Philippians 1:9-11 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — to the glory and praise of God.
Paul desired that we who are IN CHRIST might abound more and more in love so that we might live lives that are pure and blameless. John wrote: God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16) Jesus defined God's love as an active force or a condition that extends even to his enemies. This divine force would motivate people to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This is the love of a heavenly Father who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:44-45) He displays his love on all humans by allowing them to survive and to thrive by giving them the rain and the sun. He loves his creation. Christ in his Sermon on the Mount asks his followers to have such love for all humanity. Our love should be as God's love: pure, blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness. Of course this fruit of righteousness can only truly come through the abiding presence of Jesus Christ in us. Jesus said that He must go away so that He might send the Holy Spirit to each believer. As a human, Jesus Christ could only be with a small number of people as he walked this earth. Those in his presence could be comforted by him, taught by him, healed by him, nurtured by him. He could be their advocate before the Father. At that time, his influence was focused on the children of Israel, not the world. But later, after Pentecost, the whole world would be exposed to his power and authority through the indwelling Holy Spirit. All would be able to hear his voice, deep inside them, for the Holy Spirit was sent to fill every believer, everyone who put his or her trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. Jesus is now actively present in every believer regardless of his or her geographical location. The fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ is our inheritance as believers.
Christians should be fully engaged with God's Spirit in our lives. Jesus told his disciples they needed the power of the Holy Spirit, and He told them to go and wait until the Holy Spirit came upon them: Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. . . But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:4-5 & 8) We need the fruit of righteousness that the Holy Spirit brings to work actively within us, not the inertness of the dead flesh. If we live for the flesh, we are still dead in our actions. The world will be too much in us, and our lives will be unfruitful, unloving. Rather than going into the deeper things of the Word based on loving as God loves, we will still be dependent on doctrines based on the foundational positions of knowing Christ, following Christ, and being in God. All of which are good, but repetition of these basic beliefs does not necessarily lead to maturity in our Christian walk. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1-2) The abiding Spirit in our lives will endorse the foundational elements of knowing Christ and having eternal life, but the Spirit asks us to display the image of God to the world, to those who do not love us or want to hear. As Christ puts it, If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. (Luke 6:32) Jesus goes on to say, there is no credit in merely doing good to those who can repay you, but when you are kind to those who cannot repay you, you are acting as your Father in heaven would act, and He is pleased with you.
We read Paul's admonition while studying Galatians: Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5:25) The Holy Spirit contains the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. The fruit of the Spirit also listed in Galatians 5 consists of 9 basic characteristics: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is the personality, the essence of God: Christ in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot separate the fruit into its elements. This fruit is a whole, with one aspect comes all the fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is contrary to the sinful nature of mankind. Sometimes we are kind, gentle, and so on, but we do not always display these characteristics. When we do not, we miss the image of God in our lives. Now, what is not like God? We are not like God when we judge another man's servant or do not love others as we love ourselves or when we display the antonyms of the nine characteristics of the Holy Spirit. Having the opposite of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our lives shows we are out of step with the Spirit. Hatred, anger, greed, selfishness, and the like lead to wars, conflicts, arguments, judgments, gossiping, and all that is against God. They are destructive, definitely not the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Jesus died for the whole world. He died for a world that hated him; He died for his enemies; He died for Jews and Gentiles. He asks us to have this same Spirit of love active in our lives when we turn to him as our Savior. He wants our lives to be his and not ours. We are not God and we do not comprehend the things of God, but we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and come to know him. He alone has the right to judge for He knows all, but we are to be his servants, displaying his long patience with the world. He desires that no one will face eternal judgement, that no one will miss out on his love. We are to display Christ's love for the world, his fruit of righteousness. What is the fruit of righteousness? We were lost and now we are saved. We were dead and now we are alive. We are now confident: But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:10-11)
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