Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 10th Dec. 2023), session ten in our series on the Holy Spirit.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.’—Leo Tolstoy[i]
‘There goes Mr. Heartless | There goes Mr. Cruel | He never gives | He only takes | He lets his hunger rule | If being mean’s a way of life | You practice and rehearse | Then all that work is payin’ off | Cause Scrooge is getting worse’—The Muppets[ii]
READ: GAL. 5:13-26 (NLT)
THE STONE OF HELP
It’s that time of year when festive films and stories, like the Grinch and Die Hard, start reappearing. One of my all-time favourites is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
You may have read it or you may have seen a film adaption of it, the best of which is The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Next to Darth Vader, from Star Wars, A Christmas Carol contains one of fiction’s most infamous villains: Ebenezer Scrooge. What makes Scrooge so villainous is not that he actively pursues some diabolical plot. Rather, he is just heartless, selfish, uncaring.
When Dickens’ introduces Scrooge, he describes him as ‘tight-fisted’, ‘a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!’ He is frozen within. This internal cold not only finds expression in his own features, his pointed nose and his blue lips, but it outpours from him chilling the temperature of the environment around him.[iii] No one feels warm in Scrooge’s presence.
If you prefer this in the words of The Muppets, ‘He never gives | He only takes | He lets his hunger rule.’
Scrooge is a stone hard person, letting no life out and no life in.
Tellingly, his name does mean stone—a kind of stone that Scrooge does not reflect. Ebenezer means ‘stone of help.’
Charles Dickens plucked the name Ebenezer out of an Old Testament story found in 1 Samuel 7. In the story, God rescues Israel from Philistine oppression, and a prophet called Samuel erects a stone as a memorial, calling it Ebenezer, ‘the stone of help’. The idea was, you looked at this stone and you would remember the goodness, mercy, and compassion of God. You would look at this stone and recall God’s salvation. You would see this stone and be reminded that God sees you.
This is what Scrooge is supposed to be—a living memorial, a ‘living stone’ (1 Pet. 2:5) that radiated God’s warm sympathy. Instead, Scrooge is a dead stone: there is no self-giving life flowing from him. He does not echo God’s nature.
Of course, if you know the story, this all changes, and within the space of one night! The Spirits of Christmases’ past, present and future visit Scrooge and thaw his stony nature.
Some of us may think we know a few Scrooges. But when Dickens wrote the story, he wasn’t describing a particular kind of person. It would be easy and wrong of us, to think the story is about helping us to spot the “Scrooges” out there. Rather, Dickens was helping us identify a Scrooge-like inclination that is part of each of us, an inclination that needs to be overcome by the Eternal Spirit of Christ’s mass, Christ’s passion. It was Dickens’ hope that the ‘[Spirit of] Christmas lasted the whole year through’. He wasn’t talking about commercialism, spending sprees, or Slades’ Merry Xmas Everybody being on repeat every day. But, in his words, that ‘the prejudices and passions which deform our better nature were never called to action …’[iv]
Dickens hoped that something of the Stone of Help would be excavated in each of us.
To use words that we have said many times in this series already, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God is seeking to transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (Ezek. 11:19; 36:25-27), to remake us as living memorials. That we would echo and resonate with God’s Spirit. That our humanity would radiate with the likeness of God, in the same way Jesus’ humanity radiated the image of God.
A TENDER TRANSFUSION
Paul is writing on a similar vein here, in Galatians. He is reminding his audience that a major part of the Holy Spirit’s job is to cultivate a Christ-like character within us. And I’m not talking about doing the miraculous, when I mention being like Jesus! I’m talking about being human human beings.
As another famous Charles, from the same era as Dickens, put it, ‘[T]he Holy Spirit’s work is to conform us to the likeness of Jesus Christ. He is not working us to this or that human ideal, but he is working us into the likeness of Christ that he may be the first-born among many brethren. Jesus Christ is that standard and model to which the Spirit of God by his sanctifying processes is bringing us till Christ be formed in us the hope of glory.’[v]
Earlier than this, around the third century, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, worded it this way; ‘For the Spirit is both the life and the holy formation of all things; and God sending forth this Spirit through the Son makes the creature like Himself.’[vi]
We’re made to reflect Divine life—to love God and to love others, and to even love our enemies! Yet, our prejudices and passions, our self-centeredness and our drives to indulge our self, deform this better nature. I mess up. I give in to temptation. Greed grips me on occasion. Fear causes me to act impulsively and irrationally. Hate consumes. Selfish ambition blinds. Lust is given the steering wheel.
