(This sermon was preached at Epworth Chapel, Baltimore on 11/18/12 and is the 5th in a ten-part series on the fruit of the Spirit.)
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23)
In his outline of the fruit of the Spirit, the apostle Paul says that one of the fruit of the Spirit is generosity. Paul here in Galatians uses the terms generosity and goodness interchangeably (virtually synonymously). We know that the generous person is one who gives of oneself, the one who seeks to do good with one’s life and to share one’s possessions. And so Paul says that “the fruit of the Spirit is generosity.”
The context of Paul’s word to the Galatian church about generosity is not unlike the world in which we live. If you know like I know, all of us are searching for some goodness in our lives. You see, there is a struggle within us to discover and understand goodness in our present day and time. Just as in the days of Adam and Eve – goodness is often overshadowed by evil. It is hard to see goodness in our world. Just as at the tower of Babel, and at Sodom and Gomorrah, goodness seems for us too often to have been swallowed up in evil in this present day.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of the good Dr. Jekyll and the bad Mr. Hyde brilliantly shows the potential for both good and evil in all of us. It seems that just when we have risen to great heights, that is when evil bears its ugly teeth in our souls, and we seem to fall back into our old evil ways. Paul put it this way in writing to the Roman Christians: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For, I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep doing.”
Have you ever been where Paul was? “I want to do right…but as hard as I try, I keep messing up. I want to be a Christian in my heart…but as hard as I try, I keep slipping and falling down.”
Indeed, at the core of our being, we want to be good... we want to do good… we want to feel good about ourselves. We all desire and seek after goodness.
And yet, ours is a world wrought with self-interest and self-centeredness. We seem to seek more and more after those things in life, and do those things that will meet our personal needs. Thus, the mantra for us too often becomes, not “what’s in it for others,” but “what’s in it for me.” How will my actions and behaviors serve my needs? If I decide to give this, or participate in that, how will it help my life, my career, my reputation?
And so Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is generosity. The simple fact is that living a life of generosity and pure goodness is not easy. True goodness requires spiritual stamina – a spiritual maturity and persistence that exceeds just a determination to be good and do good. It requires that the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit - be at work in our lives.
The fruit of the Spirit is generosity/goodness. There are three things about generosity that I want to remind us of today that I believe can help us on our journey.
First, generosity and goodness derive from our relationship with the Lord. Paul said in another place, that “It’s not I, but the Christ that lives in me.” We need to be reminded today that a relationship with the Lord helps us to do good, even when we want to do bad. Jesus can help you do right, even when you want to do wrong.
Paul’s point to the Galatian church is that we are to walk in the Spirit, and when we walk in the Spirit, we don’t walk alone. When we walk in the Spirit, and not in the flesh, the Good News is that God walks with us, and Good helps us to do good and begin to live a life of generosity.
Second, goodness and generosity first manifests itself in our personal character, and not in our outward walk. Philosophers would suggest to us today, that there is virtue imbedded in each of us. There is some good imbedded in each of us. Paul wanted us to know that what a relationship with Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit does for us is that the good that’s already in us begins to be touched by the presence of God.
God’s character is good – God is omnibenevolent (God is good all the time). And so God – whose character is good, begins to work on us from the inside out, and as the saints of old would often say, “something on the inside, shows up on the outside.”
Good is already within us, and what a relationship with the Lord does – what walking in the Spirit does – is it begins to bring out the good (the God) that is already present within us.
That’s what the song-writer meant when it was written:
"What a change in my life has been wrought,
Since Jesus came into my heart,
I have light in my soul for which long I have sought,
Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart.
Floods of joy over my soul, like sea billows roll,
Since Jesus came into my heart."
God’s goodness can change your life and change your personal character.
Third and finally, the goodness in us ultimately manifests itself through our outward generosity. And we are reminded more than anything that we are blessed to be a blessing.
What does generosity really look like? Generosity responds to others with compassion and gracious behavior. Generosity beckons us to reach beyond ourselves in responding to the needs of our neighbors. Generosity is closely connected to another of the fruit of the Spirit – kindness – and is really rooted in our knowing that we’ve been blessed by God, and as a response to God blessing us– we seek to be a blessing to others. We’re blessed to be a blessing.
And so when we are generous – we are responding with thanksgiving and praising to how good God had been to us. And our lives become a doxology. And our heart’s song becomes –
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise him all creatures here below
Praise him above the heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
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