Who is My Mother, Brother, Sisters? The Shame of the Cross in Perspective.

This is the grown up version of Lesson #42 of my next book designed for families – Context for Kids: Honor and Shame in the Bible, due out next month. Ever wonder why even children in non-Western cultures won’t deny Messiah – even when threatened with death?

Never have I labored over a teaching to the point of becoming physically ill, nor have I ever before been burdened with such overwhelming grief over the responsibility of teaching something in such a way as to be absolutely honest and to bring honor to my Savior. I couldn’t comprehend how to do it – how do I teach adults, much less adolescents and teens, about the shame of the cross. After soliciting prayer from a good friend and mentor yesterday afternoon, it finally dawned on me and I saw diverse elements in the Scriptures come together in an unexpected way.

I admit it, I never saw these Scriptures as being applicable beyond the confines of a fictive kinship group.

Matt 12:48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark 3 and Luke 8 also record this account, which I always simply took at face value. A fictive kinship group describes the phenomenon where people claim family status with non-blood kin based upon some other agreed upon criteria (the best example might be the kinship between men who were part of the same platoon for the duration of a war). In this case, Yeshua (Jesus) claims that all who do the will of God are part of Yeshua’s kinship group. So what then is the will of the Father in Heaven? Sometimes we come up with easy, pat answers. I was laboring in prayer yesterday afternoon, deeply distressed, about the crucifixion of Yeshua – even to the point of being physically ill. I was wondering how to present the horrifying shame of the cross to younger people – because even Mel Gibson’s The Passion portrayed a dignified Messiah on the cross, in terrible pain and yet allowed to retain His dignity. We in the West like to focus on His suffering as though physical pain is the worst possible, and yet a teenager who cuts himself in order to avoid the pain within testifies to the fact that physical pain is not the worst manifestation of agony. Crucifixion wasn’t about physical pain, it was about stripping a man of his most precious commodity, his honor – subjecting him to utter and complete ruination, agony within and without, stripping Him of every shred of dignity and then allowing him to endure that shame as he died very slowly to the delight of the gathered crowds. There are things about crucifixion that no movie would ever dare portray. Our Savior was humiliated beyond our ability to comprehend, but we don’t like looking at a shamed Messiah. We like to see Him up there, wronged but still a picture of dignity. He had to bear our shame, and our humiliation – and our shame and humiliation, well-deserved, could not be dressed up in dignity. We don’t want to really see what our shame looked like. Really, it doesn’t look nearly as bad when the only pain being inflicted is portrayed as physical. People from honor/shame cultures understand this intrinsically, and are unwilling to dishonor Yeshua once they have tasted His salvation; they die before denying Him whereas in the West, we often don’t even want to face our family’s wrath if we choose to celebrate Passover and Sukkot instead of Easter and Christmas.

But back to the story, as I was praying about how to do this, heartbroken and sick – these verses came to me and I finally got it.

John 19:25 but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Why the mention of this? I always wondered. Mary had several other sons – she had men to take care of her. Why give her to John? Yeshua, as first born, could only hand His mother over to a family member, and why was John always referred to as the “disciple Jesus loved?”

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

And I understood, there at the foot of the cross we learned the will of the Father – look upon the full shame of the cross and never, ever look away again. Never forget what our shame looked like. Never forget the sight of the Man who bore it for us. We can’t turn our heads away from the shame that He endured, our shame, the full measure of it. In crucifixion there was no dignity afforded the victim. He was not given the dignity of being clothed even in a loincloth, the flies and birds probably didn’t leave Him alone, flogging and crucifixion were designed to wear a man out so quickly that he wouldn’t even retain control over his own bowels and bladder. We want a dignified Savior because it hurts too badly to look at the true measure and seriousness of our shameful sins. Over and over again throughout the Scriptures, front to back, we are told of that shame, and the penalty of that shame. That shame had to be taken away by someone, and we can at least look at it, and once we do we had better never think we can turn away or deny it. We were freed yes, and we should rejoice, but we don’t dare forget it.

“Take up your cross and follow me.”