It’s not that these things solely affect myself. They never do. By default, in their very nature, these things spill over and into the lives of others. They influence and taint how I relate with others. And so our prejudices and passions flavour the world.
I can’t imagine looking at the world today and concluding that we need more hatred and more controlling and domineering people; that we need more greed and trampling over others; that we need more outbursts of anger, backbiting, jealousy, or abuse.
Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly plenty of good in the world. I’m a firm believer that where goodness occurs and exists that it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit, whether it is acknowledged or not.
However, human passions and prejudices, be it at a global level or a local level, are not always good. Like Scrooge, there’s a lot of grasping, scraping and clutching going on.
None of these prejudices and passions echo the Kingdom of God. None of this looks like the eternal mutual, other-directed self-giving love we witness in the Trinity, the very fabric of God.
Something has to change. On some level, whether we believe in God or not, we all see that something has to change. We all know and sense that the world is not as it should be. But, as Leo Tolstoy once pointed out, everyone talks about changing the world, but no one really ever talks about changing themselves.
We may think we do. The idea of change is a popular and very marketable commodity on social media and within the self-help industry (even in Christian circles). But even our modern language about “change” is very much ‘self-improvement’, ‘self-promotion’, ‘self-actualisation’. I’m not against self-care.[vii] But, if we are not careful, we can think we are changing, but our motivations are more like ‘Scrooge’ than ‘Ebenezer’. Our ‘self’ gets larger and more dominate, while ‘other’ and ‘God’ get smaller. ‘Self’ becomes our business, instead of mankind, to use Jacob Marley’s confession.
I need transformation. Or, better put, I need a transfusion of life.
Something about my life should have a vibrancy about it, enabling people to taste and experience the delicious and bountiful beauty of God. That’s what we were all made for. And that something is God: God reproducing God’s flavour in us and through us.
That is what this Fruit of the Spirit is: a transfusion of Divine life.
As Paul shows in this text, with the contrast between works and fruit this transformation is not a self-improvement plan.[viii] Paul doesn’t list what we can do to fix things, but what The Spirit can do in us. Real transformation is an inside job that the Holy Spirit alone does.
With the mention of fruit, Paul gets our minds going to gardening. It’s as if Paul is likening the Holy Spirt to Monty Don (if you’re a fan of Gardener’s World). The Spirit, like a gardener is tending to us, nurturing us. And like well-nurtured vines and trees, that are looked after and cared for, that receive the right nourishment and pruning they need, then, over time, fruit inevitably grows.
It’s not that we are not involved at all. The Holy Spirit is not possessive, forceful, or controlling, removing our choices and decisions. Paul calls us to co-operate, to listen and allow the Spirit cultivate this taste of God within us. At one stage in this passage, he even describes it like being in a battle (5:17), where our choices are never free from this conflict between listening to the Spirit or listening to our whims. But we do have a choice. We may stumble. We will get it wrong, here and there. We misfire and wander off, at times. But, as we continue to learn to follow the Spirit, to be nourished by the Spirit, change does happen.
It won’t happen in one night, like it did with Scrooge. As with the growth of all fruit, this growth is a gradual slow work that can only be measured over time. It would be inaccurate to measure this change on the scale of days, it has to be measured over seasons.
In my own life, I can look back and see change over time. Sure, somethings appeared to happen overnight. But even then, some of the “overnight” things only happened because the unseen stuff, the underground stuff, had been going on for some time.
I’ve been on this journey for twenty-five years. I’ve come a long way. I’ve still got a long way to go. But I know this; because of the Holy Spirit, I am not what I was, and I will not be what I currently am.
Some of us may be thinking that there are things in our hearts that cannot and will not change, things that are just too hard to break. That’s not true.
I’ve walked down countless streets and seen solid concrete paving stones and thick layers of tarmac that have been raised up and cracked by a tree root. I’ve seen buildings pulled down just because a small seed found a way into a sliver of a crack, germinated and grew. There’s nothing steel-like about a young tree root—it’s pretty tender, you could cut it with a sharp fingernail. Yet, they have the power to bring down strongholds.
Never underestimate the tender power of the Spirit. Trust the Spirit to do what the Spirit does best.
STRANGE FRUIT
So what is this fruit, this Christ-likeness, that the Spirit is cultivating in us?
LOVE
Notably, when Paul writes of the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, he speaks of fruit singular, not plural. It is one singular fruit with many different outworkings. Similar to how white light is one beam that contains a spectrum of different individual colours. The one light beam here is love; all the other fruit flows out of love and makes up the corporate expression of it.
