Fruit Reveals The Root
Every fruit tree bears a fruit after its kind. An apple tree bears apples, a pear tree bears pears, and so on. I’ve never looked at an apple tree and wondered why it didn’t have an orange hanging from its branch.
We expect that the fruit will match the root. For the fruit to match the root, the branch the fruit is on must be a branch from the root that is alive and healthy.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
The working of the Holy Spirit produces fruit in our lives. It also causes hope to abound.
Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Fruitlessness is not someone else’s fault. If we want the right fruit, we must have the right root. Jesus spoke to His disciples and said,
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
John 15:4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
No one can have the real fruit of the Holy Spirit without being in the vine. The Vine is the root!
Isaiah 11:10 “And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people;
For the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious.”
Romans 15:12 And again, Isaiah says: “There shall be a root of Jesse; and He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in Him the Gentiles shall hope.”
When we are in the vine, abiding by grace through faith, we have an abundance of hope. We have that hope because the Holy Spirit is available to us by our being in the vine. When we allow Him to flow through us like a rich sap of life, He produces fruit in our lives that gives evidence to all that we are in the vine. One of the greatest evidences is our love for one another.
True believers actively abiding in the vine walk in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. They flourish in an abundance of hope. When you see this fruit at work in someone’s life, you know the root they are drawing their life from.
