What's the Deal With The Fruit of the Spirit?

All right everybody, welcome back to the channel. It is Friday and I hope you've had a very productive week.

I hope you're planning a very good weekend. My seven -month -old is getting baptized this weekend.

He also said dada for the first time, so you know, this is a Christian nationalist victory weekend.

I'll tell you that right now. Anyway, but I wanted to talk about my favorite coffee mug verse, and I don't mean that as an insult.

This is a good verse and it's great that people put it on coffee mugs. I don't have one, but that's okay.

That's okay. And it is Galatians 5, 22 to 23. If you know the reference, then you know that this is the fruit of the spirit.

And so I want to read it to you and I want to just mention a few things about it because often, as you might expect, people online will quote this verse to me as if it's the first time

I've ever heard it. But in reality, I've thought a lot about this verse over the years and I continue to all the time.

And I'm never upset when people quote it to me because it's very valuable and it's something that we all should keep in mind all the time.

And it's very instructive to Christians in every area of life. I'm going to read it from the

New International Version because why not? Here's what it says. The fruit of the spirit, it says actually, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.

Against such things, there is no law. I love that part how it ends.

Against such things, there is no law. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

There's a few things that I like to think about when I think about this verse and especially that last sentence, against such things, there is no law.

And then we see, you know, often in the scriptures, there's a lot of laws. We know that, right?

You know, we read the Bible, you know, it's not only stories and parables from Jesus Christ, but it's also, there's a lot of law in it as well.

It's not just the message of salvation through faith in the Lord, but there's also a lot of instruction.

There's also a lot of law. And so, you know, a lot of times, you know, liberals, of course, will quote this verse to say, hey, you shouldn't be against, you know, whatever, homosexuality or abortion or whatever it is, and they'll say it's not loving.

But the fruit of the Spirit says that there is no law against love. And so, if you look at the

Old Testament, if you look at Leviticus, Deuteronomy, I mean, even the New Testament as well with Paul and Jesus, they have, there's law that they teach against homosexuality, against killing, against stealing, against, there's so many different things, all kinds of perversions.

And so, therefore, we have to determine that being against those things does not violate the fruit of the

Spirit, because God says that against such things, there is no law. And yet,

He provides all of this law, so therefore, it cannot be against such things. That's the first thing that I often think about.

And we need to, of course, define all of these words according to the way that the

Scripture presents them. Also, this is the thing

I wanted to talk about today. We have to understand that the fruit of the

Spirit is going to work itself out very differently in different contexts, because we understand what time it is, and we have to.

I mean, we have to understand what time it is. I mentioned Ecclesiastes in the last video. There's a time for everything under the sun.

In fact, let me pull that up so I can just read. This time, I'm going to use the King James, which, of course, I prefer.

To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace.

I remember my son, he had read this in one of his Bibles, and he was telling me about it, and he was very interested in this.

And I just told him about how wisdom is, of course, knowing the difference. I mentioned recently about my second youngest son, and he's the most aggressive son that I have.

And he's the son that's more likely to hit one of his brothers. His older two brothers are much more passive.

And so I'm working currently to try to increase the aggression, the assertiveness of my two older sons.

And with my third son, what I'm trying to get him to understand is that his aggression is not always bad, but it has to be focused and cultivated where he knows the differences of the times.

I could see my third son, he's protective over his older brothers sometimes too.

And when they get in little altercations or disagreements with friends, he's always right there trying to defend his brothers.

And sometimes that's a very good thing. That's a very good thing. And so I could see my son being able to harness his natural aggression, his natural nature, and use it for good ends.

And that's a good thing. And so I don't want to necessarily proverbially beat that out of him.

I want him to harness it. I want him to use it for good purposes. And so I was talking to my oldest son about how there is a time for these things.

There's a time for battles. There's a time for fighting. The Bible says there's a time to kill. We need to understand that there's a way to understand what time it is.

But you got to look at this, of course, in context too, because the Bible says very clearly there's a time to kill.

There's a time to fight. There's a time to love. There's a time to hate. And we need to keep it all together.

This is the thing that I think so many evangelicals have a hard time doing. They can't keep it together.

