Week 33—Saturday Colossians 2:8-9
Week 33—SATURDAY
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT—ALL MORAL
We saw yesterday the uninspired list of qualities of a Christian believer. It was the Word become magic. Now look at an inspired list where the Word has become flesh: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). Every one of these is a moral quality and a Christian moral quality. These qualities begin with “love”—the highest Christian characteristic—and end in “self-control”—a self controlled by love. Not one of these can be manifested except through character and life, by the Word becoming flesh.
If you deal in signs and wonders as the authentication of a faith, you run into this Indian newspaper clipping in yesterday’s paper:
Nine pandits went on hunger strike yesterday to protest against nonpayment of remuneration to 800 priests who were engaged in a ceremony, or Great Sacrifice, started a month ago to appease the conjunction of eight planets. The principal organizer of the Yagna, or sacrifice, who is himself a pandit, was kept confined in a room by the priests as the former refused to pay the remuneration due on the plea that the feared deluge did not occur. Police arrived and rescued him. According to the hunger strikers the remuneration worked out to a hundred thousand rupees.
That is the aftermath of religion based on outwardism, on magic.
The Christian faith keeps its weapons clean. It wins by being winsome; it saves by exhibiting salvation; it converts by being converted.
And these fruits of the Spirit are not something of which you can have too much. They are universal and for all people in all situations. You cannot have too much of love—it can be Love, Unlimited, as it was in the Master. He masters us by being morally and spiritually masterful. The Word of mastery becomes flesh.
Blessed Lord, you are all you claim to be and more. For when we look at you, we see more than what we see. We see the unrevealed and hear the unspoken. We are in awe—lost in wonder, love, and praise. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I want no “signs” save the signs of your moral and spiritual character within me.