Sinclair B. Ferguson

He was the outstanding mathematics graduate of his time in the University of Cambridge.

And he became a missionary and died as a young man.

But Charo Simeon, who befriended him, once commented that what struck him about Henry Martin was not just how tall he had grown spiritually, but how the fruit of the Spirit in his life seemed to be perfectly proportioned.

I think that's a beautiful description of a Christian, don't you?

someone in whom all the graces of God, the fruit of the Spirit, are growing in a wonderfully balanced way, and at the end of the day showing that all of these fruit grow on the same tree.

The other comment that I often think of in connection with these words is something that my own minister as a student in Scotland, William Still, made.

I remember he said that the growing Christian is someone who has learned to do the natural thing spiritually and the spiritual thing naturally.

I think that's a very good way of thinking about the fruit of the Spirit, isn't it?

It isn't a matter of just trying to do the right thing, trying to be this or trying to be that.

It's much more organic.

It's this ninefold fruit of the Spirit, which the Spirit produces in us.

as we grow in our love for the Lord Jesus, as our hearts and minds and our wills submit to Scripture, as our affections are suffused with the teaching of Scripture and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, then there is a kind of spiritual natural way in which we grow to be more like Him.

Right at the end of yesterday's podcast, I said that the Word of God isn't inert and powerless.

Paul actually says it is at work in you believers.

And if you've been a Christian for some time, you'll probably be familiar with the Old Testament version of that statement.

when God says that the word that goes out of his mouth will not return to him empty, but it shall accomplish that which he purposes and shall succeed in the thing for which he sent it.

That's Isaiah chapter 55 and verse 11, and if you're not familiar with it, it's a verse worth memorizing.

But when the Word of God works, what does it accomplish?

That question brings Paul's important words to Timothy to mind, I think, doesn't it?

I mean, what he says in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 about the Scriptures being breathed out by God and profitable.