Looking at the Fruits

Judging Others by their Fruits

1 Corinthians 5:12:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?  Are you not to judge those inside?  God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you.’”

I decided to write an article on judging those within the church because this seems to be a forgotten message.  In fact, it has been twisted. Perhaps this is because the gospels create a tone of non-judgment upon others – who can cast the first stone if none of us is without sin?

In Matthew 7:1, Christ says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  However, if you read a little further down, at 7:15-16 Christ also says that you will know others by their fruits.  How can you know others by their fruits if you do not examine the product of their lives?  Therefore, Christ is not calling us to be universally and unconditionally accepting.  Rather, Christ is telling us not to be judgmental.

The difference between judgmental and mere examination of one’s fruits is that judgmentalism includes placing a verdict on the motives of someone’s heart.  Examining the fruits of one’s life does not place a verdict on their motives, but instead allows for correction due to the bad fruit.  The former does not spare room for correction, the later does.  Judgmentalism cannot be done through love, which when absent negates any good work that we are doing.  Examining the fruit of one’s life can only be done through love because we are expected to either encourage or correct based upon if the fruit was good or bad, respectively.

Therefore, to those within the body, we will know a tree by its fruit.  Matthew 7:17:

“So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.”

A fruit tree can produce good, bad, or no fruit. We will know fellow believers based upon their fruits. By knowing these fruits we are called to encourage or correct so that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Provers 27:17).  Through this accountability system, the church helps us on our paths to sanctification.

What is the good fruit that we should be looking for?  Turn to Galatians 5:22-23:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Many misread this verse by pluralizing “fruit” and thereby, changing each quality and isolating it from the others.  This is outright wrong.  Paul does not pluralize “fruit” because each quality creates the fruit.  Think of it as a cluster of grapes and the cluster being the fruit.  Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit consists of all nine qualities.  Do you have seven out of the nine?  So to do those in the secular world.

As John 15:5 states “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”  Verse 6 shows that for those that do not remain in Christ, he is like a branch that is thrown away because it is dead.  Examine the fruits in the lives of those within the church.  Does one think he is fruitful because he counsels effectively, plays on the worship team, or speaks a message?  That is not biblical fruit.  You will know a tree by its fruit.  Next time I write, I will write on what each of the qualities of the fruit are.  But till then I will leave you with what a friend once told me:

“How can you judge someone by their fruit?  It does not always work like that.  If a man at my church is a drunkard and he came to my house for counseling and I told him he needs to repent completely or else he will die a sinner, then he angrily stormed out of my house, crashed his car and died, how can you say there was any fruit from that?”

Every tree produces fruit – whether good, bad, or none at all.  And that example is a perfect example of how fruit is produced even through our deaths.

-Mark