The Story of a Tree: The Reformed Allergy to Good Works , Part 7
Calvinists have created a kind of allergy to fruitfulness in the last 50 years. The Reformed have developed a theology of works so foreign to the Bible that our forefathers would not recognize.
Alexander Schmemann once observed that the liturgical experience of joy is the starting point of renewal of the Church’s witness to the world. The Church does not celebrate a prophet's death but a King's vindication! Christians are people of joy because God is a God of joy! God takes joy in his gifts and is not stingy about giving them to his saints. What God possesses as good and true and beautiful, he gives to his children freely.
The Christian message differs from others because the Gospel is flavored with joy, saturated with robust goodness and hearty taste. It is a buffet of splendor! The world can play make-believe when it comes to joy, but if offers no lasting treasure. The world’s definition of the good life is decorated with immorality and false pleasures. But “Solid joys and lasting pleasures, none but Zion’s children know.”
We taste and see that the Lord is good because God put us in a delicious world to be consumed and enjoyed. And its liturgy becomes the fruit of that joy! If God were to shake the trees of our liturgy, he should find favor and delight.
Man in Black
God is gracious! He is especially good to those who pursue joy. God is a fruitful God who gives grace upon grace. Robert Capon offered this delightful appetizer concerning the grace of God:
“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe… pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”[1]
This is the background music playing at the end of the Old Testament. There was a promise that Israel would bear fruit ripe for the harvest, that they would be the joy of the nations, that the prodigals would come home. The Old Testament picture from Adam to Cain and from Cain to Malachi contained promises of a Redeemer who would come and bring forth fruit from the people. But there was a prequel to this Redeemer. Before the fruit-bearing King could come, a strange messenger descended from the desert whose diet consisted of honey and locusts, whose clothes smelt like death, and whose leather belt was tight around his waist. He was like the merger of Jonny Cash and a monastic monk.
When he arrives on the scene, he is not bringing a theology of niceness. Before joy, there is soberness. Before absolution, there is confession. He comes proclaiming to that generation that they must repent of their unfruitfulness. They have stolen the joy of God’s people.
John comes to baptize them into fruitfulness. He comes to shake up their trees. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matt. 3:10). The Gospel of Matthew makes this entire premise even more evident. If you don’t pursue faithfulness, and fruitfulness, you are endangering your soul. You are setting the stage for apostasy and self-deception.
Fruitfulness is the Christian’s Offering
Jesus says that a tree is known by its fruit: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit.” (Matt. 12:33). In fact, John came to proclaim a theology of fruitfulness, and they murdered him. He came to condemn the religious and political leaders of unfruitfulness, and they offered the head of John as a fruit of their labors. Unbelief offers Christian martyrs as dinner for demons. But the Christian offers his body as a living sacrifice at the table of heaven before angels and archangels.
Fruitfulness becomes the offering of the saint. It’s the evidence that we love God’s virtues. We bring our love, joy, peace, and long-suffering to the throne because these are fruits of a Spirit-indwelt life. Producing fruit is the inescapable project of the Christian. It is his greatest joy!
Fruit Allergy
Protestants/Calvinists have created a kind of allergy to fruitfulness in the last 50 years. Many in the Reformed world have developed a theology of grace so foreign to the Bible that they think we are on our way to Rome if we speak positively of good works. The Reformed Church has its internal problems, but thinking too positively of good works is not one of them. In the 16th century, Calvin said that the problem with the Romanists was that they presented God as angry. But the Reformed cheer good works and fruitfulness because God is pleased with our good works. God receives our fruitfulness with joy.
In the first-century, another set of fathers came into the scene. The Pharisees piled works upon us but were never content with the good works of their church members. Like his Father, Jesus enters the scene and shows enormous pleasure in the good works of his saints.
If you are a parent and think your child is having a hard time obeying you, it may be because you are functioning as an angry priest in the home. No good works are good enough. Do more. Do more. Never enough. Instead, you should be like the father who received his son at the gate, cheering good works around the house. Make it a habit to encourage at least one good work a day around the home. Always be the cheerleader for faithfulness, fruitfulness and joy. And dads, you need to set that example clearly in the home. As the dad goes, the home goes! Don’t let the “good works is bad team” lead the cheer.
