LESS THAN
PERFECT
I
am less than perfect.
I know that comes as quite a shock
to all of you, but it’s true. Just ask my wife.
Sometimes I operate on the pretense
of perfection believing that I am perfect. And then reality strikes through a
personal realization of my flaws or, more likely, through criticism or
confrontation.
Reality sucks. I don’t like feeling
imperfect. I have a hard time dealing with the truth of my flaws. It makes it
that much more difficult when others expect me to be perfect. On rare occasions
I have heard, “I expected more from you.” Some have even said, “And you’re a
pastor.”
This reality of imperfection is
compounded by certain portions of scripture. Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Mt
5:48). Now there’s a tall order.
So then we come to the fruit of the
Spirit.
In a recent Triad (a discipleship
group of three persons) my partners and I identified those fruits that were
strong in us and those that were growth areas (a nice term for weaknesses). As
we looked at love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control, we realized that some came naturally while others
were more difficult to express.
All the while the three of us knew
that the term is not “fruits” but “fruit,” singular, and that you can’t just
have one and not the others. To have five out of nine would be imperfect fruit.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – there can be no slices, no parts,
no division. When you bite this fruit you get all.
So who has this perfect fruit in
their life? Who here exhibits all of these qualities perfectly? You see my
dilemma. Not only am I less than perfect, so are you.
I want to look with you this morning
at the fruit of the Spirit and see if perfection is really necessary, to see if
I can encourage you in your imperfect expression of Spirit fruit.
Would
you eat imperfect fruit?
Let
me ask you this: would you eat imperfect fruit?
I do the grocery shopping for my
family. It has been my responsibility since we were married nearly 17 years
ago. For the life of me I can’t remember why. But I actually enjoy it for the
most part.
When I come to the produce section I
get really picky. If bananas are too yellow and have black spots showing I
don’t even bother. I will pick up bananas and turn them over to see if there
are black streaks on the bottom. Bananas have to be mostly green if they are
going to last the week.
Apples need to have a firm feel to
them. I pick up each one and look for soft spots or “bruises.” Lately we have
enjoyed “Pink Ladies” but they have to be a certain size and shape to meet my
standard.
I know lettuce isn’t fruit, but a
lady on staff there told me to pick up the heads and see how heavy they are –
heavy means good. But if there are brown streaks I leave them.
Pretty picky huh? When you consider
that most of the world goes to bed hungry it is asinine to be so picky.
The day after our Triad discussion
on fruit of the Spirit, Sharon brought home a basket of strawberries. There
were big ones, small ones, funny shaped ones and some with concaves. If we
entered them in a horticultural contest based on perfection they would not pass
the test. But as far as fruit is concerned: fruit is fruit.
What do you do with imperfect fruit?
You eat it. And if their aesthetic qualities don’t measure up you throw them in
the blender and makes smoothies, or you make jams or wine or preserves.
What does God do with imperfect
saints who produce less than perfect fruit? He makes jam out of you. In other
words, he uses you, regardless of your imperfection.
What
makes fruit inedible?
When
would you not eat fruit? An apple with a firm skin but a soft brown flesh
grosses you out, doesn’t it? That which has the appearance of fruit but is
rotten to the core is useless.
How about oranges? When I travelled
to Paraguay 24 years ago I learned a lesson about oranges. Ken Zacharias
pointed out a beautiful tree loaded with fruit that had gleaming, perfectly
orange rinds. He took one down and showed us that though the skin was perfect
the flesh was bitter. Across the road was another tree with oranges that had
unattractive rinds. He took one down and cut it open – it had the sweetest
flesh.
What makes fruit inedible? It is the
sap of the tree, or, the spirit of the person. If we are controlled by our
sinful nature and the desires of the flesh we will produce rottenness.
Paul said the acts of the flesh are
obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft;
hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies and the like. “And the like…” leaves
open the reality that this list is not exhaustive.
Anything that does not match Christ
cannot be the fruit of the Spirit, for the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Selfishness
sums it up pretty well.
