Flesh Works vs Spirit Fruit

Galatians 5 and the Contrast Between Flesh Works and Spirit Fruit

Look at your Bibles and turn to Galatians 5. We're going to finish the chapter today, Lord willing. We'll see how it goes. We're going to begin in verse 16. We're going to read to the end of the chapter and our focus is going to be on verses 22 to the end, but I think verse 16 helps us pick up the context.

If you remember in the first portion of Galatians, Paul has been arguing against the Judaizers, those who would say that to be a Christian, you must also keep the ceremonial laws of the Jewish people, meaning you must be circumcised, you must keep the dietary restrictions, you must maintain the Sabbath day, and Paul was saying no, those things are not required because we are now living on this side of the cross and on this side of the cross we live by faith in the work of Christ and we do not live under the law, particularly those laws that were meant to distinguish the Jewish people.

And so we get to chapter 5 and Paul says in chapter 5, verse 1, for freedom Christ has set you free and we've talked about what that means. Freedom in Christ means freedom of conscience, freedom from condemnation.

We're no longer condemned. But that does not mean that we are free to live ruthlessly, sinfully, arrogantly. It doesn't mean that we're free to live in sin, it means we're free to live in Christ and live for Christ, which would mean that we would seek to be followers of His example and certainly He was one who was in every way like us except without sin.

So we get to verse 16 and Paul begins to tell us about walking by the Spirit and the last several weeks we've been over this but I'm going to read it to you beginning at verse 16. But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit.

The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.

I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word. I pray that now as I seek to give an understanding of it, that You would keep me from error. For Lord, I am a fallible man, capable of error and I don't want to preach error because of the sake of Your name and the sake of these men and their hearts and for the sake of my own conscience.

And I pray, Lord, that everything that is said today would be in accordance with Your Word. And I pray, Lord, also that it would be moved by Your Spirit, taught by Your Spirit and received by hearts that have been opened by Your Spirit.

For Lord God, if the Spirit is not working, then we teach in vain. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. One of the things that is very evident as we look out at the world right now is that there is a lot of hate in the hearts of men and women.

We live in a world filled with hatred. Men make up reasons to hate one another. I hate you because you look different. I hate you because you sound different. I hate you because you come from a different place.

They make up all kinds of reasons to hate one another. And if you go back to the last study we did, in fact, the last two studies, the works of the flesh, if you'll remember in your mind what they were, there were like 15 of them that Paul gives us.

And that's just a relative sample. That's not all of the works of the flesh. That's just some. But if you notice, when you go down that list, most of them have at the heart hatred for one another. What did we say that the majority of the works of the flesh were focused on?

Social sins. Remember, it starts with sexual immorality and impurity and sensuality, those things that most people at least would accept there are something wrong with that. You know the one thing that most people still agree on?

Adultery is wrong. Because if you commit adultery, whether they call you a cheater, you know, and most people still consider, even in a world that's lost its morals, if you commit adultery, that's wrong.

So the first three of the works of the flesh is sexual immorality, which would include fornication and adultery. People, okay, that's wrong. Sensuality, that's lusting for the flesh. God is their bellies, is the way the Bible describes it.

Wants what the flesh wants all the time. Moved by the senses, that's what sensuality means. And we see that. And then it goes into idolatry, which is putting things before God. But then it quickly moves into the works of the flesh that are social.

The first one is enmity, which means hatred. Literally just means hatred of other people. And then the strife and jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.

All of these, with the exception maybe of drunkenness, are purely behaviors towards others. And what do we say drunkenness, how does it fit into that?

What's that? Being like out of control of your thoughts. Yeah, if you're already a jerk, it just makes you more of a jerk. Yeah, it amplifies whatever it is.

Yeah, they say, well, drinking accentuates my personality. Well, that's not good if you're a jerk. It just makes you more of a jerk. And so if you're already a hateful person, and then you become an alcoholic, you're just a hateful alcoholic.

