Commentary on "The Fruit of the Spirit: The Essence of Christian Character"

RICHARD PEIFER

 

Day 3: Monday, March 22, 2010

 

Overview

“How well are these characteristics manifested in your own life? If you are discouraged by what you see, what’s your one hope? What’s the only place you can flee to, and what can you find there?” (Adult Teachers Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, Page 152)

 

Observations

The author does a nice job of including many other characteristics of the Spirit-controlled life to the mix. I especially appreciated his inclusion of 2 Peter 1:5-7.

The quotation used in the Overview section above comes immediately after the 2 Peter reference, and, though used to encompass all of the other passages in this section, exposes the typical bias of Adventist teaching. Adventism is all about performance—How do I know I’m doing things right? How do I improve my behavior?

The answer to the question is found in 2 Peter 5:8-9 – “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.”

Note the purpose of all these characteristics—to be effective and productive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The surest way to become “ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” is to forget that you have “been cleansed from [your] past sins.”

First, this echoes Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

The point of both Paul’s and Peter’s statements is that we would know Jesus better and better, not that we would behave better and better. In fact, it is never safe to spend much time contemplating our behavior, except to ask whether it reflects our identity as children of God, allowing the Holy Spirit to continue the process of mind renewal.

Second, the cause of being unproductive is forgetting that we have been forgiven. Any focus on our failure, and we all fail, takes our focus off Jesus’ success. Christian maturity never is gained through a continuous cycle of try-fail-ask-forgiveness-try-again. It is gained solely through the realization of our complete and total forgiveness (attained once for all by Jesus on the cross), which leads to joy, which leads to peace with God, and so on.

 

Summary

1. Truly, the fruit of the Spirit includes more than just the lists Paul presents in Galatians and Ephesians.
2. The cause of our failure to grow and mature is not our failure to behave better.
3. We fail to grow and mature because we get stuck on our sin (behavior) rather than Jesus’ victory.

 

GO TO DAY 4

 

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