[sunday meditations]

I’ve been writing about, praying about, and thinking about “life in the Spirit.” That’s what the Christian life is all about. I’m not going Pentecostal (not that there’s anything wrong about that), and my focus isn’t on “spiritual gifts” or “speaking in tongues.” These indeed have their place (or had their place, if you’re of the cessationist breed), but “life in the Spirit” goes so far beyond such things. It’s for this reason, after all, that St. Paul criticized the Corinthians’ obsession with a Spirit-filled life manifested primarily in spiritual gifts and speaking in tongues. Life in the Spirit is life in union with God, life characterized by God’s presence and power, inside-and-out, a life marked not by bubbly speech but by daily death to self and life unto God. Life in the Spirit produces those very things which the human race is in dire need of: love, joy, peace, et al. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells the Corinthians, “Yes, God gives the church all sorts of spiritual gifts! But not everyone has the same gift. You’re eager in your pursuit of gifts, but you should be desiring the higher gifts.” The Corinthians, of course, were all about vouching their spiritual maturity in their spiritual gifts, so “higher gifts” is appetizing. “And this is what I’m talking about,” Paul says, launching into the classic text quoted at weddings every single day, and the most known of all Paul’s writings, 1 Corinthians 13.

“Life in the Spirit” shouldn’t be reduced to spiritual gifts, and certainly not tongues. These really are gifts from God, but the greatest gift from God, the prime “gift of the Spirit,” is love. This sort of love—a sacrificial, self-giving love that places the interests of other people over against the interests of oneself—is the kind of love Paul’s talking about, the sort of love that should characterize the church, the sort of love that will identify those who really belong to God. Anyone, of course, can love their family and friends. Jesus was honest about that much. The proof that this love is in our lives comes when we love our enemies, when we put their interests before our own, when we sacrifice ourselves and give of ourselves for their benefit and well-being rather than our own. When I say I want my life to be filled with the Spirit, I mean I want him to live in me and turn me into a truly loving person. When I say I want to walk by the Spirit, I mean that I want love to be the characteristic manifestation of my life. I want to love with the love of Christ, a love that is self-giving and others-seeking. That’s the love that Christ displayed on the cross, that’s the love that characterizes God’s love for us, and that’s the kind of love God demands of his people. This sort of love isn’t natural; it’s super-natural, in the sense that to really embody and be consumed by this love, we need to have someone else come and do surgery on our hearts. I speak, of course, of the Spirit—and that takes us right back to what the “Spirit-filled life” is all about.

Thus I’ve been praying that God will cultivate within me the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. This fruit goes beyond mere externalities: they’re all about transforming character. Anyone can show love to a stranger, kindness to an enemy, gentleness to a neighbor; this fruit isn’t so much about what we do but about who we are. This fruit is itself a signpost pointing to what genuine human living is all about: those transformed by the Spirit are a different sort of person in the world, and it’s saddening that the Christian life has been reduced to a works-based religion founded on moral precepts and wearing certain behaviors around certain people rather than submission to God, conformity to Christ, and being filled with the Spirit. As I’m praying for these things, I find myself tested. That’s how it works. I pray for patience, and suddenly my patience is sorely tested all day long. This testing is critical to the growth of such fruit, for as gold is tested and purified in the fire, so our discipline and diligence in the midst of testing strengthens the fruit in our lives. Really, I wish God would just grant me this fruit, absent the struggle, but if the fruit is to truly be a part of my character, a struggle there must be.