Gunfighter and the Garden

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. Romans 7:40 


When I was a young Christian I viewed bearing fruit as if I was the new gunslinger in town. The purpose of the Great Commission was to face down the unbeliever at the OK Corral and see how many notches I could put on my belt, or perhaps on my Bible. Listening to some people speak about winning souls made it seem we were bounty hunters always wary of spotting our prey everywhere we went and ready to bring them in to the sheriff.


Then came a period of uncertainty. Perhaps I was not a very good Christian (maybe not one at all), because I couldn't go to meeting and brag about the souls I saved like some others seemed to do constantly and continuously.  Perhaps I was like autumn leaves without fruit, twice dead.


How ignorant and arrogant was I. It is not the souls I save that constitutes my fruit. It can't be, because I can't save souls at all. I couldn't save my own soul, what makes me ever think I could save yours? No man can save another's soul, not I, not you, not Billy Graham in his heyday.


Only God can save a soul. All we can do is tell them so they hear and if they believe we can disciple them. We do that, we have done what we can. So put away the six-gun and forget the notches. If you are bragging on how many souls you've saved you have lost yourself in pride and self-acclamation.

But when [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 3:7-10

But what is this fruit we might bear to God? I mean, this sounds serious when every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and burned. I certainly want to be a fruit bearer, but what kind of fruit?


We are told in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."


I will tell you at this point of my Christian life I have at least the blossoms of all these. I will say some are actual fruit, not fully shaped or ripe, but recognizable.  


Shall I also tell you how hard I have worked to cultivate these beginnings of fruit? About all my selfless labor, my hours of concentrated effort? Not likely, for what I have in fruit is not my doingat all. I'm so likely to allow a weed to grow to choke me off from the vine, so prone to forget the water my fruit needs or too easily distracted by the "fruit for death" my flesh once bore.


Yet, when I am lured to those old dried up prunes, then I remember the world is watching and I am now bound to display healthy fruit.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: 
   "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:8-14

Our fruit reflects light into the darkness of the world. The light we reflect is the light of God through Jesus Christ. If we have no fruit to provide that reflection, then we must question our Christianity. 


So how do we assure our fruit will grow and develop? How to we get the Fruits of the Spirit? Exactly like the pumpkins in the illustration with this post. We are not the fruit, we are the branches on which it grows and in order for the branch to live and bear fruit it must be attached to the vine. Our fruit will not grow and could shrivel and die if we do not keep in constant contact with the vine, and what is the vine?

"I [Jesus Christ] am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. John 15:1-17

Trust and obey the Lord and your garden will blossom.




Illustration was taken at Monticello, Virginia, September 17, 2007