When I was a young Christian, I thought the Christian life was mostly about the things I didn’t do. You know how it goes: Good Christians don’t_____________(fill in the blank). Some have called this kind of thinking “the gospel of sin management.” That is, we think Christian living is about trying to sin less and finding ways to manage our sin.
Galatians 5 teaches us “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Starting September 10, we’ll be diving deep into this profound teaching in Galatians in a new series called “The Fruit of the Spirit.”
As we’ll see in this series, there is a big difference between “sinning less” and living a life of love, joy, peace, patience, and so on. Maybe one of the reasons we’ve missed the deep transformation that comes from the gospel is because we’ve been focused on the wrong things. Instead of working on strategies to sin less, maybe we should be focusing on the things that actually grow us to be more like Jesus.
Through this new series, we’ll be looking at some practical, biblical teachings about how Christians grow and what it is we are trying to grow towards. We’ll be talking about some of those old-fashioned words churches sometimes use, like sanctification, holiness, and virtue.
I hope you’ll lean in!
Spencer