To be crucified was the greatest shame imaginable, and we are commanded to own that shame as having been our own, and to live in such a way as to never purposefully shame Him again.

Heb 6:4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt

We cannot accept His suffering for our shame and then reduce Him to shame again by denying Him. If we deny Yeshua, we are saying that He rightly died as a criminal for the crime of claiming to be the Son of God. We are guilty of convicting the one who was shamed for our sake – we cannot hold Him up to that shame and contempt again after that. Peter denied Yeshua before He went through that shame, but never afterwards. Not one of them denied Him or ran away afterwards.

Hebrews 9:27 tells us plainly that man is destined to die once – we cannot crucify our Master again.

People in honor/shame cultures understand this. They are willing to face death, even at the hands of their own families.

Six times in I Corinthians, Paul talked about the foolishness of the cross, and of the foolishness of the wisdom of God – as perceived by the world. To follow a shamed criminal in the first century world was a stumbling block for the Judeans (many of the Jerusalem elites) and foolishness to the Gentiles.

In the end, as He was about to die, Yeshua hung there in full sight of the mockers and scoffers who watched crucifixions for the entertaining public spectacle that they were – and He hung there in front of His mother, brother and sisters – naked, His genitalia swollen for the crowd to gawk at, His body distorted out of shape, covered in His own blood and feces.

His mother Mary
John
Mary, wife of Cleopas
Mary Magdalene

They did not despise the shame of the cross, they looked at that shame with both eyes opened – they did the will of the Father in Heaven and never turned away. It is loyalty, and not genetics, that set them apart as His family – and in the end, that meant that Yeshua only had one brother to whom He could entrust His mother.

Do you see the love with which He has loved us? Do you see the absolute loyalty demanded of us?

Glory be to our Great King that Yeshua is no longer on that cross, no longer shamed but instead honored, exalted and glorified – but we can’t afford to forget what He endured so that our shame could be removed. We must live such lives that we never bring Him to shame on purpose ever again. I don’t cherish that old rugged cross, but I cherish the One who died upon it – may my life be well-spent in His service.

I am picking up my cross, I am owning my shame that was taken from me, and I am following Him.

The Character of God as Father Pt 15: Don’t Mock His Disabled Children

I am going to share this two part revelation based on Lev 19:14, a verse which is etched deeply in my mind.

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.

Now, even most bullies won’t mess with the disabled in the PC environment of the US, and I have to say that’s one area of political correctness I am grateful for as a special needs mom. But this verse goes deeper than it would appear, because in scriptures blindness and deafness are also equated with the spiritual concepts of not being about to hear or perceive the Words of God. So how are we to treat them? Do we mock them and trip them up? Or do we assist them as we would someone who is physically deaf and/or blind? Is there any honor at all in creating barriers between God and the people who are spiritually blind and deaf to His Word? Is it not God who controls who sees and who is blind, who hears and who is deaf?

Ex 4:11 And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?

When we mock those with closed eyes, do we not sit in judgment of the One who could lift the veil and restore their sight and cause them to hear? Do we dare make fun of someone who has not been the recipient of God’s mercy? Did we obtain mercy by merit? Were our eyes and ears opened because we earned it? Mine were not. And are we wise enough to always know the difference between those in actual rebellion to what they know, vs rebellion to what we are telling them? If they do not believe us because they cannot perceive the truth in what we are saying, are they to be equated with those who know, intimately, the truth and have walked away? Do we dare mock them?

When we mock the deaf and trip up the blind, are we not falsely representing the character of the One who came to open ears and eyes?

Isaiah 35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Why on earth would we mock the people who have not received this blessing? Why would we even risk it with our angry, self-righteous presumptions?

I have been laid terribly low with a dream that I had this morning. I will share it here, the dream was two-fold.

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In the first part of the dream, I was preparing foundations for living quarters in a house. Beds and bathrooms had been placed in rooms that had no floors, and I was planning and counting the cost of building those foundations. Some of the rooms had refrigerators with good and bad foods in them so I had to get rid of the bad foods. As I was going through the house making plans, I walked outside and into a courtyard where I saw a great many refugees. They were cold and so I went and got the blankets off the beds in the foundationless rooms, assessed people’s needs and handed out the bedding that was available, covering people according to their level of risk. I never asked why they were there, or who they were, I just handed out coverings so they would be warm.