Galatians isn’t the only place where this list is found, and it’s not an exhaustive list, either. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul makes a very similar list; the famous ‘love is…’ list.
Without love, there can be no other fruit. How easy is it to be patient with someone without love? How can goodness exist without love? If we’re living in love, the other fruits will also be seen in our lives and are evidence of the Holy Spirit is doing His work.
There are many other verses we could use to say this. But as Jesus said, ’it’s your love for one another that will prove to the world that you are my disciples.’ (John 13:25)
How do we know we are growing in our faith? How do we know that we are maturing as followers of Jesus? It has nothing to do with how gifted we are. Even though gifts are good, and Spirit given, they can still be operated out of an unloving heart. This is the problem Paul has to deal with when he writes 1 Corinthians: Corinth was a church full of people exercising Spirit-given gifts, but there was no Spirit-grown fruit on their branches.
They had gifts, but the evidence of the Spirit’s life was not among them.
We have all met and known very gifted people—even people who can speak in tongues—who resemble Scrooge more than Ebenezer
Love is the fruit.
Love is the Greek word Agape: It is to love like God loves: Selflessly; unconditionally; not counting the cost; not based on getting something back; seeking the highest good of the other, even those who seek the worst for us.
Without the Spirit’s help, loving like that is impossible.
JOY
Joy is part of the makeup of this love.
It’s not happiness in spite of everything else that’s going on. That wouldn’t be a godly expression. God mourns. God laments. God suffers with others and on the behalf of others. God has sympathy with humanity.
A smile in all seasons is not sympathy—it’s the sign of a hard heart.
Joy is not happiness.
This joy is more to do with strength. The Greek word is Chara; where we get our word character from. It’s an internal, deep-seated satisfaction and contentment, which produces a strength that isn’t easily rocked back and forth. It’s not a satisfaction with how things are. It’s a sense of hope; hope in the knowledge that what is, isn’t permanent, knowing God is good, God is victorious, and God’s plan will win out.
As Tim Keller describes it, ‘[joy] doesn’t banish the sorrow or get you to not care or not feel the pain. Rather, joy is something that gets you through it.’[ix]
While the world around us may beckon us to despair, the Holy Spirit moves us to hold on to hope. Paul tells the believers in Philippi to ‘Always be full of joy in the Lord’ (Phil. 4:4). Nehemiah famously writes that, ‘the Joy of the Lord is your strength’ (Neh. 8:10). Both are writing this to their respective communities because circumstances don’t rule, God does.
This joy (hope) brings us peace…
PEACE
God is not a god of chaos. In the story of scripture, God is the one who overcomes chaos. As we saw earlier on in this series, The Holy Spirit is the beautifier and redeemer, moving what is dark and chaotic into beauty and liberty. The Spirit is working against chaos.
Peace, in the Hebrew language, is shalom. It’s more than the absence of conflict. It is the absence of anything and everything that knots up life; everything that suffocates, entangles and deforms the highest good for others. The Spirit wants to unknot me and you.
Jesus, in the same conversation where he talks about the Holy Spirit as a counsellor, told his disciples, ‘I am leaving you a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives.’ (John 14:27)
The Spirit is the gift of peace of mind and heart.
The product of this is that I should be more peaceful toward others. This doesn’t mean we are passive people, uninvolved, unconcerned and uncaring. Many have sought peace or “discovered” peace by checking out of society as a whole, removing themselves from the lives of others. This is not what we are called to.
Rather, as Jesus says in the beatitudes, we are to be peacemakers. We too get in on the work of unknotting the world. But our tools, our methods are not controlling and brutal—this peace is not like the peace the world gives. When Jesus said this, the Romans, who controlled Jesus’ homeland at the time, spoke about the Pax Romana (the Peace of Rome). And that peace was “given” by crucifying anyone who disrupted it. This isn’t that. Peaceful people don’t go to war with their actions or words for they know that brings no relief to any situation. In fact, it just knots it back up.
Are we a healing presence? Or do we seek to roast people?
This leads us to the next component…
PATIENCE
Things don’t change overnight.
For people, and for culture as a whole, it can take generations. Throughout the Bible, God is ‘slow to anger’ (Ex. 34:6-7)—he has big nostrils, to use the Hebrew figure of speech; God doesn’t easily react when a foul smell enters the room. God understands that things take time. In fullness of time, we stand assured that the whole of creation will be unknotted and brought back into tune (Rom. 8:18-25; Rev. 21:4-5; Acts 3:20-21). But in the here and now, we recognize that things still go awry.
