Freedom That Bears Fruit

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This piece was written for the July issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace.

With each year that I spend in the garden, I am more willing to prune fat, full, leafy plants. It’s one thing to pinch off dead and yellowed leaves when the seedlings are young in spring. It’s another to go out to the July garden and snap off the low-hanging tomato branches. It feels like I’m breaking off an arm.

But without careful pruning, trellising, and tending, what happens to a garden? It grows wild. Slowly and subtly, weeds strangle it, and before you know it, those vibrant seedlings have grown so many twisting branches that they’re draining the life out of the garden itself. The leaves may still be green, but they’re fruitless.

Like pruning my garden, Christian freedom may seem like a paradox at first. What does it mean to be a slave to Christ? Isn’t that the opposite of living fully and freely?

But the freedom Scripture speaks of is like the trellis that stakes a vine. It’s a liberty rooted in truth that guides the believer into upward growth. Paul wrote to the Galatians:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” ~ Galatians 5:13

The world offers us a counterfeit freedom every day.

You can be anyone you want to be.

Only you define your identity.

Live your truth.

But it’s a freedom with roots yanked out of the ground, sprouting from lies, that grows like a wild thicket. Peter exposes this clearly:

“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2 Pt. 2:19).

Just after he tells the Galatians to live out their freedom in Christ, Paul goes on to write of the fruit of the Spirit that true freedom produces—love, patience, goodness, and joy. A well-pruned, trellised garden is beautiful to see come midsummer. And so it is with a Christian life that is rooted in truth, pruned by Scripture, and trellised to God’s Word.

It’s a life that won’t just bear fruit for itself, but will “through love serve one another.” To put it in gardening terms, you’ll produce good things and have enough to give away.

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“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

~ Romans 6:20-22

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