Right From the Start
A Guide to Nourishing the Spirit-Born Life
by
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The Means, the End, and the Fruit of Abiding
Just as bearing children should never be the only reason for a couple to enter into a marriage, obtaining the fruit of the Spirit in our lives should not be the only reason we want to abide in Christ. Don’t misunderstand. Just as having children is a good and right thing to do in a marriage, so also bearing fruit is a good and right outcome of abiding in Christ. But we are too self-loving at our core. We cannot trust ourselves to approach God without having this distinction clear: If we only want to abide in Christ because we want joy or peace or self-control, then we are idolaters at heart. Just as we would look critically upon a woman who enters into a marriage indifferent to her husband but bent on having children for herself, we must look critically at ourselves if we want to draw near to Christ in order to get what He has that will make us into better people.
An exaggeration?
Maybe this seems like splitting hairs, a chicken and the egg argument, to you. Doesn’t it all look the same in the end? Do we have to make such a big deal of motives? We bear fruit for God; God is glorified. Isn’t that enough? How can seeking the fruit of the Spirit be a step toward idolatry?
Seeing God in terms of His promised gifts has been a stumbling block to God’s people since day one. All the way back in Eden, Eve seemed to weigh her allegiance in the scales of fruit promised. She put the innocence and purity of walking sinlessly with God in one side of the scale and knowledge of good and evil in the other side and chose knowledge.
Israel also committed this sin. We won’t take the time to re-cap their history and failures in this study. But if you were to read Deuteronomy 6-11, you would see a pretty complete summary of what God promised to them – and what He desired from them. Basically, God promised them health, prosperity, and safety if they would worship Him alone and make no alliances with the inhabitants of the land God was giving them. They were to drive out the Canaanites and leave no one behind. Then they were to establish the worship of the Lord in that land. He would dwell among them and they would worship Him. He would protect them from invasion and make sure they had rains and crops. God was essentially promising them a “happily ever after” in exchange for their devotion to Him alone.
In no time, Israel proved that their hearts were NOT set on having their God dwell in their midst. They were not excited about worshipping and serving Him alone and passing along the heritage of holiness to their children. They did not care about being a light to the nations, showing that their God was the One true God. They cared about what God promised them: prosperity and safety. These things were to be the FRUIT of their union with God. Instead, they made the “fruit” into the “end” – their goal. This made faithfulness to God secondary to obtaining prosperity and safety.
Before long, other things started to promise the same things God had promised. Making an alliance with a neighboring nation (instead of driving them out) seemed a better way to get safety than worshipping God. Enslaving the inhabitants and exploiting their labor (instead of driving them out) seemed a more effective path to prosperity than loving God with all their hearts. Before long, even making an offering to the pagan god Baal seemed a more direct way to get rain for crops than worshipping the true God.
This continued off and on for years. Even Solomon, supposedly so wise, fell into this trap. To obtain what God would have given anyway in exchange for drawing near to Him, Solomon married foreign princesses to make alliances, taxed his people into poverty to build palaces, and amassed horses from Egypt to protect his borders.
Do you see the connection? God promised Israel that certain things would come as a byproduct of their relationship with Him. They set their hearts on those things – not on God Himself. Today, God does not promise us health, wealth, and safety. He promises us the fruit of the Spirit. But if we set our hearts on the fruit, not on the relationship of abiding in Christ, we are no better than Israel. Sure, it looks nobler to pursue the fruit of the Spirit than health, wealth, and safety. But is it really nobler? If, for example, we just want God because we want self-control to break our bad habits, is that less selfish than Israel’s desire for peace and safety? I think not.
The Danger
In fact, if we are only seeking to abide in Christ as a means of producing this fruit, what will keep us from pursuing other means of producing it if Christ does not work fast enough for us – or if the fruit does not look like we expected it to? If we want the fruit and not the relationship, what will keep us from turning to Oprah, Dr. Phil, pop-psychology, or even pop-culture if those will give us the same outcome we are looking for? Anger management, parenting techniques, self-help, money management, diet motivation, relationship coaching – all these are available from the world. And if these are why we want the fruit, we will quickly abandon Christ.
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About the Book
True or False: A person is a Christian if he or she believes the right things about Jesus.
True or False: A person is a Christian if he or she obeys God's laws.
True or False: A person is a Christian if he or she believes the right things about Jesus and obeys God's laws.
Would it surprise you to hear the correct answer to all three questions is False?
Too many people misunderstand their faith at the most foundational level. Because of this misunderstanding, they pursue Christian growth and maturity in all the wrong ways. The result is failure, frustration, and the inevitable conclusion that Christianity doesn't “work.”
Right From the Start is a two-part study exploring the truth that Christianity is not a creed or a lifestyle; it is a God-begotten life growing in you, which is spiritual in nature and therefore must be nourished on spiritual food and drink.
Anchored in the teachings of John, part one of this study explores what the Christian's new life is made of and how to nourish it to maturity. Part two goes to the next level, demonstrating how a new way of living flows out of a new kind of being. This is not your typical application stage of Bible study. Too often when Bible studies begin to get practical, they cease to be spiritual. Spiritual truth gets relegated to the realm of “theory” and the “real” day-to-day Christianity is lived out in the strength of the flesh – which essentially means it is not lived out at all. This study does not leave the Holy Spirit behind when it comes time to apply the principles learned. Rooted in the book of Titus, the second part of this study examines the Christian life as a series of portraits of Christ and shows clearly and simply how Christ can be formed in you.
About the Author
Krista Graham is an insatiable student of the Scriptures. She earned an Adult Bible Studies Certificate from Moody Bible Institute by correspondence when her first two children were toddlers. Since that time, Krista has continued to devote herself to the study of the Word, driven by a passion to answer the question that plagues so many believers: “If Christianity is true, why doesn’t it seem to work?” Raised in a somewhat legalistic environment, Krista is painfully aware of how wide a gulf exists between head knowledge and a real-life relationship with Christ. Krista has a particular burden for second-generation Christians like herself who grew up knowing so much about God, yet so little of God. Her motivation in all her teaching and writing is to see believers come to a deeper understanding of the gospel’s most essential truths so they can experience all that the gospel promises them in Christ. Krista has spoken at women’s conferences at several locations in Maine and New Hampshire. She has taught women’s Sunday school classes and Bible studies for over a decade. Krista is married and has five children, currently between the ages of 9 and 19.