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Satan sure does love to be sneaky. He is, as John tells us in his Gospel, the father of lies (John 8:44). His favorite trick is to tempt us to turn our eyes away from Jesus and to become, in St. Augustine’s words, “incurvatus in se” or “turned in on oneself.”
This may seem like a strange way to begin a reflection on the fruit of the Spirit. These verses don’t seem like a trick. We love to hang this passage on our walls and to teach about it in Sunday school. We strive for this fruit. As Christians, we work hard to be more loving and joyful and peaceful and patient and ... wait a minute ... that sounds like it’s all about me. But it’s not, in fact, about you!
The temptation is to take these beautiful words of Gospel and make them seem like Law. What pressure it is to believe that, to be a good Christian, one must live up to this standard. Which of us can say that we have gotten to the point of being a truly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled human? If that is the standard, we fall short each and every day. What a heavy yoke it is to view this fruit as our obligation, something we must accomplish. But there is good news. It’s not about you!
In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus tells us that He trades yokes with us. We get to give our heavy loads to Him and He gives us His easy one. He lived perfectly for us. He took the punishment we deserved. He conquered death, sin, and Satan. He did it all, including embodying every single adjective that Paul listed in Galatians. It’s not about you. It’s actually about Him.
Jesus accomplished it all, and then He did something more. He claimed you as His own beloved child and gave you the gift of His Spirit. That Spirit is living in you and is working through you to show the world His goodness. Notice that it is His goodness. It’s all about Him!
That is pure Gospel. We don’t have to bear fruit in order to be a good Christian. Instead, we have the privilege of being chosen by the only good One to be the branches through which His fruit is produced. We have been grafted by Him into the life-giving vine, Jesus Christ, and it’s His Spirit that does all the work. I’m so glad that it’s all about Him!
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