And so when there's a time that we're ready to fight and we should be ready to fight and willing to fight, that requires some aggression.

That acquires things that you wouldn't normally do. You wouldn't do the same things in a fight or a war or in a battle that you would with friends.

You wouldn't do that. But we still have to have the fruit of the Spirit. We still need to be bearing fruit.

And so the things that you need to think about is, how do I bear the fruit of the

Spirit of God in those times? Because if there's a time to kill and a time to heal, we kind of understand intuitively as Christians growing up in the evangelical church in this time, how to bear fruit of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, all of these things, when it's a time to heal.

But Christian warriors in a war, in a real war, you know, in an actual fight where you're trying to kill the enemy, they also have to bear fruit of the

Spirit. So when they're on the battlefield and they're doing war, they have to do war with the

Spirit of God in them bearing the fruit of the Spirit. And so some people take this and say, oh, well,

I guess Christians can't go to war because how can you have love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control in a war?

War is hell. How can you do that? And so what they say is, oh, no, you can't do that.

And, you know, we talk about some of the famous examples of this in modern times, you know, John Piper, you know, if a rapist comes into my house and tries to have my wife,

I would not shoot him, I would just plead with him, don't do it. What I tell my sons is that if someone came through the door and was trying to hurt you,

I would do everything I can to put a stop to that. And if that meant I had to kill him,

I would do it and I would not hesitate. But hopefully it wouldn't come to that because I have to have forbearance, right?

I have to have self -control. And so if there's a way for me to stop the aggression, to stop the threat in a way that does not require me to kill him or to go overboard, of course, you do that.

A Christian warrior, and I mean, I'm talking about actual warriors, people in an actual, you know, physical fight in a war has to still bear this fruit, has to still, they have to still have self -control.

That would be a big one. They have to still have peace, but it's going to be different the way it looks when you're in a war than when you're in peacetime.

And that is, it can, I can understand why a Christian born in, you know, 1980s, 1990s would have a difficult time understanding that.

Because life in America, though we've been at war basically forever, life in the

United States has been relatively peaceful for a long time, for a long time.

And so we understand the fruit of the spirit at home in peacetime, but we have to understand the fruit of the spirit in war, in times of unrest, in non -peaceful times,

I guess is what I'm trying to say. Most of us aren't warriors, right? Most of us, some of us are, and that's something that you need to work through.

Most of us aren't warriors, but we do have problems. We do have unrest.

We do have political situations that we're considering. And I would suggest that one thing that would be very helpful to do is to work through with your pastors, with your brethren, with the brothers at your church that you trust, the fruit of the spirit applied to less than optimal situations and times and occasions, because that is where it matters so much.

You want to believe, you want to know what someone really believes, you press them a little bit, you put them under pressure, because that's where, that's where what you really believe fundamentally comes out.

How do I have self -control in less than optimal situations? Anyone can have self -control in optimal situations.

Well, not anyone, but most Christians can. How do I have love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control when the world hates my guts and tries to make everything

I do as difficult as possible? How do

I bear the fruit of the spirit in trash world? That's a question that is worth asking, because it's not a question that we really had to deal with head -on in the church, in the

United States, very recently. I think that one very good way to do this is to look at the

Old Testament stories, man. There's so much in the Old Testament that is so valuable, and it's removed from our context to a certain degree, but in another sense, it really isn't.

You know, you want to see people get pressured intensely, probably more than we are right now.

I mean, definitely more in many instances. And how they reacted with faithfulness, that is so helpful.

It is so helpful. We need to look at these stories and recognize that the

Jesus that we've been sold by evangelical leadership for so long is not complete.

You don't get the whole story. The Lord Jesus was perfectly loving, perfectly joyful, perfectly peaceful, perfectly kind, good, faithful, gentle, perfectly self -controlled.

When you read the stories of Jesus in his time, you see an example that if you followed it, if you tried to follow it, trust me,

I've experienced this myself, you get the fruit of the Spirit quoted at you as if you are completely off the rails!

And they'll say stupid, idiotic things like, you're not Jesus! If I had a dollar for every time

I've heard, you're not Jesus, when I tried to follow Jesus's example, I'd have like,

I don't know, a hundred bucks, which these days doesn't buy you much. When you try to follow the example of Christ, the full example, not just the stuff that they twist into sentimentality, when you try to do that, people don't like it.

