When we confess our faith in Jesus and are baptized we begin to grow in our Christian walk, mature in the faith, and are transformed into the image of Christ. To say yes to Jesus as Savior is to accept the gift of the forgiveness of our sin. To say yes to Jesus as Lord is to accept His will for our life. To say yes to Jesus as the Christ is to acknowledge His supremacy and authority to mold us into the kind of person we were created to be. This is the role of God’s Spirit in our life, to conform us into the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29, 12:2; Colossians 3:10).

            But what does that look like? Are we as Christians to discover and copy first century dress and lifestyle? Are we to transport back in time 2000 years in order to fulfill this requirement? No, because we are not talking about externals, but character. Though Jesus was God in the flesh, we are not copying something physical, but spiritual. So even though we do not have a photograph of Jesus, we have a picture of Him, and it was given to us by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:22-23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law”. That is who Jesus is, and who we are to become.

            To further explain this I want to share with you the thoughts of Henry T. Blackaby from his devotional Experiencing God (for June 11).

            An examination of the fruit of the Spirit can be intimidating. Working all nine of these traits into your life seems impossible, and indeed it is. But the moment you became a Christian, the Holy Spirit began a divine work to produce Christ’s character in you. Regardless of who you are, the Spirit works from the same model, Jesus Christ. The Spirit looks to Christ in order to find the blueprint for your character. The Spirit will immediately begin helping you experience and practice the same love that Jesus had when He laid down His life for His friends. The same joy He experienced will now fill you. The identical peace that guarded the heart of Jesus, even as He was being beaten and mocked, will be the peace that the Spirit works to instill in you. The patience Jesus had for His most unteachable disciple will be the patience that the Spirit now develops in you. The kindness Jesus showed toward children and sinners will soften your heart toward others. There will be a goodness  and gentleness about you that is only explainable by the presence of the Spirit of God. The Spirit will build the same faithfulness into you that led Jesus to be entirely obedient to His Father. The Spirit will teach you self-control so that you will have strength to do what is right and to resist temptation.

            All of this is as natural as the growth of fruit on a tree. You do not have to orchestrate it on your own. It automatically begins the moment you become a believer. How quickly it happens depends upon how completely you yield yourself to the Holy Spirit’s activity.

             During the months of September, October and November we will be exploring these characteristics from the life of Jesus as our worship theme each Sunday. We can learn from God’s Word how His Spirit produces each of these attributes of Christ in our lives. Since Jesus said “a tree is recognized by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33), and that He “chose [us] and appointed [us] to go and bear fruit” (John 15:16) we had better understand just what this means for us as His disciples. As Christ’s followers, as ones filled with His Spirit, we show that we belong to Him when our life produces the evidence of His life in us. The world will know we are Christians when they look at our life and see Jesus, when they see His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control being produced in our lives.

            Let us live by the Spirit,

Denis Whittet