BANANABOATS

In the circles I run in (and those I ran in) it is not uncommon to hear people say things like "I want to be more fruitful" or "I don't see much fruit in my life" or "I'm hoping to bear more fruit" or my favorite "I want my fruit to remain." It seems that many of my friends are looking to maximize their fruit production as well as their fruit's shelf-life. (I always like to imagine their fruit as bananas. Bananas are the archetypical fruit in my mind.)

It makes me wonder sometimes whether my fruit-conscious friends really think about what they're saying when they say such things, especially given how commonplace it is. Not that they couldn't defend the use of such language; in fact, I'm quite sure that most who say such things could take me to several verses in the Bible that say essentially or exactly the same thing (e.g., Col. 1:10). It's just I wonder whether they think about what the metaphor of "fruit" is really supposed to convey. Do they know what it means? Or has it been eviscerated through common use?

My guess is that if asked to describe what they mean by these expressions, and if given time to think, most would say that fruit is a biblical metaphor they employ for describing the things that they want or expect to see happen in or through their lives as a result of their faith in God. So, changed behavior is the fruit or expected result of a changed heart/disposition. Christian converts are the fruit or expected results of talks on the good news about who Jesus is and what he's done.

But I don't think many do consider what the fruit metaphor means. I didn't--really anyway--up until just this week. But thanks no doubt to the imperceptible action of the Holy Spirit in my brain I did finally consider it and found its meaning remarkable. The essential meaning that the fruit metaphors convey is that the results (fruit) are expected not merely because of our actions or efforts or intentions; they are because of God. Fruit is meant to convey the idea of new creation. The gospel message about Jesus in the Bible is metaphorically called a seed (Matt. 13; 1 Pet. 1:23), which when planted in the human heart (believed; Matt. 13) takes root, grows (continued belief through learning; Matt. 13; Col. 1:10), and eventually, invariably, bears fruit. Our moral conduct then is not simply the result of more carefully aimed efforts. We do aim for good behaviors, but what is actually true is that God brings about these behaviors in our life by nature of the new life now animating our old (Eph. 2:10).