues.
This underscores the point that how we treat others is very important because it often reflects our heart before God. Examine how you treat people. Are you harsh with others? Are you judgmental? Are you quick to be angry and blow your top? These point to root problems because one who has been called unto salvation, a Christian has been changed, and is continuing to be changed at the root level by the continuous filling of the Holy Spirit so that we can be humble and patient before God and gentle and accepting before men.
By ray
5) Fruit bearing is gradual, it’s mysterious, it’s internal, it’s symmetric and it’s inevitable.
What does a fruit bearing life look like? Just like there are no two identical oranges from the same orange tree, fruit that is born in each believer’s life is unique. If you have an orange tree, you should get 2 oranges, albeit slightly different, not 1 orange and 1 durian. If you don’t know what durian is, it’s okay. It’s better that you don’t know. The way fruit is born in my life may look a bit different than fruit born in your life. Yet, since we are born from the same Heavenly Father through the Spirit, there will be a strong family resemblance.
My kids prove this principle. Timothy looks exactly like me and if Jackie cuts her hair short like a guy, you get Jeremiah, and Timothy and Jeremiah look nothing like each other but they look like mom and dad. God is fair because Elijah is a 50-50 hybrid of both parents. Kids will look unique but there should a strong family resemblance since they share the same parents. Likewise, Christians may bear fruit in slightly different and unique ways, but as children of God, there should be a strong family resemblance with our Father in heaven.
Bearing the fruit of the Spirit sounds kind of abstract, right? What does it look like? Simply put, when the Spirit is at work in your life, you change. It is impossible to remain as you are.
Christian growth is inevitable. If you have the Spirit of God within you, you will grow. You will mature. You will become more and more like Christ. You must. It’s like an acorn. An acorn vs. a thousand pound slab of concrete. Who wins? It’s no contest. The acorn will always win. It grows into a tree and it is powerful enough to split a sidewalk. Botanical growth has this kind of power in its gradual-ness. How much more powerful is the fruit of the Spirit?
Let’s be clear. You are not saved by fruit. You are saved by faith in Christ. This is the gospel. A genuine encounter with Christ that leads to a true conversion will result in change, growth, fruit. You are saved by faith, not fruit. Faith in Jesus saves. Faith that He died on the cross for your sins. Fruit does not save. However, you are NOT saved if your faith is fruitless. True faith and true fruit are inseparable.
Final question: how do we bear fruit? Fruit-bearing requires two things. First, let’s read Gal 5:24. [READ]
Gal 5
24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
You have to crucify the sinful nature. Does that mean just stopping certain behaviors? That’s like cutting off a branch. You have to deal with the root, not the branches. Our sin arises because of the flesh, meaning, there are things in our hearts that we desire more than Jesus. There is something at the root level that is more important to you than Jesus Christ and that thing is running your life and creating the works of the flesh. Remember, the works of the flesh are the outward manifestations of a root that is still fleshly. Those things need to be crucified. You need to go home and identify the things that need to be crucified.
Second, v25– [READ]
Gal 5
25 Since we live by the Spirit, we must also follow the Spirit.
While the flesh desires things like self-glory, recognition, the applause of men, the Spirit only desires one thing–Jesus. The Spirit is in love with Jesus. We are the bride of Christ and Jesus is the Bridegroom and the Spirit is like the best man and the maid of honor who brings us together. And the Spirit says, look at how beautiful Jesus is. The reason you lack self-control and the reason you worry and the reason you waste your life away on idols is because you don’t recognize the beauty of Christ.
Paul does not say, fruit vs. weeds. It’s fruit vs. works or acts. Why does Paul mix his metaphors? A work of the flesh is something you do. Fruit, on the other hand, fruit of the Spirit is something you avail yourself to. The gardener doesn’t make the seed grow. All he can do is to create the right conditions for growth.
What are the right conditions for spiritual growth? A heart that has crucified the sinful nature or the flesh with its passions and desires. Examine your passions and desires. Are there things that you are more passionate about than Jesus? Things that you desire more than Jesus? Those need to be crucified. Second, you need to live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit as he directs your attention to the beauty of Christ. Now we are full circle. We are back to the gospel. Jesus is the gospel embodied. He not only saves us, he sanctifies us as we abide in Christ moment by moment.
If you understand the gospel and you are truly converted, your life will change. Fruit will be born as you continue to reckon your flesh as dead and as you rely on the Spirit, whose sole job is to point you back to Christ over and over again. If the Spirit has convicted you through this message of your fruitlessness, drop everything and run to Jesus.