It intensifies your... Your attitude is. And so we see hatred as really the heart of the works of the flesh. And hatred expresses itself in different ways. Jealousy, I want what you have, and I feel like I deserve it more, and I hate that you have it.

That's jealousy, it's hatred. Envy, I feel like I should be able to be where you are, and have what you have, and do what you do. And be able to do what you do. And I hate you that I can't do what you do.

And that's the hate that we see beginning at verse 19 and going through verse 21. But then we come to verse 22 and we find this great contrast. We see the word but, and if you've been here long enough, you've probably heard Brother Mark talk about the importance of the word but.

It's an adversative conjunction, which means it changes something. You know if somebody says, if a woman tells you, you're a really nice guy, but you don't want to hear what's coming next. Because whatever it is, it's not good.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. Whatever's coming after the but is going to be different than what came before. And so we have in verses 19 -21 this list, which at the heart of the list is hatred. That's the flesh working itself out, wanting what it wants, not caring about others, not being concerned with others, not considering the well-being of others, wanting what it wants.

But, verse 22, the fruit of the Spirit, and it goes in to give us nine things in this list. So, just so we're clear, it's making a contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. And you say, well, that's obvious.

Well, the reason why I want you to see it this way is because when you interpret the fruit of the Spirit, you should not only interpret it by what the words mean, but you should also interpret it by how these words contrast what the other words mean.

Because this is a contrast. What the flesh gives us is hatred. What the flesh gives us is death. What the flesh gives us is immorality. What the flesh gives us is self-want and fulfillment and all those things that we just want to indulge.

What the Spirit gives us is distinct and contrasted with that. It's not a one-for-one list. It's not as if you can say, well, the flesh gives this and the Spirit gives this and the flesh gives this and the Spirit gives this, because they're not even the same amount in the lists.

As I said, there's about 15 on one. There's only nine on the other. So it's not a direct one-for-one. But what I am going to show you today, at least I hope to show you, is that the contrasts are there if you're able to see them, and it will help you understand more what the fruit of the Spirit really looks like if you compare it to what it doesn't look like.

Sometimes the best way to know what something is is to look at it as opposed to what it's not. You know? If I asked you to define good, you'd say, well, it's not bad. I mean, honestly, that would be the first thought that most people have.

If I ask you to define righteousness, you'd say, well, it's the opposite of unrighteousness. Well, that's kind of hard, right? You find the definition in the contrast. You find the definition in the opposite.

Now, one of the things I want to mention as we go into this is the difference between works and fruit, because we see that's the first contrast that we see here. The works of the flesh. If you follow that word works back through the book of Galatians, what you will find is the works of the flesh almost always is dealing with the law, because he says works of the law, works of the law.

So that word works comes up in regard to the law. And so what are the works of the flesh, but our inabilities to keep the law? The works of the flesh are the evidences that we are not law keepers, right?

The law tells us to do righteous and do good. And what does the flesh do? It proves that we're not good. Last night, I taught a lesson to our church on the doctrine of total depravity, which is a doctrine of the sinful nature of man.

I went through ten passages, and I showed that the Bible describes man not only as not good, it describes man as evil by nature. Ephesians 2, You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, according to the prince of the power of the air, and you were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Now that was a paraphrase. I missed a little bit of it, but you understand. By nature, children of wrath. Romans 3, verse 10. There is none good, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God.

All have turned aside. All have gone their own way. The venom of asps is under their lips. There is no fear of God before their eyes. This is the nature of man. A rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, Good teacher, what must I do to be saved?

Jesus said, why do you call Me good? There is none good but God alone. Jesus wasn't denying His own goodness, but what He was denying was that man's understanding of goodness. You call Me good because you don't understand what good is.

You think you're good, and if you go back to that story, what did Jesus say? When the man said, good teacher, what must I do to be saved? Jesus said, keep the commandments. And He said, honor your father and mother, do not commit murder, do not steal.

What did the young man say? All that I have done since my youth. Which means I'm good too. No, you're not. It's in a couple of the Gospels, but I think it's Mark 18. But I'll have to check to make sure.

