3-28-14 Bearing Fruit

8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I 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. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17This is my command: Love each other.  (John 15:8-17)

Thoughts: We are created to bear fruit for Him.  If we do not bear fruit, we will be pruned away as dead weight to the body of Christ (the church).  There are at least three different kinds of fruit talked about in the New Testament.  1) The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5)- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 2) The fruit of a well lived- life.  Romans and James talk about persevering and hope producing maturity- a fruitful Christian life.  3) The fruit of reproducing faith in others.  Fruit is how a tree reproduces itself, and there is a sense when we share our faith and people respond to the Good News we are reproducing ourselves and Christ in us- in others.  Our faith is not simply in order to help us be more fulfilled and happy.  Such a faith is not fruit-bearing, but becomes self-centered.  If we abide in Christ, we are being nourished so that we might bear fruit- not that we might be bloated with nourishment.  Our passage says (vs. 16) we were "chosen" to bear fruit.  We were not created to simply be fulfilled.  We were created to bear fruit.
     The best of the fruit is love.  It is the first of the fruit of the Spirit.  It is the greatest of the Spiritual gifts.  It is the greatest commandment and the command that Jesus is focusing on right before His death.  Jesus says the greatest love is shown in sacrifice.  His "new command" is not to love neighbor as self, but to love others as He loved us- in unconditional sacrifice.  The greatest fruit is love, and the greatest love is like Christ's sacrifice.

Prayer: Lord, May my life bear fruit for you.