Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1582
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, February 6, 1881
“But the fruit of the Spirit is joy.” Galatians 5:22.
OBSERVE, “the fruit of the Spirit,” for the product of the Spirit of God is one. As some fruits are easily divisible into several parts, so you perceive that the fruit of the Spirit, though it is but one, is threefold, no, it makes three times three—“love, joy, peace; longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; faith, meekness, temperance”—all one! Perhaps “love” is put first not only because it is a right royal virtue, nearest akin to the Divine perfection, but because it is a comprehensive Grace and contains all the others. All the commandments are fulfilled in one word and that word is “love.” And all the fruits of the Spirit are contained in that one most sweet, most blessed, most heavenly, most God-like Grace of love. See that you abound in love to the great Father and all His family, for if you fail in the first point, how can you succeed in the second? Above all things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness.
As for joy, if it is not the first product of the Spirit of God, it is next to the first, and we may be sure that the order in which it is placed by the Inspired Apostle is meant to be instructive. The fruit of the Spirit is love, first, as comprehensive of the rest—then joy rising out of it. It is remarkable that joy should take so eminent a place! It attains unto the first three and is but one place lower than the first. Look at it in its high position and if you have missed it, or if you have depreciated it, revise your judgment and endeavor with all your heart to attain to it, for depend upon it—this fruit of the Spirit is of the utmost value!
This morning, as I can only speak upon one theme, I leave love for another occasion and treat only of joy. May its Divine Author, the Holy Spirit, teach us how to speak of it to our profit and His Glory! It is quite true that the Spirit of God produces sorrow, for one of His first effects upon the soul is holy grief. He enlightens us as to our lost condition, convicting us of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. And the first result upon our heart is astonishment and lamentation. Even when we look to Christ, by the work of the Spirit one of the first fruits is sorrow—“They shall look on Him whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him, and be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.”
But this sorrow is not the ultimate objective of the Spirit’s work—it is a means to an end. Even as the travail of the mother leads up to the joy of birth, so do the pangs of repentance lead up to the joy of pardon and acceptance. The sorrow is, to use a Scriptural figure, the blade, but the full corn in the ear is joy. Sorrow helps the fruit on, but the fruit, itself, is joy. The tears of godly grief for sin are all meant to sparkle into the diamonds of joy in pardoning love. This teaches us, then, that we are not to look upon bondage as being the objective of the work of the Spirit of God, or the design of the Lord in a work of Grace. Many are under bondage to the Law—they attempt to keep the commands of God—not out of love, but from slavish fear. They dread the lash of punishment and tremble like slaves. But to Believers it is said, “You are not under the Law, but under Grace” and, “You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
To be in bondage under the Law, to be afraid of being cast away by God and visited with destruction on account of sin after we have trusted in Jesus—this is not the work of the Spirit of God in Believers, but the black offspring of unbelief or ignorance of the Grace of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord! Neither is a painful dread or a servile terror a fruit of the Spirit. Many worship the Lord Jesus, Himself, at a distance—they know not that Believers are “a people near unto Him.” They are afraid of God and they never delight in Him. They attend to worship, not because they rejoice in it, but because they think it must be done. Their secret feeling is—“What a weariness it is,” but necessity compels. They know nothing of a child’s joy in sure and full forgiveness, spoken by the Father’s own lips as He pressed them to His bosom.
His kiss was never warm upon their cheek. The ring was never on their finger, nor the best robe upon their shoulders. The music and the dancing of the joyous family who are in harmony with the father’s joy over the lost son have never charmed their ears. They are still under dread, which is the fruit of superstition rather than “the fruit of the Spirit.” Many things they do and suffer and all in vain—if the Son did but make them free, they would be free, indeed! I know some whom I am very far from despising, but whom, on the contrary, I greatly value, whose religion, sincere as I know it is, is sadly tinged with gloomy colors. They are afraid of Assurance, for they dread presumption! They dare not speak of their own salvation with the certainty with which the Bible saints were known to speak of it—they always say, “I hope,” and, “I trust.”