In a previous article, we explored what the fruit of the Spirit is. In short, the fruit of the Spirit is the sanctified attitudes and actions produced by the Holy Spirit working in a believer’s life.
It’s not an understatement to say that the fruit of the Spirit is essential to every aspect of the Christian’s life. In this article, we’ll zoom in to explore why Christians need to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in family life.
Why is the Fruit of the Spirit Essential to the Health of Your Family?
Our goal as Christian husbands and wives and parents should be to honor God in our families. We want to honor God in our marriages. We want to raise our children in a way that honors him. We want to avoid the pain and heartache that comes from sin. We want to receive God’s blessing on our marriages and in the lives of our children.
We believe that God’s Word has given us everything we need to know about life and that applies to our marriages and our parenting. He has either directly addressed a topic in Scripture or he will give us wisdom to handle something not directly addressed in Scripture.
With all of that in mind, it would be crazy for us to try to achieve the end result of honoring God in our families and approaching that in a way that is contrary to his Word and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit. We should be seeking to do things God’s way and in his power.
Here are a few reasons why the fruit of the Spirit is essential to having a spiritually healthy family:
Avoiding Legalism
According to Galatians 5, you are either walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh. If you’re walking in the flesh (the remnant of your unredeemed sin nature), you will not honor God, even if it looks like you’re achieving spiritual results. Do you know who did this in the Bible? The Pharisees.
From the outside, the Pharisees looked like they were achieving results that were honoring God. Yet, they were doing everything in their own strength for the wrong reasons. Jesus repeatedly tore into them for their legalism. All of their spiritual activity was worthless because it was done in the flesh (see Matt 23:1ff).
A key theme of the book of Galatians is Paul rebuking the Galatians from departing from the gospel to returning to a form of legalism by thinking that keeping the Old Testament law will earn their salvation (see Gal 3:1-5). He is telling them to walk in the Spirit and not according to the flesh (Gal 5:16).
Approaching your marriage and parenting through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit will keep you from falling into legalism and trying to honor God in the flesh.
Embracing Our True Nature
When we walk in sin, we’re walking according to our old nature. We’re returning to our flesh, which has been crucified in Christ (Gal 2:20; 5:24).
When we respond harshly to our spouse or our kids, we’re walking in the flesh.
When we approach our marriages selfishly and aren’t considering the needs of our spouse as more important than our own, we’re walking in the flesh.
When we’re lazy and don’t discipline our children for disobedience, we’re walking in the flesh.
In all of those instances, we’re walking according to our old, unredeemed nature.
The fruit of the Spirit is the mark of a true Christian. It’s part of our new nature in Christ. As children of God, we should be displaying the character qualities of our heavenly Father. As the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, He’s conforming our attitudes, words, and actions to be more like Jesus. Approaching our families through the fruit of the Spirit is actually embracing our new nature.
Pursuing True Spiritual Effectiveness
If we want to see God-honoring spiritual results in our families, we need to be doing it God’s way. We won’t see spiritual growth in our families using worldly approaches. Human methods are not going to be effective to honor God.
We need the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to see God working through us to benefit our families. Jesus said this:
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).
Now, this raises several very important questions. If the fruit of the Spirit is part of our new nature, do we just sit back and relax and let it grow? Or is there something we can do to grow in the fruit of the Spirit? We’ll seek to answer those questions in our next article.
