How Does This Happen?

...By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  So by their fruits you will know them (Matthew 7:15-20).

Reading this passage in Matthew's Gospel struck me with a bit of incongruity.  I saw Matthew sitting at his tax-collector's table in the public market -- shamelessly cheating and overcharging people on their taxes, oppressing the poor for his own gain.  And I immediately thought of the rotten tree bearing bad fruit.  And yet, that is not the tree Jesus saw when he passed by.  He saw a tree that could be pruned and fertilized, a tree that could yet bear good fruit.

How does this happen, that someone producing evil fruit in this world can be born again as a good tree bearing good fruit, for it seems that's what it would take.  Jesus said to His disciples:  You did not choose Me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit-- fruit that will last.  And the way we bear fruit is to remain in Him, for His Word continually works in us to cleanse us from our own evil works:  You are already clean because of the Word I have spoken in you (Jn. 15:3).

We tend to think of Jesus' washing His disciples feet as purely symbolic, as an example of how we need to treat one another.  But the symbol conveys the reality that as we remain in Jesus, His Word constantly works in us to cleanse and purify us.  He is always washing our feet -- and our heads, hands, and souls.

I used to wonder what "fruit" I was producing -- sometimes I see very little at all.  And yet, Paul in the book of Galatians tells us what the fruit of the Spirit is:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Actually, though we cannot see these fruits, they are the very ones that will change the world around us.  I believe that these spiritual fruits will even make a difference in the physical environment around us.

In the 1940's, there was a Russian experiment to increase productivity on farms.  By adding perlite to the soil to retain moisture, they hoped that a greater yield of wheat would be the result.  The first trial indeed produced a significantly greater yield, but the second trial a year later, with a different group of scientists, produced no results at all.  The third year, the original team was sent to repeat their experiment, with the same results as the original trial.  The conclusion seemed to be that it was the people involved, not the perlite, the produced the results.  Indeed, gardeners do know the difference between a 'green thumb" and a "black" one seems to lie within the soul.

If this is true of the garden, how much more so of the spiritual environment in the home and workplace.  Perhaps the fruit of the spirit flowing out of those who remain in Christ changes the atmosphere in the world around us.  The good news is that we ourselves do not have to "produce" the fruit -- for who among us can actually produce peace, or love, or joy in ourselves?  If we could, we certainly would -- despite the claims of the meditation gurus who want us to lock ourselves in a closet and hum.

It is the Spirit of Jesus in us -- even in Matthew and those like him -- that produces the good fruit.  Mark 4 tells us that the farmer does not know how the seed produces fruit -- all by itself, he says, the soil produces grain, even while the farmer is sleeping.

Matthew walked with Jesus for 3 years, leaving behind his tax table and his own pursuits.  At the end of that time, he was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and his life yielded much fruit for the kingdom of heaven.  I wonder if we could leave behind our selfish pursuits and set out to dwell in the tent of the Lord for 3, 5, 15 years until He produces in us fruit for the kingdom of heaven.