In the second part of a dream, a former ally became an enemy to myself and my companions – because we were not giving him leadership over us, we refused to hear his words. That former ally desired to compromise us. I was the last person that he tried to attack, and he did so by making cruel and taunting accusations about my disabled son (who as many of you know, is also adopted) in front of a crowd of people. As he did it, even though some of the accusations were true or could be true, I rose up and addressed his audience. Full of passion and wrath I did not know existed, I explained my son’s situation, I pleaded his case, I appealed for mercy – no, I demanded mercy by the forcefulness of my defense. I never mocked the man who was attacking my son, I simply defended my son so ardently that his audience was forced to recognize my son’s merit. The man attacking my son lost in a stunning public display.

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What are we called to do?

Are we called to acts of mercy? Are we called to minister to the wretched within the reach of our grasp, those we can see around us? Are we to assess their needs and fill them? I tell you the truth, in one way or another, every single one of us is like those refugees in my first dream. In one or more (or many more) areas of our lives we are naked, cold and filthy. If someone is able to keep me from dying, should they not cover me? Or should we yell at people and tell them how cold and naked and filthy they are. The second is a lot easier to do. It appeals to the flesh. It seems like righteousness. But what does YHVH require of us?

Micah 6:8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Do you love mercy? Do you walk with such humility that you hate it on those occasions when you have to rebuke? Are you so concerned with justice that you agonize over whether you are tripping a blind man or saving a rebellious one? God requires all those things of us. Nowhere does He require us to mock people. And just because someone in scriptures is recorded as doing it does not make it right. All of the forefathers sinned, sins that were not called out as sin in the text, but were indeed sin. We cannot use the acts of men to excuse our actions. We cannot equate their situations with ours so easily, in order to justify ourselves.

Now for the second dream. I sometimes think that I was made an adoptive mother not only as a blessing to myself, but so that I could understand the passionate love between parent and adopted child. I believe I was made a special needs mom in order to bless and refine me, and to help me understand our condition before our Heavenly Father. The man in my dream who was mocking my son was retaliating because we were not listening to him. His intention was to wound and conquer so that people would listen to him and follow him and agree with him. But he made the mistake of attacking my child, based on how his disabilities compromise him – without explaining his disabilities at all but only focusing on his behavior. He withheld the information that would have moved his audience to mercy.

But it was the very things that compromised him, that I rose up and used in his favor. I was filled with such outrage, such love, such overwhelming wrath and grief. Everything I said was borne out of loving my son, defending him from unfair accusations born out of a lack of mercy. The man accusing my son should have attacked me instead. You do not attack someone’s disabled child without facing wrath. As I told the crowd about my son, about his challenges, the crowd came to see the humanity of my son (whereas before they were snickering) and they came to have compassion on him.

I woke up with the realization that when we attack our brothers and sisters, the adopted children of God, when we accuse them and mock them we never take into account why they are doing what they do. We never stop to wonder about the unseen disabilities. Is the person drowning in an endless sea of false teachings that they are too afraid to let go of? Were they beaten or molested by their father and unable to embrace a religion that is centered around a Father figure? Are they dedicated to being good, yet with unopened eyes and ears because their time has not come yet? Were they rescued from a perverse Hollywood lifestyle and now desperately cling to and defend what they see as their life-preserver, sometimes in wrong ways but with good intentions? Are not all these people disabled children? Do we want to risk incurring the Father’s wrath by touching them with our merciless scorn? Do we want to assume willful rebellion? Do we want to presume what they do and do not truly understand? Do we ever want to be laid low by an angry Father who rises up in defense of His disabled child? Do we want to hurt Him, the way I was hurt in that dream, on behalf of my son?

Let me tell you, I do not love the way He does. I wouldn’t even want to face my wrath, the way it was meted out towards that man. I am not God, my wrath pales in comparison to the efficiency and purity of His. I do not want to provoke His wrath and anguish by mocking His disabled children.

I don’t ever want to mock anyone ever again.

