THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT Fruit-Bearing Branches Now we come to one of the most remarkable features of the New Creations life. It is the fruit bearing of the recreated spirit. The fruits he is to bear are the fruitage of the Vine. Now you can understand John 15:5, I am the vine, and ye are the branches. We are the fruit bearing part of the Vine. Jesus does not bear fruit. The Holy Spirit does not bear fruit. The branches bear the fruit, enabled by the Holy Spirit. Now we come to Gal. 5:22, But the fruit of the Spirit is love. I always thought that to mean the fruit of the Holy Spirit; the translators evidently thought the same thing, but that is not true. The word spirit should not have been capitalized, for it is the recreated spirit that is the fruit bearer. It is the branch of the vine that bears the fruit. Romans 5:5 tells us the nature of these first fruits. For the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That means that the love of God comes with the New Birth to the human spirit (which is called the heart). The first fruitage of the recreated spirit is love. The strange new word that Jesus evidently coined is used, agapa. You remember in 1 John 4:8 that God is called agapa, God is love. Now the recreated spirit is bearing the fruits of love. We know that we have passed from death into life because we love the brethren. Agapa is used here also. In this same chapter he says, Let us not agapa in words only, but in deed and in truth. You remember that the law of the New Covenant, which takes the place of the Old Covenant and its law is, A new commandment I give unto you, that ye agapa one another even as I have agapaed you. The lave of the first Covenant was summed up by Jesus. The law was that a man should love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. Natural man could not love God. He might love some idea he had of God, as some of our modern preachers do today. The natural man cannot love or know God. He was to love his neighbor as himself. This too was an impossibility. The New Covenant law says that we are to love even as Jesus loved us. Jesus loved my neighbor enough to suffer the torments of the damned for him. I am to love him the same way. Jesus loved the world enough to go to hell for it. Paul said, speaking of his relations, For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ. In other words, he said, I love my brethren enough to go to hell for them. I would willingly be lost eternally if I could only lead them into the joy of this union with Christ. You see, Paul had received this revelation truth of love, and it had taken possession of hint. His heart was captured by it. This revelation of the Fathers nature being imparted to man is the genius of Redemption. This new hind of love is the solution of every problem. You understand that there was no love before Christ came. Women were bought and sold among all peoples. A woman had no standing until Christ gave her one. Up until 1840 men questioned whether or not a woman should have an education. Slavery could not he abolished until love gained the supremacy in a mans heart. The great forces in the world today are spiritual. They are greater than the Atom Bomb or the Hydrogen Bomb. They are greater than any of mans organizations. These two forces are the New Kind of Love and the Old Kind of Selfishness. The labor end capital problems can only be settled by the late of the New Covenant. You see, this new law of love is the nature of God in practice. It is Eternal Life dominating the reasoning faculties. That is the reason it is so difficult to put it over in our land. Selfishness has arisen to its supreme heights in both the economical and political worlds. His church has lost its dominion. No one cares much for its voice any more. Our broken homes proclaim aloud that selfishness is the goddess of the divorce court. Many parents look upon children as a hindrance to their selfish happiness. They have never recognized the Lordship of Jesus. His Lordship is our ticket into Gods family. That Lordship really means the Lordship of Love. It is love gaining the ascendancy over the recreated spirit. Where a man receives Eternal Life, love becomes supreme in his life. The recreated spirit is a product of love. It is born of God, and God is love. When it came forth, fresh from the womb of the Spirit, it was filled with the love nature of the Father. If one allowed love to dominate him, we would see Jesus men and women facing selfishness, hatred and jealousy as the Master faced it during His earth stall. The Hidden Man
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:00:00 +0000
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