But there is another passage that really... I talked about this a little bit last night. When Jesus was describing the goodness of God, He said, you fathers, being evil, you still know how to give good gifts to your children.

How much more will the Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who love Him? Right? That was a statement Jesus made. But notice the dig. You fathers, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.

Jesus couldn't even express anything about us without saying, oh, and also, you're evil, don't forget. Don't forget you're evil. The works of the flesh are evil. The works of the flesh are hatred. The works of the flesh are bad.

But the fruit... And remember the contrast. The contrast is from works to fruit. Why? And no, I'm not trying to make a cross. There's nothing particular about it. You say, oh, make a cross. No, that's not the point.

That's not the point. It looks like a cross. The comparison is works and fruit. What's the difference? Works are what we do. Remember, works are the law. It's all about us. It's what we do. Fruit, though, fruit is something that is planted, nurtured, and comes to life by a process that we don't control.

Think about this. Have you ever planted a seed and had it grow into anything? I never have. I literally never have. Because people talk about having a green thumb. I don't have a green anything. I can't do it.

But I've seen people do it. I've seen people plant seeds and grow fruit, grow crops, grow trees. What did they do to make that happen? Other than planting, of course. But what did they do? They watered, maybe.

They nourished. But ultimately, you can't make a seed grow. Yeah, it has to rot, germinate, change, and metamorphosize. And it does all that independent of us. We can't go down there and make it happen.

We can't make a seed grow. And think of the picture of that with fruit. And you say, well, what are you getting at? Here's what I'm getting at. The works of the flesh are what you do. The fruit of the Spirit is the growth of the Spirit's work once He comes to live inside of you.

Just like that seed that goes into the ground, you don't cause it to grow, it just grows. The fruit of the Spirit is the natural growth of someone who's been born of the Spirit. Remember what Jesus said in John 3?

Unless a man be born again, he will not receive the kingdom of heaven. And Nicodemus said, what do you mean? Am I supposed to go back up into my mother's womb and be born? And Jesus... You don't want to know what's wrong.

Sorry for that interruption. So where was I? The fruit of the Spirit is the... Oh, I was in John 3. He said, unless a man be born of water in the Spirit. So, born of the Spirit, Jesus says. We must be born of the Spirit.

What does that mean? Well, the doctrine is regeneration. Our heart was dead. God comes. He gives us a new heart. The Bible says He takes out our heart of stone. Gives us a heart of flesh. And the Spirit comes to make His home within us.

And now that He's there, the fruit begins to work itself out. Because He's there. The seed is planted in the ground and it grows because the seed's there. The Holy Spirit is inside of it. And so it grows because He's there.

It's the by-product of having Him within us. I'll give you a thought on this. At our church, many of you have been there, visited. Next time you're at our church and you're driving in the driveway, or you're riding in the driveway, whatever, and you make the first turn after the driveway entrance, you make that first turn, there's a place where the concrete slab has shifted.

And it's literally like an 8-inch shift. And what has happened is the trees that are nearby that have these long, extended roots have continued to grow. The church building has been there for, well, since 93.

So, what's that? 27 years? 26 years. I was born in 23. Okay, so it's been there for that long. And when it was first built, those trees weren't quite as big as they are now. The roots had not grown out as far as they have.

But we couldn't stop the root growth. We didn't know where it was going to go. But what's happened is it's grown up underneath that concrete. And even as heavy as that concrete is, and it's probably several tons worth of concrete.

Even though it's got several tons worth of concrete sitting on it, it literally is nothing because that fruit is going to fruit. That root. But you have to understand the connection. It's growing. That growing root is going to make its way out.

And it doesn't care if there's a two-ton boulder in front of it. It's going to keep going. This is why Jesus, when He described in Matthew 7, He's talking about false teachers. And He talked about the fact you'll know them by their fruits.

Right? This is because a bad tree produces bad fruit. And a good tree produces good fruit. Why? The fruit doesn't make the tree good or bad. But the fruit shows whether the tree is good or bad. The fruit says what kind of tree it is.