Big Eva guys don't like it. The fruit of the

Spirit is so important, and continue to quote it at me, you know, as much as you want.

I'm okay with that, I love it. But we have to recognize that depending on what time it is, depending on what your purpose is under the sun, depending on what the occasion is, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, works itself out slightly differently.

Slightly differently. Self -control when you're sitting by your fire on a nice Friday night, enjoying some time with the family and just, you know, generally at peace and at rest, looks different than self -control on a battlefield, looks different than self -control in politics, looks different than self -control on, you know, when you're out in the public square and you're preaching the gospel and people are, you know, throwing proverbial eggs at you.

But it's always self -control. It's always self -control. When that man comes into your house and he wants to have your wife, self -control is going to look a little bit differently than when you're home with your wife, enjoying a nice meal together.

But it's still self -control. I think a lot of my audience gets this.

I think a lot of my friends get this. It's still worth thinking about.

It's still worth thinking about. Because we need to be very honest with ourselves, right?

I need to be honest with myself. I was trained and you were trained, many of you, that essentially the fruit of the spirit turns you into a woman at peacetime.

That's what it should, that's what it looks like. You should be like a woman at peacetime. You should act like a woman at peacetime.

And so we're not very good necessarily at exercising the fruit of the spirit outside of that context.

And so there may be mistakes made. You may go too far.

You may say something that you ought not to have said. You may do something that you ought not to have done.

But it is so necessary to do the things that you need to do at times of unrest or less than optimal conditions that it's worth practicing.

It's worth trying. It's worth thinking about. It's worth doing. We need to go recognizing we will make mistakes, but we need to go with humility and we need to go with full confidence that the

Lord and his sacrifice on the cross is big enough to cover even when we do the wrong thing.

Even when our motivations are less than perfect. Even when our actions are less than perfect.

It's worth doing. You know, everyone's, all the rage right now on Twitter is the whole thing with the spanking, you know what

I mean? And how, you know, spanking is just automatically abused. It's all nonsense. We all get that, right?

We all get that. One thing I have noticed though, is that there is sort of like a undercurrent with the people that are pro -spanking that tries to make it seem like unless you're doing the spanking in a perfect state of mind, you know, you have no anger at all.

You have no anything at all. Then you shouldn't even try. You shouldn't even do it. You shouldn't, it's not going to work.

And I understand why they say that because that, because when you're not in a good place, right?

If you're not in a good state of mind, that's when spanking tends to go overboard, right?

That's when things can become abusive. That being said, the chance of something going overboard does not mean that you should not try.

You should not seek to discipline your children the way God says as perfectly as you can.

And in fact, I remember very specific instances in my own childhood. We're looking back.

I had great parents, my mother and my father. I'm so grateful. I am so fortunate to have had them.

I remember instances where they did not deploy spanking and discipline in a perfect way.

I remember them. I am still grateful for even those.

I am. I'm still grateful for discipline imperfectly applied.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's worth the effort and you want to be perfect and you want to do it the best way and you want to be as consistent as possible.

Cause that's the other thing too. Cause sometimes people do the spanking thing in an inconsistent way and it can be very confusing for kids.

And that is definitely true. I mean, you don't want to, you don't seek to do it inconsistently, but it's required by God and it's worth making a few mistakes to go after the perfection of what

God requires. And so I'm grateful to my father for the inconsistent or imperfect discipline that he sometimes deployed.

I'm grateful to my father for that. The key here is that, you know,

I knew my father loved me. I knew he did. There was no question about that in my house.

Not, not, not once. That was the key. And so while he, um, you know, got angry and did it, you know, in a state of anger, maybe he shouldn't have done it.

Fine. Fine. But my, but, but, but everything about that house, I knew my dad loved me.

I knew he was on my side. I knew he would have my back. And that was what was important in that. When you're acting as a

Christian, um, your love should be obvious. And even if it's not obvious to all those that you love, those that you protect, those that you're, that they're your people, it should be obvious to them.

Anyway, that's all I have for you today. This is a little more preachy than some of my content, but that's okay.