A little basic refresher
A Sunday school teacher greats her middle-school class, opens in prayer, and hands out slices of apples, which the children are encouraged to enjoy. They find bowels with moistened towels, and dry paper towels at their tables with which to clean up.
She then holds up an apple and asks her students to come up with a list of words that describe that apple.
Their list includes
Red on outside, White inside, Sweet, Juicy, has seeds
And many other things.
She then observes that all these different things describe the fruit of an apple tree.
The teacher then puts the apple down and asks her class to open their Bibles to Galatians 5 and read verses 22 and 23.
She says to her class “count the fruit in that passage”.
After a short pause the class answers “nine!”
The teachers then asks again, “how many different fruit?” and picks the apple back up.
The class is a little confused, and still says that they count 9:
[1] Love, [2] Joy, [3] peace, [4] longsuffering, [5] gentleness, [6] goodness, [7] faith, [8] meekness, and [9] temperance.
The teacher then explains that there is only one fruit being described here. It has qualities of each of those things. Just like the apple, which is one fruit, has many qualities.
A healthy apple tree will produce fruit that has all of the qualities they saw in the apple, a spirit that is healthy, meaning that is in God’s will show all these qualities. A person new to Christ may not show all of them equally, but as one grows in Christ they will more and more show all of these qualities.
A Sunday school teacher greats her middle-school class, opens in prayer, and hands out slices of apples, which the children are encouraged to enjoy. They find bowels with moistened towels, and dry paper towels at their tables with which to clean up.
She then holds up an apple and asks her students to come up with a list of words that describe that apple.
Their list includes
Red on outside, White inside, Sweet, Juicy, has seeds
And many other things.
She then observes that all these different things describe the fruit of an apple tree.
The teacher then puts the apple down and asks her class to open their Bibles to Galatians 5 and read verses 22 and 23.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
She says to her class “count the fruit in that passage”.
After a short pause the class answers “nine!”
The teachers then asks again, “how many different fruit?” and picks the apple back up.
The class is a little confused, and still says that they count 9:
[1] Love, [2] Joy, [3] peace, [4] longsuffering, [5] gentleness, [6] goodness, [7] faith, [8] meekness, and [9] temperance.
The teacher then explains that there is only one fruit being described here. It has qualities of each of those things. Just like the apple, which is one fruit, has many qualities.
A healthy apple tree will produce fruit that has all of the qualities they saw in the apple, a spirit that is healthy, meaning that is in God’s will show all these qualities. A person new to Christ may not show all of them equally, but as one grows in Christ they will more and more show all of these qualities.