This week, Joe asks Jamie what counts as fruit. The context is John 15:8, where Jesus says "the Father is glorified" when we "bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples."
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And we want to welcome you back to our podcast, The Towel & the Basin.
Joe: So Jamie, today I want to ask you a question. This is a theological, philosophical question and it comes out of John 15:8. In this passage, Jesus says that his followers' fruit is what glorifies the Father. And so my question is, what does he mean by fruit? What counts as fruit to us?
Jamie: Yeah, so you have a number of places in the New Testament where Jesus talks about bearing fruit, right? You know a tree by the fruit that it bears, for example, in Matthew six, Matthew seven I believe it is. You have the John 15 text that, if you abide in him you bear much fruit, but apart from him, you can do nothing. And then that statement, I think it's in verse eight that you mentioned that, when we do bear fruit, we are glorifying the father.
Jamie: So we should naturally want to know what that means and what's entailed with that. I think in the Bible belt culture over the last couple of hundred years coming out of the revivals and the revivalist traditions and things like that, and especially we Baptist types, I think there's been a tendency to think of fruit bearing in terms of evangelism and conversion rates. So that if we're walking with Christ, if we're being filled with the spirit, then we will see a number of people saved from our lives. And look, does it mean that? Well perhaps it very much could, but I think biblically speaking, there's actually some indications of something very specific that's in view here when we talk about fruit bearing. It may very well and I would suspect does include our being evangelistic in our evangelist efforts and the conversions that we see coming from that.
Jamie: But to me, I think if we go that way, it's not that that's wrong, it's just incomplete in my mind.
Joe: So the picture is bigger.
Jamie: That's right. So that's a piece of it, but it's got to be more than that. I mean, surely Christ is interested in all of my life. Yes, that we're doing those things, but he's interested in all of my life as well.
Joe: Holistic.
Jamie: And the interesting thing is, is that Paul in the book of Galatians actually mentions fruit bearing as well, and he gives some very clear descriptors of what that means. Now, let me just pause here and say some folks may take exception with me moving from John to Paul. Some maybe biblical theologians would say, "Hermeneutically, you need to stay within the Johanan context. Whatever John meant by fruit, well, that's what John meant, and we need to try to figure that out within his corpus of writing, specifically within the gospel."
Jamie: But maybe that's so, but I just have to think that what Paul is saying here has something to do with what Jesus is getting at there. Because again, Jesus says, "If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit and without me, you can do nothing." Paul then says in Galatians chapter five that, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control." And so he mentions these aspects, or these virtues, or these qualities about us.
Jamie: And essentially, his point runs analogous to what Jesus is saying. Jesus said, "If you abide in me, you bear fruit." Paul is saying, "If the spirit of God is in you and dwelling in you, you will bear fruit." So the parallel there between the two is, look, your communion with God will indicate or dictate the kinds of stuff that flows forth from your life.
Jamie: So I take it therefore to mean, when the New Testament talks about bearing fruit, it has something to do with what Paul's getting at there in Galatians five. So that if I'm in communion with Christ, if I'm indwelt by the Holy Spirit, then there are going to be some natural qualities that take root in me, that begin to shape me, define me, and then ultimately, flow forth from me, right? And so if I am in Christ and I'm communing with Christ, then his love overtakes me, his love overcomes me, his love redirects me, his love now flows forth and oozes forth from me.
Jamie: So in short, my ability to love people seems to be rooted most fundamentally in my communion with Christ. My ability to have peace in trial or difficulty or various uncomfortable circumstances will be determined by my communion with Christ. My ability to have joy or self control ...
Jamie: I mean, think about how many of us have all, my gosh, there's probably a sense in which all of us that are trying to live the Christian life at some point or another, have taken the white knuckle approach. And it's probably, unfortunately, the most common standard approach of all for all of us is that, when we know we're sinning and we don't want to do those things, what do we do? We just simply try harder. It's like we grip the chair and our knuckles turn white. We're just man pouring our-
Joe: Will power it away.
Jamie: Yeah. We just try to willpower it away and that is virtually never successful.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: By contrast, when I am properly communing with Christ and he's indwelling me and I'm abiding and that's being nurtured, there is a control that comes, it's still difficult to resist sin, but there's a control that comes there. And so my ability to be gentle with people, I mean, our probably natural disposition, especially in a world like we live in today, is to be harsh. Think about driving to work today, right? Somebody cuts you off.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: Somebody's bobbing and weaving through traffic in reckless ways, you ride past somebody, you glance over and they're texting on their phone while they're driving in tight circles. And you beep and you honk. We get to work and we pick up the computer or our cell phone and we look on social media and people are barking at each other.
