The Fruitful Life

Book Reviews

May 17

The Fruitful Life: The Overflow of God’s Love Through You
By: Jerry Bridges

“God has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” (2 Pt 1:3)

I had recently read The Daily Grace Co.’s devotional on the The Fruit of the Spirit and wanted to do some further reading on it. I picked up this book and it was an excellent companion to the shorter study.

This book is gospel-centered, highly applicable, encouraging, and convicting.

[I’ll keep this review fairly short because I’ve written a blog series on the fruit of the Spirit.]

I love how he begins his book talking about devotion to God and humility.

These two things tell us WHY we pursue the fruit of the spirit and HOW we pursue them.

We must have the right motive and the right source.

He rightly separates devotion to God from fear of consequences.

“The fear of consequences may keep us from committing the outward acts of murder or adultery, but only love will keep us from committing murder or adultery in our hearts.”

We desire to be loving, joyful, peaceable, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful, and self-controlled because we love God and we want to be more like Him. We love him and therefore want to obey. Out of the love, reverence, and thankfulness for his character and his love toward us, shown sacrificially on the cross.

The transformation of the Holy Spirit is not merely behavior modification. It’s heart transformation and it should change our hearts and minds along with our actions.

Not only must we have the right motive, but if we don’t have the right source, it becomes a sinful endeavor of pride. If we think we can create these attributes on our own and achieve them if we work hard enough, we will fail.

The Holy Spirit is at work in us to produce His fruit. That is the only way.

“These godly qualities are not something we can manufacture, take pride in, or lay claim to as self-generated. Rather, they are the work of God, and their source is God alone.”

“Humility with regard to ourselves, then, consists in ascribing all that we are, all that we have, and all that we have accomplished to the God who gives us grace.”

Humility helps us stay plugged into the right source, but it also knows that sanctification is a lifelong process until we are finally glorified in heaven. The Spirit produces the fruit and also gives us endurance to continue growing.

There are only two directions. Either we are moving toward Christ or we are moving away from Him. There is no in between.

“Growth in godly character not only is progressive and always unfinished, it is absolutely necessary for spiritual survival. If we are not growing in godly character, we are regressing; in the spiritual life we never stand still.”

And we cannot cultivate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control if we are not first humble before a holy God, aware of our sinful nature, and devoted to Him.

Bridges breaks ‘devotion to God’ down into three essential elements:

fear of God
"If we truly reverence God, we will obey Him, because every act of disobedience is an affront to His dignity and majesty.”
love of God
”The love of God has no meaning apart from Calvary, and Calvary has no meaning apart from the holy and just wrath of God… He died to reconcile us to a holy God who was alienated from us because of our sin.”
desire for God
”[We are] satisfied with God alone, but never satisfied with [our] present experience of God. [We] always yearn for more.”

“The fear of God and the love of God form the base of the triangle, while the desire for God is at the apex. As we study these elements individually, we will see that the fear of God and the love of God form the foundation of true devotion to God, while the desire for God is the highest expression of that devotion.”

“To seek to grow in the fear of God without also growing in our comprehension of His love can cause us to begin to view God as far-off and austere. Or to seek to grow in our awareness of the love of God without also growing in our reverence and awe of Him can cause us to view God as a permissive and indulgent Heavenly Father who does not deal with our sin.”

The rest of the book goes through each attribute. The fruit of the Spirit is not just about ourselves, they are relational; they dictate how we treat other people.

Because we often learn the fruit of the Spirit at a young age, I think the depth of it in our lives is often over-looked. I found myself teaching my kids to be patient and turning around the next minute and being impatient with them.

I felt convicted to study these traits and really think about how they can be exhibited in my life right now. And not only how to produce this fruit but how to prune off the ‘bad fruit’ so to speak. To put off the old self as I’m putting on the new self. We need both things.

This is a really good book to read to remind ourselves that the fruit of the spirit is more than a cute song we teach our kids so they stop hitting each other and wait quietly for more than 30 seconds.

They are characteristics of our holy God that he has commanded us to exemplify with his help.

All of them are for everyone all the time. We don’t just pick the ones we’re good at and use our personality as an excuse to ignore the ‘hard ones.’

One thing that’s hard to get our minds around is that we are responsible to strive to exhibit these characteristics, yet also with the knowledge that it is not us at work, but the Holy Spirit. There is both responsibility for our actions and dependence on the Spirit.

“We need to learn that the Bible teaches both total responsibility and total dependence in all aspects of the Christian life.” (Phil 2:12-13)

Being successful in producing this fruit is not what saves us. We do not achieve our salvation. Yet they are evidence of our abiding in Christ.

It’s a weird line to walk but it is what the Bible teaches.

I highly recommend this book for all people! I’ll leave you with this quote, lest we feel overwhelmed or unappealed by the task before us. And remember to check back for a link to my blog series where I will flesh out each attribute.

“The practice of developing our relationship with God should never be thought of as drudgery. We are seeking to grow in our devotion to the most wonderful Person in all of the universe, the infinitely glorious and loving God. Nothing can compare with the privilege of knowing Him in whose presence is fullness of joy and in whose hand there are pleasures forever. From this joyful relationship flows the rich harvest of our transformed character.”