Misunderstanding Yeshua: Why on earth did He call that woman a dog anyway?

It had bothered me for many years, but this morning as I was praying the Psalms, I happened upon the key to breaking down a very serious misunderstanding I had about one of Yeshua’s (Jesus’) most notorious confrontations. And it came down to a very simple parallelism.

Psalm 22:16a For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me (KJV — yes they used inclosed, and it bothers me that it is spelled that way, but it isn’t my spelling mistake)

Now a parallelism is something we see in Hebrew writings where a concept is expressed in two different ways but means the exact same thing. Here we see two concepts –

dogs have compassed me

the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me.

The Hebrew word for dog, of course, is keleb, which is very similar to the name of the great Biblical hero Caleb — one of the two faithful spies who alone were allowed to enter into the Promised land out of all their generation. Caleb was the representative for Judah, even though he was not an Israelite by birth, but a Kenezite (Joshua 14:14). I will get into why that is applicable later.

The word for compassed is sawbab and the word for inclosed is nawkaf. They both have similar meanings, but nawkaf is a bit more aggressive in nature. In any event, the recipient of both these words end up closed in and surrounded, which is how we know that the phrases are parallel. What does this mean? This means that as sabab and nawkaf are being linked, so are the words keleb (dog) the phrase “assembly of the wicked.”

So, unlike what I had previously thought, dogs are scripturally equated not only with male prostitutes, but also with the assembly of the wicked.

But why did I bring Caleb into the discussion? Well, because it helped me solve a question that had always irked me, relating to the character of Yeshua.

How many of us have always hated this exchange between Yeshua and the Caananite woman?

Matthew 15:21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

I never liked it that He called her a dog, just being honest here. To someone of my generation, a dog was one of the worst things you could call a woman short of using profanities. And to top it off, He was up in Tyre and Sidon — not in Israel! It’s like, He went to someone else’s house and insulted them for living there, I never got that.

But, if we substitute in “assembly of the wicked” for dog — things get a lot clearer.

“It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to the assembly of the wicked. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet those from the assembly of the wicked eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

Now that reads entirely differently and ties in perfectly with Matt 7:6a Give not that which is holy unto the dogs (assembly of the wicked).

It is no longer a personal insult towards this woman but a recognition of what she already admitted in coming to Him. Her people were not following the way of righteousness, they were not of the righteous assembly of YHVH — if they had the right way, if they were not the assembly of the wicked, she would not have been compelled to forsake her gods on her daughter’s behalf. Yeshua wasn’t insulting her, He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. Her very actions were an admission of this truth. What He was doing was provoking her testimony. And what was her testimony?

“yet those from the assembly of the wicked eat of the crumbs which fall from THEIR MASTER’S TABLE.”

This woman was given an opportunity to proclaim that YHVH is Master. And she did it. Her actions had already proclaimed it, and now her words followed suit. And Yeshua’s response to her is no longer to a dog, but He calls her “Woman.”

Now, how does this tie back in to Caleb? As I said before, Caleb was not born a Hebrew, but a Gentile, and yet he was sojourning with Israel — why? Because he also had, through his actions, admitted that he was from the assembly of the wicked (the Kenezites), and through his actions declared that YHVH is Master.

Caleb and the Syro-phoenician woman are pictures of those in the Gentile community who confessed and denounced their position as dogs, as part of the assembly of the wicked, and who receive deliverance for themselves and their children. I think that is just beautiful.

I have been waiting to understand this passage for decades, and my soul is just delighting in YHVH this morning. It is wonderful to receive peace after being vexed for so long about this exchange that seemed so out of character for Yeshua. Context really is everything!

The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 7: All things in due season

So much of scripture involves seasonal language, and so the reference cannot be ignored.

Ecclesiastes 3

3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

²A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

³A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

⁴A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

⁵A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

⁶A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

⁷A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

⁸A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Thanks to the musical group The Byrds, this might just be the most famous passage of scripture on earth. But what is it telling us? I believe this passage by Solomon is about patience and wisdom, I believe it is about the Fruit of the Spirit. In it, I see the development of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. I look at this beautiful passage and see that things do not start out perfect, that we can expect tribulation. I see the refinement process. I see maturation and things moving forward. I see that things have to happen in seasons so that we can reap a harvest later. I see the balance that should come with experience.