You don't... Yeah, and a poison ivy bush is not going to produce grapes. Because it's not... Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's not going to produce good fruit. Because it's not a good bush. It's not a good tree.

The Spirit coming to live within us produces fruit. And the fruit is described here in nine different things. Nine different qualities. But I want to make a point about the word fruit. The word fruit is in the singular.

I point that out and some people say, you can make too big a deal about this. And I do think you can make too big a deal about this. Because it's what we call a collective singular. When you go to somebody's house and you see they've got a bowl and the bowl's got apples and oranges and bananas, you don't say, hey, look at all the fruits.

You say, look at the fruit. It's still multiple things but it's a collective singular. It's used in the singular. But the reason why I'm pointing out the use of the singular is because when it says the fruit singular of the Spirit is, yes?

It does not bear good fruit and a good tree does not bear bad fruit. So as a Christian, we're not perfect. And is that where the works in the fruit are different? Because there are good trees that do have bad things in them.

I mean, do you understand? Remember this. The general rule is the general rule. Jesus is not saying that it's impossible that a believer have something in their life that's bad. We know that that's possible.

In fact, the very thing we're going to study next week is if a person is caught in sin, restore such a one. That's chapter 6 of Galatians and we're going to talk about how that happens. It's not impossible.

But the point is the quality of life. And here's the example. If you had an apple tree that bore a hundred good apples and you saw a couple of bad apples, you'd still say it was a good tree. But if you saw a tree that had all bad apples, then you'd know it was a bad tree.

So it's not a... It's an example. It's an analogy. It's a metaphor. It's not a hard and fast thing. Oh yeah, I'm glad that was helpful. So getting back to the idea of fruit being singular, you say... And I don't want to be too pedantic here because I do think we can overpress this.

But the reason why I'm pointing this out is when it says the fruit of the Spirit, fruit being singular, it says the fruit of the Spirit is love. And then it goes joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Everything that comes after the word love is an expression of love. And I'll prove it to you. Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13 is what's known as the love passage. It's all about love.

It starts by saying, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers, understand all mysteries and all knowledge. And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have or deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. So the point of the first section of 1 Corinthians 13 is that if you have all of these various things that you do, whether it's giving up of yourself and being a good teacher, being a good speaker, all those things, if you don't have love, it doesn't matter.

Because love is the one true necessity if you're a Christian. Then it says, love is patient. Guess what? That's a fruit of the Spirit. If you go back to Galatians. And kind. Guess what? That's a fruit of the Spirit.

That's one of the nine. Love does not envy or boast. Well, you could go back and say that that would fit into the quality of joy and peace. Again, these are not hard and fast, but it goes in to say it's not rude.

It does not insist on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful. Of course, those are all examples of kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. And it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

Alright. So we see the example of what love is in 1 Corinthians 13. We go back to Galatians 5 and we see this list and we say, okay, there's something special about the first one. There's something special about this one.

Now, again, stepping back, I'm not saying the only fruit of the Spirit is love. But I do think there's a reason why it comes first. And if I had to encapsulate all of the fruit of the Spirit in one word, if I had to take that singular fruit and said what is the fruit of the Spirit, I would say it's love.

In fact, I'll quote Martin Luther as I often do. He's my favorite on the book of Galatians. This is what he says. It would have been enough to mention only the single fruit of love, for love embraces all the fruits of the Spirit.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul attributes to love all the fruits of the Spirit. There it is. That's what we see. And that's why we could stop there. And we could just have a study on what does it mean to love others.

Honestly, you could go back to the other page. You could go back to verses 19 to 21 and you could say entity. What is entity? The opposite of love. What is strife? It's the opposite of love. What is jealousy?

It's the opposite of love. I mean, it's all opposite in a different way. It's expressing hatred in a different way, but it's all hate. And hate is the opposite of love. And therefore, all of that is an expression of the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit.

Therefore, if you get nothing else out of today's lesson, know this. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Jesus said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Now, why did He call that a new commandment?

