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Does My Love Have a Fruit?

Filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 1:11

A preacher was in Atlanta, several years ago, and noticed in the restaurants section of the Yellow Pages, an entry for a place called Church of God Grill. The peculiar name aroused his curiosity and he dialed the number. A man answered with a cheery, "Hello! Church of God Grill!"

The preacher asked how that restaurant had been given such an unusual name, and the man said: "Well, we had a little mission down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. Well, people liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, that eventually we cut back on the church service. After a while we just closed down the church altogether and kept on serving chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that's Church of God Grill."

When Paul prays for love to be an important factor in the lives of the Philippians he says in this verse why it is so. When our love abounds, but its kept within the bank of knowledge and discernment, it's a pure love and God is glorified. This should be the purpose of all love - marital love, friendship love and so on. The purpose of all love as a Christian is to glorify God. In fact that is the purpose of all life. All of life is to glorify God. We all exist to glorify God.

The bigger picture of this verse is Paul is referring to the fruit of love. Galatians 5:22. "The fruit of the Spirit is love." Here Paul says, "filled with the fruit of righteousness." The root is one's saving faith in Jesus Christ. The fruit that grows from the root, the fruit is the fruit of righteousness.

Now, righteousness in this context means right outward behaviour. It refers to good deeds, godly deeds, the display of ethical, good works, because love is far more than just a feeling. Love is doing. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."(John 3:16) "God has demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners." (Romans 5:8) True love acts. True love does. True love makes decisive choices. True love is always in action. It is not just in feeling. It is in action. There is reality about it. And that is the fruit of righteousness. Paul says that they have been filled with the fruit of righteousness.

This fruit of righteousness Paul says comes through Jesus Christ. This word through denotes the channel through which this fruit is produces in our lives. It comes through Jesus Christ. It comes through His grace being operative in our lives. It is through His power. It is through His divine enablement that this kind of fruit of righteousness in produced in our lives. Only Jesus Christ can produce this fruit in us. It is supernatural fruit that cannot be humanly generated. It can only come through a supernatural means, and that is through Jesus Christ.

All of this increased love produces fruit to the glory and praise of God. When God is so at work in our lives that we are responding in ways that re not natural, but supernatural, when we are giving in ways that far exceed a human dimension, the only conclusion that there can be is that God is definitely at work in that person's life. He or she just keeps on giving. He or she keeps on loving. There is such a sacrifice on their part for others. They just keep dying to themselves and considering the interests of others to be more important that their own. When we live in that manner of life, it bring greatest glory to God.

Last 6 days we were observing Paul's prayer for the Philippians. And I am sure this certainly is a checklist for us in our own spiritual lives. In fact the prayers are very practical. To sum it up, this is what Paul says - there must be an ever-abounding flow and overflow of love. This will come only where there is real knowledge of God and all discernment that the Holy Spirit gives us to have insight into others so that we may approve the things that are excellent, so that we may know what is the best thing to do for someone else in accordance with the wisdom of God. And this will lead us to living lives that are sincere, pure and blameless. And we are to keep on doing this until the day of Christ. We have been filled and must be continued to be filled with the fruit of righteousness and it comes through Jesus Christ only. And as it does, it is to the glory and to the praise of God.

May God help us to pray the same prayer and ask God to give us the strength to live out this prayer.

God Bless you.
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Location: Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

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