Trees, Fruit & The Cross
In rural England, where we grew up, you can’t help but be surrounded by trees. Tall, spindly ones that sway in the wind. Short, knobbly ones, betraying their aging roots. Weathered ones, in need of pruning. Budding ones, brimming with anticipation. To the nonchalant passerby, they are simply a bunch of trees. But to those who have ducked and dived through their boughs, to those who have sat pondering life up high in their branches, to those who have drawn their differences with pencil and paper in hand, their variation sparks wide-eyed wonder.
And yet, for all their beautiful difference, this ‘bunch of trees’ do indeed have wonderful commonality, and also predictability: they are all fruit-bearers. They cannot help it; it’s in their very nature to bear fruit. From the youngest of ages, we’re encouraged to plant seeds and anticipate the fruit that will come. Trees bear fruit, it’s what they do. And so when Scripture speaks of the Lord Jesus as a fruit bearer (Isaiah 11), or the vine (John 15), or indeed the seed (Mark 4), and the Christian life as one of bearing fruit, we’ve all got pictures that readily come to mind.
Somehow though, as we read of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, it can be very easy for us to divorce that fruit, from its root, found in Christ. It’s as though we come to it, as with any other checklist - something to be accomplished, or something to be ticked off one by one. Or we pick and choose the fruit that we think will be easier to accomplish or grow in, in our current season of life.
What are we missing? What are we forgetting? In his letter to the Galatian churches, Paul is at pains to remind them that they are saved by faith alone, in Christ alone. Indeed, he reminds them that they are saved by Christ being ‘hanged on a tree’ (Gal 3:13). And it’s here that we’re confronted with the only means for our life and growth. For on that very tree, as the fruit-bearer breathed his last, his death bore the fruit of eternal life for you and me.
Do you desire to bear the fruit of the spirit found in Galatians 5? Do you want to become more like Jesus, the chief fruit-bearer? Do you desire to be ‘like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season’? Then, dear sister, start by looking at Christ, and that sin-bearing tree. Start there, with eyes raised towards Christ, nailed to a tree of death, that in the Lord’s sovereign purposes, would become the tree of life, the leaves of which ‘are for the healing of the nations.’(Rev 22) He, and only he is our means to life. He, and only he is our means to bearing fruit. May our eyes be fixed on him as we seek to grow in bearing the fruit of his spirit.