On the other hand, love leads the
list of fruit expressions in Galatians. Dr. Weymouth wrote that the Spirit
brings a harvest of love, love being the fountainhead of all other virtues. Joy is love exulting; Peace is love resting;
Long-Suffering
is love enduring; Kindness is love w/bowed head; Goodness is love in action;
Faithfulness is love confiding; Gentleness is love in refinement; Self-Control
is love obeying. True love is not selfish.
Great! But we are still left with
the conundrum of how we are to bear perfect fruit.
Who
or what produces fruit in us?
If
we ask the question, “How are we to produce perfect fruit of the Spirit in our
lives?” we ask wrongly. The right question is “Who produces fruit in our
lives?”
First of all, Jesus says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No
branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you
bear fruit unless you remain in me,” (John 15:4).
Jesus is the vine, we are the
branches. To remain in him is to cultivate our relationship with him through
hearing h is word (reading Bible), obeying his word, and living out the tenets
of the gospel. When we do that HE will produce fruit in us.
Secondly, Paul builds on the teaching
of John 15 by saying, “Those who belong
(read: remain in) to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” (24). And I know what
you are thinking (or should be thinking): “I have not done that perfectly.”
Before you beat yourself up about
that consider this: Crucifixion is slow and agonizing. You can’t say, “I have
crucified my flesh so that’s that,” in regards to sin. Our flesh isn’t dead yet
and it calls out to us and wants to be revived. We cannot allow ourselves to do
that. Having crucified the flesh we must nail it to the cross over and over and
over again.
Picture your flesh – that egocentric
part of your self that wants to dominate and control everything – as a dragon
in your soul. When you come to Christ and receive his gospel, Jesus beckons you
to kill the dragon. He gives you the power to do so because you cannot do it on
your own.
And when in the name of Christ you
slay the dragon you wonder “Is it dead?” No, Christ answers, but it is mortally
wounded and it will die eventually. It will try to rise up and cause you a
great deal of trouble before it ultimately dies. So you need to treat it as
though it were dead and seal it up in a tomb. Satan, the chief dragon, will try
to loosen the stones with trials and temptations, but you just pile on the
stones again and keep your dragon buried.
Our old self has been dealt a mortal
wound on the cross of Jesus and is stripped of power. The Christian life, the
fruit of the Spirit, is a constant reckoning of the flesh as dead (piling
stones on its tomb) and a constant relying on the present Spirit of Christ to
produce love, joy, and peace within.
Thirdly, Paul says, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in
step with the Spirit,” (25). The imagery is military, like a company of
soldiers on parade. As the soldiers file by you note that their movements are
synchronized, left feet and right feet, left arms and right arms moving
together as one. To walk with the Spirit is to do as the Spirit does. It is
asking, “Do my actions reflect love, joy, peace, patience (longsuffering),
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control?” If they do then
that is Spiritual fruit in keeping with the Spirit himself.
We are less than perfect, there is
no doubt. Even our fruit is a little knobby, marked and misshapen. God still
uses that imperfect fruit.
One more lesson from the fruit tree
should encourage us. When you plant a fruit tree it takes several years before
it produces fruit, does it not? And then some years it may produce less than
stellar fruit. But there’s always next year. You don’t cut a fruit tree down
after one bad season.
So maybe your love is not perfect.
Maybe you don’t express it as openly as others. Some can love with words while
others do so in quiet and subtle actions.
Maybe your joy is not as full as
others. Maybe your peace is disturbed by circumstances and things out of your
control. Perhaps your prayer for patience was answered with trials to teach you
patience (you should have asked that God would just give it to you). That’s
okay because it’s a process. We are in the process of bearing fruit. Your fruit
may be less than perfect but it is still fruit.
The important thing is not to block
the work of the Holy Spirit in your life who produces fruit in you. Keep
burying the dragon and allow God to do the producing.
“Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I
press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me,”
(Phil 3:12).
AMEN
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