We struggle with that. When it comes to our agendas, we want it now. We prefer instant gratification and quick fixes. We struggle when the microwave takes two minutes to heat some beans. We can be explosive people. We can be the kind of people that others need to tread carefully around, like stepping on eggshells.
The word used for patience— makrothumia— is always used as meaning ‘patience towards other people and events involving other people’. Its patience with others. Generally, the word was applied to a person who chooses not to avenge themselves, instead showing empathy toward others when they are not doing things to our standard.
This isn’t cancel culture. This isn’t social media assassinations. This isn’t trolling people who share a differing opinion to you.
In the face of the world’s imperfection, of our own imperfection, God is patient with us. God is slow to anger, meeting the shortcomings of humanity with mercy, forgiveness, grace and a teaching hand. Patience, as a Fruit of the Spirit, strives to adopt a similar posture. As God is gracious to us, we strive to be gracious and patient with others and with ourselves.
The Spirit helps us to be less needful to avenge wrongs and more able to endure the imperfections of people and this world. Without patience, we can never practice peace or joy (hope)—we just end up avenging a wrong done to us with more wrongs.
As Paul instructs us, ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). That takes patience.
It also takes…
KINDNESS
The Greek word is chrestos. It was actually used to describe old wine as being mellow and smooth. Jesus, when he talks about his yoke of discipleship, describes it as being chrestos. In other words, Kindness doesn’t chafe, or cause unnecessary discomfort and irritation. Kindness is not burdensome. It is well-fitting, it accommodates the wearer.
I suppose a modern word could be ergonomic. Office furniture, like chairs, has to be checked to make sure that it doesn’t cause damage. It has to handle us with care. Kindness is tangible care and support of others, in our words and our actions.
Are we like that with others, or do we chafe?
In Ephesians, Paul writes, ‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’ (Eph. 4:31-32, NIV)
Displaying kindness to those around you can often be one of the hardest things to do, especially when they are not kind to us. But, this is why it is listed as a fruit of the Spirit in our lives rather than a work achieved in our own strength.
GOODNESS
Paul uses a word here that rarely, if at all, shows up in any other secular Greek at the time: Agathosune. It’s hard to define. But, generally speaking, it means doing what is right and what is best for others, not just ourselves.
In the Old Testament Hebrew, the word for good is Tov. It’s the word God speaks over creation, when God sees a spacious and fruitful place that supports and generates life. As Scot McKnight would describe it, in his book A Church Called Tov, Tov (good) is about an environment designed to help people live fully, free from neglect, harm and abuse.
They Holy Spirit does not lead us to harm or abuse others. The Holy Spirit does not call us into doing whatever we want to other people. It cultivates a desire to see the best in the lives of others.
Jesus went about doing good, healing people and releasing them from all the oppression of the devil (Acts 10:38)
FAITHFULNESS
The word translated ‘faithfulness’ is the word pistis, more commonly translated as ‘faith’. And it can mean two interconnected things:
On the one hand, it can mean trustworthiness, being dependable, reliable, etc. Can people trust us? Are we honest? Do we have integrity?
I don’t know about you, but I like having trustworthy people in my life.
On the other hand, we speak of faithfulness as also meaning having faith. In the midst of trying and troubling circumstances, it is the endurance of our belief that God remains good and in control. To lean into the Holy Spirit, not just when life is easy, but always. That we are faithful to God.
One of the best definitions of ‘faith’ that I have come across is something the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote; ‘Faith is the ability to live with delay without losing trust in the promise; to experience disappointment without losing hope, to know that the road between the real and the ideal is long and yet be willing to undertake the journey.’[x]
The two definitions are interconnected, because God is faithful. God cannot be unfaithful, even when I am unfaithful (2 Tim. 2:13). I have found that the more I am drawn to the rock of God’s faithfulness through every storm, the more steady I am on my own feet, and then the more stable I become toward others. When your feet are on solid ground, you are better able to support others.
GENTLENESS
William Barclay says this is the most untranslatable word, because the Greek (praotes) can mean several things.[xi] We could translate it to mean the same as kindness: handling others with care, that we are considerate. After all, the Holy Spirit meets us not with cold cruelty or irritated ruggedness, but with gentle care. The gentleness of God reaches out to us in our brokenness and vulnerability, knowing we are dust (Ps. 103:14), and that touch cultivates and facilitates healing and restoration
However, the Greek for gentleness also means being teachable: to be humble enough to be taught by God. The adjective of the same Greek word (praus) is used to describe an animal that has been tamed.
Our pet rabbits at home are gentle: they allow us, they permit us, to make a fuss of them. I should explain: our rabbits free roam in the house and the garden. We have had rabbits in the past that have not been so gentle, and have run from us or, on occasion, bitten us.