A Fruitful Text
In John’s Gospel, chapter 15 becomes the central fruitfulness text, and I want us to glean a few observations from it:
a) All our fruitfulness is from Jesus. Our Lord says in 15:5 that without him, we can do nothing. He is the true vine. We are branches in this great vine, and as long as we live in this vine, contributing to the life of the vine, we will bear fruit. We will bring delight to the vine-community, the Church. We will be liturgies of joy!
b) We were elected to fruitfulness. 15:16: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” Our baptismal identity only makes sense in a fruitful vine. There is no such thing as baptism without fruitfulness. If baptism is incorporation into the vine, then if you are not acting like a branch in the vine, Jesus says that you are abandoning the ethics of the vine. If you want to act as if you belong to other vineyards, then Jesus will say, “Thy will be done.” He will cut you off the vine. The true vine is looking for repentant branches. You were elected to produce good fruit, and when you don’t, repent, and get back to work.
And The good news is that the Father, through the Son by the power of the Spirit, will always receive you with a smile. If you want the smile of God, then start to bear fruit; delight your community because you were elected to fruitfulness.
And finally, John 15 states that fruitfulness is directly linked to sacrifice:
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
It was the tree of Calvary that bore the greatest fruits to humanity; it was the crucifixion that made all our fruits acceptable to God; it was the broken body of Jesus that gave us the fruit of redemption. There is no fruitfulness, valid good work, or pleasure unless Christ died to make all our works good. And the greatest of all good works was done by the Father who raised the Son from the dead and vindicated him before the nations.
All the fruit we bring—our love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—are living sacrifices to God. God receives our works, smiles upon us like a happy Father, and sends us out into the world to spread his virtues far as the curse is found. The easiest way to distort the fruit of the Spirit is through selfish gain and selfish ambition. The truest way to twist virtue is to treat it like brownie points only to be dispensed to those we think deserve it. “Well, if that person was a bit kinder towards me, I’d really show them love.” “If my husband really cared for me like that other husband cares for his wife, I’d show him kindness.” That’s not the root of sacrifice, it’s the root of selfishness, and it’s not the fruit of the Spirit; it’s self-centered spirituality.
Serving the Fruitful King
Malachi prophesies the coming of the Messenger. When John comes into the picture, he makes our politicians rather uncomfortable. It’s like Elijah’s entrance into the story when the political leaders of the day say: “Isn’t he the troubler of Israel?” The problem, of course, is that John was only the ambassador to the troubler of Israel. John’s troubles led to the loss of his head. Satan wanted to crush the head of Jesus, but he knew he couldn’t, so he took John’s head instead. He knew he couldn’t take the head of the true Vine. He knew that he couldn’t destroy the fruitfulness of Jesus, so he tried to decapitate the fruitfulness of our Lord’s Messenger.
The saints will never serve a decapitated Lord. Paul says that Jesus is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. He is the head over every power and authority. There is no greater vine that can usurp the power of the ruler of the world. We bear fruit because we are in him. We are united to him. We serve under our true head and true Vine. As John says, those who abide in him will be pruned by him. He will remove the dead, diseased, injured parts of our branches. He will sanctify us. He will promote our healthy growth so that we might bear more fruit.
Virtue feeds more virtue as love feeds on more love and joy on more joy. The more you practice it, the more you produce it. The more you delight in it, the more rivers of life will flow from you. You will be like a tree planted by streams of living water. Fruitfulness is evidence that we are in the Vine, but it is also a witness to our delight in the Vine.
Fruitfulness is a display of abundance in the Old Testament. But in the Gospels, those who were thought to be most fruitful were actually most cursed. That’s why Jesus curses the fig tree when he enters Jerusalem. Israel was tested and found wanting. Her fruit was fed to the vultures; her works were disgusting to our Lord. But Jesus Christ comes to restore us and remake us. He comes and plants his Word in our hearts, and gives us of himself on a table, and nourishes and waters his trees in his Garden.
Your invitation is to come and taste of the Vine from heaven. Come to the tree of everlasting life. Come and dine before the Father of joy! In him, all your fruits are acceptable, and you shall be like a vine with fruit abounding.
[1] ― Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Nuntium
Next week, I will speak at the Third Strawbridge Forum for Pastoral Theology in New Holland, PA. The forum is a limited event for pastoral students or current pastors. Here is the event.
I miss Gregg greatly and wish I could dial him at a moment’s notice. I also knew that if I called, he would pick up. Here is my tribute to Gregg.
Uriesou T. Brito
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