The following is an
excerpt from an article in the magazine In
Touch by Dr. Charles F. Stanley:
The wisest decision you
can make is to set your heart, mind, and will on doing whatever is necessary to
grow up in Christ. Then whenever the
Lord gives you a specific responsibility of any kind, you will be prepared and
equipped to fulfill your calling. Here
are some spiritual markers of a believer.
The Fruit of Spiritual Maturing
Spirit-controlled character (Gal. 5:22-25)
Stability of sound doctrine (I Tim. 4:6)
Passion for Christ and His calling (Phil. 3:7-14)
Increasing love for one another (I Thess. 3:12-13)
Ability to gently exhort others (II Tim. 2:24-26)
Discernment
(Heb. 5:14)
Godly wisdom
(James 3:13-18)
Increasing holiness in behavior (I Peter 1:13-16)
In the New Testament Jesus
used the fig tree to illustrate spiritual hypocrisy in the religious community
of His day. Here is one such passage:
Now in the morning, as He [Jesus]
returned to the city, He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came
to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on
you ever again.” And immediately, the fig tree withered away. (Matthew 21:18-19)
Jesus cursed the tree
because it should have had some fruit on it naturally – simply as a function of
its fruit-bearing nature and tendency to blossom nearly year-round. He correlated the tree’s lack of fruit to the
nation of Israel’s spiritual deficit and moral corruption. The Jewish people had forsaken God and
rejected Him time and time again. The religious leaders made a mockery of the original intent of the Law and had burdened men with hundreds of man-made rules and regulations.
Fig trees in Jesus’ day
were abundant and as common as an oak or maple in your front yard today.
Everyone had a fig tree and they dotted the landscape in the hillsides
surrounding Jerusalem. In the Old
Testament it often represented prosperity. In I Kings 4:25 we read that “every man was
sitting under his own fig tree.” The fig
tree makes a good shade tree, often growing up to 20 feet or more. (John
1:43-50)
Many times fig trees were
planted alongside the grapevines and flourished in the well-maintained
vineyards. Fruit often appears before
the leaves which don’t appear until right before summer. Two crops of fruit appear: one in the spring
which is eaten fresh, and the other in fall which is often dried during the
winter.
The first time a fruit
tree is mentioned and named in Scripture is in Genesis. Fig leaves were sewed
together and used to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness in the Garden of Eden.
(Genesis 3:7) The fig leaves are roughly the size of a human hand and are hairy
on the back side.
So, let’s talk about OUR
fruit (or lack thereof). How do we
assure a year-round crop of eye-pleasing, mouth-watering fruit? How do we stay connected to the Vine and grow
as a follower of Christ?
We go back to our passage
in John 15:1-8. We abide. We make Jesus the hub of our lives. As the Apostle Paul says in Acts 17:28, “for
in Him we live and move and have our being…”
What should our fruit look like?
But the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. (Galatians
5:22-23)
I just happen to know a
really great Gardener, and His fruit is always ripe.