(Trust me—a rabbit bite is no laughing matter! That scene is Monty Python was an understatement)
We have also adopted rabbits, being told they were tame and didn’t mind being handled Only to discover this isn’t the case when they were given their freedom from a cage or hutch.
A caged animal is generally easier to approach. But it would be wrong to assume it is tame—it’s timid. Give an animal its space, its freedom, and if it approaches you, or allows you to approach it in its freedom, then it is tame (gentle).
God has given us freedom. This is what Paul states in Galatians 5:13; we have freedom, not to do what we want, but to love God and others. But freedom is there all the same. God will not remove this freedom. God will not muzzle us or place us on a leash.
The question is; do we, in our God-given freedom, allow God to handle us, lead us and guide us? Or, like a wild rabbit, do we just run away, or bite God’s hand off?
What’s key here is that this gentleness is a mutual, two-way, relational thing.
SELF-CONTROL
Finally, self-control. The Greek (egkrateia) means, surprise, self-control: to master one’s self, to keep ones desires in check.
Self-control displays moderation, temperance, and discipline. Someone described it as, ‘choosing, under significant pressure, to chase after the important instead of the urgent.’ But that doesn’t go far enough. It’s choosing to chase the important even when not under significant pressure.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, not all the time, pressure helps focus me. It is when I have time on my hands, left to my own devices, that I stumble. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands,’ is how the saying use to go.
What I find so fascinating about this, is that it is not ‘Spirit-control.’ Again, God never removes me from the equation. Again, God never removes our freedom. God never possesses or takes over—that would be demonic. God, through His Spirit, leads us to control of ourselves. God helps me get a hold of the wheel.
In the ancient Greek-speaking world, egkrateia was used as a virtue of an emperor who never lets his private interests influence how they govern the people they lead. Instead, to have self-control meant that they were fit to be the servant of others.[xii]
Jesus had ultimate self-control. He didn’t see his equality with God as something to cling to and wield over others, tyrannically forcing them to his will. Instead, He humbled himself and became a servant, even dying a criminals death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-11). He didn’t come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:43-45; Lk. 22:24-27; Jn. 13:12-17).
This is love. This is being a human human being. And this is what we are called to, the image the Spirit is refashioning us into.
No natural inclination will ever take me down the road that Jesus travelled (Rom. 5:7-9). Only the Spirit, a transfusion of God’s life, will get any of us there.
Again, this fruit is not the product of me. It is the Spirit’s fruit, as the Spirit works to transform us from Scrooge to Ebenezer; from self-serving emperors in the Kingdom of Self, to servants in the Kingdom of God.
‘Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing’
Jesus, John 15:5 (NLT)
‘Jesus does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.’
Dallas Willard[xiii]
[i] Leo Tolstoy, Three Methods of Reform, from Pamphlets (1900), translators, Alymer Maude and Vladimir Tchertkof.
[ii] Lyrics from the song Scrooge, from the festive classic, The Muppet Christmas Carol
[iii] As described in chapter 1 (Stave 1, Marley’s Ghost) of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
[iv] Charles Dickens, Christmas Festivities, in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (Penguin Classics, London, 2003), p. 2
[v] Charles H. Spurgeon, sermon entitled The Indwelling and Outflowing of the Holy Spirit: https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-indwelling-and-outflowing-of-the-holy-spirit/#flipbook/
[vi] St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (c. 213-270), A Sectional Confession of the Faith, 4,
[vii] I’m not against self-care, honest. Due to my own mental health, the practice of Sabbath rest has become more and more important. But, what if self-care looks more like caring less about the self? I do think the modern self-help industry (and industry is the best word for it), along with the ongoing trend of self-promotion via social media, is generating a whole wave of new mental health struggles and deepening the very holes they claim to be healing. For an admittedly ‘generalised’ argument for this, author Mark Manson makes some great points on his blog: 5 Problems With the Self-Help Industry
[viii] As an aside: Paul’s contrast between Flesh and Fruit is not a contrast between body and soul, or material versus non-material. Paul is not anti-body, as many commentators show. Paul is not saying ‘body bad, spirit good.’ Rather, Paul is pro-body, as our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit. This contrast is about where our deepest motivations, our deepest desires come from. It’s a statement about identity, what rules and motivates our life: doing whatever we want, or listening to what the Spirit wants.
[ix] Tim Keller, in a sermon entitled, Infalible Joy
[x] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis, p.93
[xi] William Barclay, The New Daily Study Bible: The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians (Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, 2002), p. 62
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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