The commandment to love was already in the Old Testament. The commandment to love in the Old Testament was love your neighbor as yourself. But what did Jesus say?

Love one another as I have loved you. Because He has to be. Because if it was based on me or like anything else all of humanity would come out and screw it up. But Jesus is perfect, so He has to.

Be the level. He becomes the standard. He is the standard. He's the plumb line. That's right. And so we look at Jesus and we say, there's my standard. He said, A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you.

Meaning in the same way that I have loved you. How did Jesus love His disciples? He was patient with them. Think about how patient He was with Peter. If there's one disciple that I really connect with, it's the one who had the biggest mouth and the one who was quick to speak and the one who often got his foot caught in his mouth.

You ever been there? Yeah. And that's Peter. Well, Thomas, absolutely the doubter, right? Thomas had legitimate questions that expressed themselves sometimes in the worst ways. But it was his concerns, his doubts, but yeah, so we see that Jesus was patient with Thomas.

He said, put your hand here. Know that it is I. Touch my side and see that it is I. That's patience, right? He didn't come up and say, Thomas, how could you doubt me? Hit the floor, young man. Now Thomas did hit the floor.

Thomas said, my Lord and my God fell down after he had seen the nail marks and the spear mark. Love. Love is the ultimate fruit of the Spirit and Jesus is the example of it. And the rest of these we're always going to go back to love.

Whether it's joy, patience, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, we're going to go back and say, and see how love does this. See how love does this. Think about Romans 10.

I'm sorry, Romans 13 verse 10. In Romans 13 verse 10 it says this, love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Anytime we have ever done wrong by our family, anytime we've ever done wrong by a friend, anytime we've ever done wrong by someone we didn't know, anytime we've ever done wrong by anything, anyone, it was a moment where we were not showing love because love does no wrong to a neighbor.

So the first fruit of the Spirit and the one that encapsulates all the fruit, plural, of the Spirit is love. So now let's look at the second one. The second one is joy. Joy is hard to define. And I say that because it's often misunderstood and it's often wrongly defined.

Some of you have Bibles that, and I don't know what translation it is, it might be the New Living Translation, it might be the Message Bible, but some of you have Bibles where when you go to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, it's supposed to say, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who this, blessed are those who that.

Some of you say happy. Happy are those who this. Happy are those who that. And that's the translation. I don't remember which one it is, I just remember seeing it and I remember going, that's wrong. Because blessedness and happiness are not necessarily equal, but also joy and happiness are not equal.

People want to compare joy and happiness and make it equal, but it's not. What's the difference between joy and happiness? The very heart of the definition. The word happiness comes from the same root as the word happen or happening.

Happiness, happen, happening. So for instance, there are happenings that occur that can be hard. Go to the doctor. He pulls out a file, opens it up, and at the top it says cancer. That's a tough happening.

Wake up on Christmas morning. Your house is flooded with sewage water. As your toilet is backed up. That happened Christmas morning several years ago. That, yeah. That, no. That was a happening that weren't happening.

It was like, this is awful. And I can tell you, that moment, I weren't happy. I weren't happy. I were not. I was this deep in my sewage the pipe outside that you know, oh yeah. What a day. It was rough.

And each one of you, if I gave you the opportunity, could tell me about your worst day. That's certainly not my worst day. That was a bad day. That wasn't my worst day. I've had worse. I can say a lot of fun, but I don't know right now.

I can say a lot of fun. But I'm serious. I mean, if I said were there happenings in your life? I mean, maybe it's what brought you here. Maybe you had a really bad day. Maybe you had a really bad year.

Maybe you had a really bad decade. And if you came here looking for happiness, I'm going to tell you and again, I don't mean to deal with just you guys in this situation, but since we're here, we'll talk about it.

If you came to Set Free looking for happiness, that is not the promise. Because happiness is fleeting. It comes and it goes. But joy is a state of being. It is not the same as happiness. Joy is a state of comfort and peace where you are with God.

