Day 35 – John 15: 9-17

“Fruit that will last”: what a strange picture. In itself fruit doesn’t last: producing more of the species involves the death in some way of the fruit itself: rotting away, eaten, dried to split open so that seeds are dispersed for new life to be brought about.

But when we move the picture on from botany, talking of ‘lasting fruit’ can make sense! Fruit reveal identity; tell us what kind of plant we are looking at, a theme that Jesus picked up. “You will know them by their fruits’ he said about people” (Matthew 7: 16). Fruit give witness to how things really are: John the Baptist warned “bear fruit worthy of repentance”, meaning that words claiming a changed life for God needed to be backed up with actions (Matthew 3:8). These aren’t transitory but lasting, lifelong.

In Galatians 5:22 St Paul writes about “the fruit of the Spirit” pointing out “there is no law against such things”. You simply cannot prevent “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control” in individual or community life by statute or persecution. The witness endures to God at work in human lives in how we live, what kind of people we are, for these fruit aren’t just positive human virtues: Paul contrasts them to the kind of things we get up to left to our own devices (read the previous paragraph in Galatians).

Fruit that identifies, that gives witness, that is a gift of God the Holy Spirit: we can see in these pictures “fruit that will last”, indeed which must not diminish or decay. But Jesus also talks of the grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying to “bear much fruit” John 12: 24. We are reminded that like botanical fruit, we don’t exist for ourselves but to God, to humankind and to all creation. This brings us the paradox that our ‘fruit that lasts’ for God involves future generations of Jesus’ followers, and for us as for our Lord this involves some kind of giving our lives away to bring new life.

‘Lord: may we be a fruitful people for the sake of Your kingdom’

by Bill Offler
Durham & Deerness Valley Circuit
Darlington District Local Preachers’ Secretary