-The fruit of light. The fruit of light. You will know them by their fruit, Jesus says. And if I have His light in my heart, if I AM in fact Light, there will be some by-products of that, some inevitable outcomes which one could expect to emerge, expect to be true of me - things which are as divine in origin and effect as is the Light itself. Paul lists them (or at least three prominent ones) - goodness, righteousness, and truth. All fruit, all of it, all the time, 100 percent divine, divinely sourced. No spiritual GMO's or pesticides or worms here. Not a bad apple in the bushel.
-All goodness. If I am Light you will find in me all kinds of things which are good, good traits, good words, good deeds. Divine things - like God Himself. He is the Supreme Good - He is consummately breathtakingly good and manifests this goodness in all that He does (Genesis 1.31; Exodus 33.19; Psalm 34.8 84.11). He works all things together for good (Romans 8.28) - ALL things, even that which an adversary might intend for evil He will work for good (Genesis 50.20). Good typically contrasts with evil, being not so much about conforming to a standard per se (right vs wrong) but rather more about that which is welcome and pleasing, something which somehow helps or meets the need of another. And that’s really the thing, isn’t it? Goodness is all about the experience of others - this is walking in love. And so Light brings goodness to others. Light provides warmth. Light helps one to see, and actually brings out the color which would be otherwise hidden. Light turns an otherwise dull marginal existence into something extraordinary and abundant and beautiful. Truly divine.
-Righteousness on the other hand tends to be more about how I conform to a moral standard. I am right (morally) - all right, alright. I think right, I say right, I do right, all in conformity to the Divine - what God is like and what He wants. Thus if I am Light in Christ you can expect to see all kinds of traits and words and deeds which are right in God’s eyes, which are in fact like Him, God-like (godly). Justice. Honesty. Integrity. Faithfulness. Self-control. Not to mention obedience and submission. All right. I am not cutting corners and taking convenient moral short-cuts. No compromise or moral expediency. No immorality or impurity or greed of any kind. And all this, not in some harsh antiseptic lemon-sucking tea-totaling stuffiness with all the joy siphoned away. Remember, all goodness is also front and center. A delicate and difficult balance to maintain, this, to be sure, but fruit is not something forced - it is produced effortlessly as the branch simply draws on the resources of the Vine (cf John 15.5). The Di-Vine naturally produces His fruit through the ones who are vitally connected to Him.
-Lastly, Light also reveals truth. It shows off reality, what things look like, how they really are. Hard to hide in the light, right? So, all truth. Absence of falsehood - no hint of it. No deception or empty words. No lies, duplicity, pretense, cheating. Just honest truth, which of course is a sort of sad redundancy since there is really no other kind of truth, is there? Yet the way of the world is contrary, is it not? The world is full of charlatans, those who double-deal and deceive in order to squeeze out a little bit more whatever for yours-truly, lives which are essentially swamped in some murky moral backwater. No true north. In contrast, children of Light illuminate the world around them with the Truth. Keeping it real. Authentic. No shadowy hiding or spinning of the truth. Ultimately making it about Jesus, Who IS the Truth and Who now reproduces His life in and through those who are truly His to a lost world adrift in darkness. He is the Divine True North, and that’s the gospel truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment