Our world is not attracted by slick salesmen of the gospel.
What it is impressed by are the free samples. It has its own marketers in droves; but a life that exemplifies in practice the virtues and values of the Lord Jesus is the strongest of all magnets to the faith. That is why we are looking at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.22-23, over these months. They form a character study of Christ himself and he wants to see these qualities increasingly replicated in the everyday lives of his redeemed people.
Two aspects of the fruit
This month we are putting together numbers five and six of the list of nine fruit, since they are very closely related. They are ‘kindness’ and ‘goodness’, as both the NIV and ESV translate them. Perhaps the best way to grasp their connection is to understand goodness as a foundational moral quality, and then kindness as the expression of goodness in action, particularly in terms of our relationships with other people. Kindness demonstrates its existence by means of deeds of mercy, compassion and tenderness, empathising with and encouraging others, by putting oneself in their shoes and feeling with and for them.