You see, when I wake up and my house is flooded, I'm still a child of God. If the doctor opens up that thing and the word cancer is there, I'm still a child of God. If I, on my way home, am in a horrible accident and I lose the facilities of my body and I can't walk, and for the rest of my life, my wife has to take care of me, I would still be a child of God.

Johnny Erickson Tada was a young girl who was a swimmer. And once she dove into a pool and when she dove into the pool, she broke her neck. She lost all of the feeling from her neck down. She became a quadriplegic.

And she has lived her life since then as what we would call an invalid. A person who's unable to do and care for themselves. She has gone on to be one of the most inspirational Christian speakers and writers in the last 25 years.

She's married. She has a husband who loves her and takes care of her. She has a life that is hard, but not without joy. And she is able now to thank God for her injury. Because it turned her into who she is.

And it changed her life ultimately for His glory. That's joy. I'm sure there are days where she's not happy. I'm sure there are days where it hurts. But she's still a child of God. And that's the key.

That's joy. That's the fruit of the Spirit. Love. Joy. Peace. The word peace. The best way I can describe it is the Hebrew word Shalom. You've all heard Jewish people use that term. Shalom. And the Arabic word is similar.

You've heard As-salamu alaykum? That is the Arabic expression of the Hebrew which is Shalom Alekhim. It means peace be to you all. Shalom Alekhim or As-salamu alaykum. It's the same idea. Shalom. Shalom.

In battle, there are ceasefires. But a ceasefire does not necessarily mean peace. Think about the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. North and South Korea could go back to war at any moment.

That space keeps them separated. But at any moment, that peace could become war again. It's not peace. It's a ceasefire. But when we come to Christ, the Bible says we who were at war with God are now at peace with God.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. And that word peace is the idea of shalom. The Bible says when we come to Christ, we are given a peace that passes understanding. Meaning that it doesn't make sense, but we have it.

That's the peace that's the fruit of the Spirit here. It's a peace not with others necessarily because there's a lot of people who hate me. You don't think so. Let's just go to the videotape. Go online.

E-mails. Comments. People don't like what I have to say most of the time. Yeah, calling people. Yeah. Calling out sin. Preaching Jesus. People don't want to hear that. I don't expect to have peace with people.

Jesus said I didn't come to bring peace with a sword. And I will divide father from mother. I'll divide sister from brother. I'll divide people even within their own homes. You say, why is He called the Prince of Peace?

Because He came to give peace with God. And the fruit of the Spirit is peace with God. And that peace carries us through the inevitable battles of life. Patience. Number four. Patience. I'm going to kind of go through these a little quicker now.

The word patience is macrothumia. Now the reason why I mention that is because if you go back to the works of the flesh, one of those was fits of anger. And that was the word thumoi, meaning getting hot.

Remember we talked about where we get the word thermometer? It means to get hot. Thermometer means to measure heat. And so thumoi means a person who gets mad. Gets hot. Macrothumia. Macro means large.

Thumia means hot. You say, well it means he gets hot big? No, that's not what it means. It means it takes a long time for him to get angry. That's what patience is. A person who has a long fuse. You ever heard somebody say, I got a short fuse?

That's the opposite of patience. Macrothumia. I've got a long... it takes me a while before I am... What does the Bible say about God? He is slow to anger. An abounding and steadfast love. And by the way, if you walk through these characteristics, love, joy, peace, patience, all these, and then you go back and you compare them to Christ.

He magnifies all of them. As the God man, He magnifies them for us. And so what it's saying is the fruit of the Spirit is it's the Spirit's work of making you more like Jesus. Romans chapter 8 says we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

That's the goal of our salvation. Not to take you to heaven. That's the byproduct. The goal of your salvation is not to take you to heaven. The goal of your salvation is to make you more like Jesus. Yes?

Very quick question. Sure. So, let's just say, individually speaking, as all of you. If we worked on this kind of like class and school and graduated, would Jesus take us to heaven if we magnified all of His teachings and we became similar like Him?

Like, would He like just drop dead and just rise to heaven and let us enter if we pass? If we magnified those teachings.