Producing More Fruit

II Peter 1:5-11

While in Bible college, I rented a small house outside town, adjoining a wooded area. That summer, the landlady told me that there were blackberry bushes, gooseberries, and various fruit trees in the woods, and that I was welcome to pick as much as I wanted.

Growing up on the reservation, I didn’t know much about different fruits, and had to examine the bushes and trees for their different fruit to tell what kind of trees they were. The fruit was nearly all very small, and heavily infested with insects, making much of it unusable, but I was able to save enough to make a huge difference in our grocery bill the following winter. The landlady said I was the first renter to ever go to the trouble of picking and using any of the fruit.

After graduation, I learned several things I could have done that would have significantly improved the yield. Pruning some of the trees would have actually produced more fruit by eliminating dying limbs which sapped the trees of nutrients and protecting the fruit from insects and birds. Not doing those things, I was only able to harvest what grew wild, but that was more than previous renters had gotten.

Nothing I could do would make the fruit. That could only be done by the proper tree or bush. They naturally produced some fruit every year, even though nobody used any most years. Simply for the effort to pick it, I was able to reap quite a bit. By researching and acting on what I learned, I could have gotten a great deal more fruit, possibly supplementing our income by selling the surplus.

There is a similarity between the fruit trees and the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can produce spiritual fruit, and he will produce regardless of any persons efforts. Our efforts, on the other hand, can greatly enhance the results of the Holy Spirit’s action. We can simply settle for salvation through faith, or we can actively participate in maximizing the fruit Just as I could have done with the fruit trees. Galatians 5:22-25 describes the fruit and our need to participate in it’s production. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

For lack of a better way of describing it, the fruit of the Spirit is a collection of attitudes he produces in us. No one benefited from the trees producing fruit until someone picked it, Spiritual fruit produces little or no benefit until some effort is put into walking in the Spirit, actively doing what the Spirit directs. Peter lists essentially the same fruit and promises similar results.

“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” (II Peter 1:5-9)

The Holy Spirit produces the attitude in our heart, but unless we trust God by faith and act on that attitude, it serves no useful purpose. The actions are our works. Just as James 2:19-26 describes our actions as completing and perfecting our faith, they complete and perfect the fruit in our lives. A lack of action leaves the reality of our salvation into question.

“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (II Peter 1:10-11)

Philippians 2:5-11 directs us to have the attitude which Christ had, reviewing what it was like. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe the Holy spirit coming on Christ, and Luke 4:1 describes him as “being full of the Holy Ghost,” and “led of the Spirit.” Philippians 2:12-13 directs us to act in accordance with that attitude, completing and establishing evidence of our salvation. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

The Greek word translated ‘work out’ means ‘to work fully, to finish, or to accomplish’. Our works do not save us but they do demonstrate whether our faith is real. Without the attitude, the works are just a pretence, much like a guy buying a girl flowers in order to seduce her with no intention of marrying her.