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: It's harsh. And yet my communion with Christ will dictate that I do something and be something different. And ultimately, I think it's not just that, "Oh I have love, so now let me behave different." I think what Paul and Jesus are saying there is that, listen, when we are properly communing with Christ, these things are going to so redefine me and so overtake me, that they begin to naturally, in the same way that fruit naturally grows from a vine, these things now will grow from me and flow from me.
Joe: That makes sense, because I feel like so much of life, when you think about like a mentor, mentee relationship, you can give advice to a person or you can receive advice, but so much of those lasting impacts are really just, you perceive the person to be in such and such a way. Like you get their character and you're beginning to model and become like your mentor's character. Not that you would do the same steps because everyone's path is different. And I really feel like that is a very consistent concept with that.
Jamie: Yeah. Think about it psychologically. Think about, it sounds like we're just kind of moving all over here, but think about marital disputes and think about tensions that are very, very ... I mean, a major source of marital disputes are in-laws, right?
Joe: Yeah.
Jamie: "Well, I don't like her parents. She doesn't like my," I have a wonderful mother-in-law too, by the way. But that's generally speaking what happens, right? In-law tension is a real thing. And in a very real level, it doesn't make any sense, right? Because your spouse doesn't really want to keep living with her mom and dad, right? They don't want to keep living life that way. They love you, they want to be with you.
Joe: Right.
Jamie: But here's what's interesting. The reason there's tension there is because they've grown up in that environment during the years of their psychological formation, where they were most impressionable. And whether we mean to or not, we ended up catching so much of our parents' ethos and mental frames of reference and things like that, habits, customs, traditions and all of those things. So you come into a marriage and there's a different expectation. Why? Because you've been deeply shaped and formed by being with someone. It's not just that you're trying to be like them anymore. You genuinely have become like that person by being with that person.
Jamie: So now, what the Bible's instructing us with as Christians, or what is teaching us, is that when we become Christians, it's not just now that we've affirmed a set of beliefs, we've tried to reform our behavior. What the Bible actually suggests, as I'm thinking here of Ephesians chapter one. Paul says that, "In him, after you believed and trusted, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." Jesus says in John chapter 14 through 16, this is where that John 15 passage is situated, that he would send the paracletus, the comforter, who would guide us and instruct us.
Jamie: So in other words, what Christianity is teaching us, is that when we come to faith in Christ, there is now one who is with us. There is one who is in us. And so the degree to which I actually commune with him and you commune with him, will also I think, determine the way we ourselves become like that. And so in short, when we commune with Christ, we're like Christ. And when we don't commune with Christ, we're not.
Joe: So would it be fair to say that something like fruit is really all of us, that the sum total of our lives impact in the world? When we exist, we are going to meet people, we're going to have influence on people, we're going to do work. All the things that we do as individuals, we might simply say is our fruit.
Jamie: You could, I mean, going back to the Galatians five, I mean Paul sets this notion. He doesn't use that description per se about the negative stuff. He calls them works of the flesh, right? So there's the works of the flesh on the one hand, and then there's the fruit of the spirit. But even if he's using different metaphors there, I still think the general sense is that what you're in tuned with, what you're connected with, ultimately dictates the outflow of your life, right? If you're not communing with Christ, Jesus says, John 15, you don't bear fruit. Paul talks about this as works of the flesh. He talks about the enemy within us that's actually manipulating us. And then yes, the outflow of our life.
Jamie: So divisions and dissensions and outbursts of wrath, he puts all these things in the same category with things like witchcraft, by the way.
Joe: Right.
Jamie: So this is some pretty wicked funky stuff. And his point is to say, "Man, when you're not properly in tuned, if you're not properly communing with the spirit of God, this will be the work of your life. This will be the fruit of your life. By contrast, when you do have the spirit of God and within you, this is what's going to be the result of your life."
Joe: It makes sense.
Jamie: And so now Jesus will say another passages, "You know a tree by the fruit that it bears." You know it's an orange tree if you walk up and the fruit of its life is oranges. If it has apples on it, you know that it's an Apple tree. When we are properly rooted in, and there's all these beautiful natural metaphors, right? There's the metaphor of the vine, the branches and the roots and all those things that you have. Psalm one, the whole point is to say if you're not in that communion with the sinner and the scoffer and all of those things. If you are, that's what your life's going to look like over there. But the one who meditates in the law of the Lord, right? He will be like what? A tree planted by the rivers and waters. Its roots are nourished and cultivated in the way that it yields fruit again.
Jamie: So, this notion of fruit bearing based out of a tree or a branch metaphor is actually a very long lasting metaphor that the Judeo Christian worldview has utilized to make this point. And that point is simply, you more than anything else, need to be in communion with Christ.