Let’s be honest, we start out as the types of people who want to know it all now, we want to be mature now. But knowledge and maturity come with a price. Knowledge comes with time, experience and dedicated study. Maturity comes with time, experience and endurance. But neither knowledge nor maturity are complete without the revelation of God. We can have a worldly sort of knowledge, we can have a worldly substitute for maturity — but without a connection to the divine it is largely empty.

Unfortunately, the church has pushed us towards worldly excess in knowledge and worldly standards of maturity.

Knowledge for knowledge sake is an empty pursuit. To be a holy pursuit, that knowledge must be for the purpose of being conformed into His image, into the very representation of His character, into the sort of person who can fit into the community of His earthly Temple of living stones. If our final goal is not to glorify Him through our character and through His collective community, then our pursuit is worldly. It isn’t that we be known, but that He be known.

Maturity, as the world views it, is pretty much behaving yourself in a way appropriate to the given situation, as determined by the cultural norms. Generally when I hear someone say, “Oh grow up!” it is not because they want me to behave in a godly manner, but according to an ungodly manner. They want me to have no standards outside of the cultural norms of THEIR community — whether that community be the local church or Hollywood. Godly maturity is a self-sacrificial maturity. We decrease so that He can increase. We stop assuming that our desires are holy, or Spirit led, or even honest. We begin to question ourselves, as all children do when they begin to develop empathy. Only now we are adults who have come into the community of faith and the rules that governed out behavior as worldly children are no longer sufficient. We are more dangerous now, we are more willful in many ways, and we are often convinced that we are mature because we are now adults.

But God never called us to be adults. He called us to be mature children. Adults are independent, but children are by their nature dependent upon their parents. Adults forge their own way, but children are learning to be adults by watching their parents. Adults do as they wish, but children have restraints. Adults are masters of their own homes, but we are brides waiting for our Bridegroom and as such have not left our Father’s house. You see how the mature child mindset is completely at odds with the mature adult mindset?

All good things in time. We do not start out mature. It is unreasonable to expect people to come out of the world with any sort of real maturity. It is unreasonable to try to train up a dependent babe as you would a mature adult. With adults you tell them what to do and expect them to do it, but children have to be guided and allowed to figure things out so that they can truly learn, and part of that is watching to see what they are ready for and not just pushing them according to what we want them to know and how we want them to do it. One of the biggest problems we have in religious circles is not allowing for immaturity and ignorance (not in the nasty insulting sense of the word, but the recognition that we naturally do not know what we have not been taught!). I don’t expect someone new to God’s ways to do very much right, and why should I? How unfair would it be? And the temptation is there, while we are immature and unloving still, to start to impose heavy burdens upon those who are still learning to walk. And it is most unloving (and unbiblical) to want rigid conformance now.

Can you imagine taking a 9 month old who is still crawling, or not even crawling yet, and telling them to stand up and walk? And then telling them they are rebellious for their inability to do it yet? To everything there is a season. No one walks their way out of the womb.

Can you imagine taking a preschooler and telling them to do multiplication because you don’t want to take the time to teach them their numbers and addition and subtraction first? To everything there is a season. Even prodigies need to be taught the basics, or they will fail.

Can you imagine criticizing a deaf person for not being able to hear, or a blind person for not being able to see? To everything there is a season. If you want them to be able to hear or see, then get to work praying for them.

Can you imagine getting angry at a seed for not producing a hundred-fold harvest the day after it was planted? To everything there is a season.

I look at these examples, and what I see is not a failure in the babe of the Kingdom, but in those who do not recognize the seasons. If we do not understand the seasons, then we do not understand the community life as recorded in scripture. The seasons were given to us, by God, in order to teach us about the patient nature of His character, that He not only understands the concept that things take time, but that it was part of His design. Yes, He expects growth, but He expects it to happen “in season.” We need to do the same. It’s part of His compassion and mercy, and when we do not display that patient compassion and loving-kindness and gentle mercy, then we are sowing chaos, faithlessness and our lack of self-control into the lives of others. If we cannot tolerate immaturity in season, then our fruit is not where it needs to be and we are the ones who need to be taught, not the ones who should be teaching.

The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 6: Focusing on Fruit First and Foremost

Fruit, from a purely scientific standpoint, exists for one purpose and that is the transportation of seed from one place to another. Fruit is supposed to be mobile. A bird will carry away a berry laden with seeds, eat it and deposit the seeds far from the original plant. Humans and animals do the same, we take the fruit, and eat it and the seed goes elsewhere. How interesting is it that it was YHVH’s plan that all seed which is eaten is deposited in the earth WITH fertilizer!? Now that is brilliant planning. Blessed be His Name. Yes, fruit nourishes us, but its actual job is to make more fruit by making more trees or bushes.

But what is our fruit? Is it the things we try to do?

Look at the tree. Does it put any effort into making fruit? Certainly not, the fruit is what happens naturally in season, in response to the external stimuli of heat and moisture. We are much the same, we are creatures whose fruit will manifest in due time in response to our internal and external conditions. Fruit is not something we can force, fruit happens — or more often than not, is revealed. Works, on the other hand, can be forced and faked. Works are what we do, fruit is about who we really are — and most importantly, it determines the type of seeds we ourselves plant in others, for better or worse. Are we figs or thistles? Both of them are full of seeds, chock full of them!

What species of fruit we are does not change, but the quality of the fruit can. Our fruit starts out naturally inferior — Leviticus 19:23 even clearly tells us that for three years you shouldn’t even eat the fruit off of a new tree! It’s uncircumcised! Can I just say how wonderful it is to serve an Elohim who expects and makes allowances for the fact that our fruit will not be immediately good upon entering the Kingdom, that He allows us time to grow? That is the Father’s heart!

So why is the fruit of the Spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22)? Because when we are grafted into the tree of Israel, that is the lifeblood that tree should be pumping into us, the very character of Messiah! It should be changing us, it should be changing our fruit. Our obedience or disobedience to the commandments will play a big part in how quickly our fruit changes, as will our willingness to be humble and loving and yes, gentle. We will do mercy, justice, and kindness in the lives of others.

Are we bearing the fruit of Messiah or of the evil one? His fruit will not manifest itself in mercy, justice or kindness. Messiah’s fruit tempers our flesh, while the fruit of the evil one encourages our flesh. The seed Messiah plants produces good fruit and that 100 fold harvest, while the seed of the enemy sows tares that chokes off the full potential of the harvest.

Fruit is who we are and what we propagate, works are what we do. Works can be fake — but fruit is revealed as soon as it falls into the ground and produces something. Whatever it produces will show you exactly what it was in the first place. Fruit can be transported and propagated through works, and fruit can be displayed through works, but flesh-driven works can also obscure our true fruit. Works committed under great pressure are often the true physical manifestation of our fruit. You see how deceptive works can be, and yet also full of truth? This is why the Kingdom is not only about works, but also about fruit. A works focused Kingdom can be an illusion, hence the focus in the Gospels on fruit in partnership with works! What we do is important, and if we claim that we are loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good faithful and self-controlled but never show it in our actions — then we do not truly have that fruit yet. We are still yielding evil or mixed fruit. Striving for the classic good works (church work, for instance), if it distracts us from producing good fruit (which requires submission to and discipline from our Father in Heaven), is a very deceptive trap. It seems like the right thing to do, but it is really just for naught if it springs up from a sense of guilt or obligation instead of pouring forth from the abundance of love in our hearts.Better to do nothing now, and spend time growing and maturing towards developing godly fruit, so that we can produce a hundred-fold harvest later, instead of settling for a 30-fold harvest.

Torah shows us the works we are commanded to do in order to show love to one another in truth. But the Spirit is the One who makes it possible for us to feel love towards one another. Worshiping God in Spirit and Truth is a response to both sides of the equation — be love, don’t just do love and don’t just feel love, don’t neglect one for the other, but embrace both. Be love. There is your good fruit, when you can be love.