[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! Today's Word is the Word read according to the scheduled program. It may come as a surprise or a disappointment that Joseph Siklós is not completing the evangelization series that he began and has carried out among us with the outpouring of the Spirit, for which we can only all be grateful to him. May the Lord God bless all his ministry! I myself would have liked him to continue and finish this series he started. This would be the very point of an evangelistic series: that a congregation accustomed to a certain "orchestration" of the Word would hear the same truths and sayings in a different "orchestration" - then they might hear it better, it might penetrate deeper into their hearts. Besides, it is better if an evangelisation is carried out by one person. But we all know that tomorrow is Pentecost, he has a church in Jászkisér, he has to be there. There was no other way to do it than to leave this morning. Let us take comfort in his kind words of farewell to me. He said, "I am going away, but the Holy Spirit is staying". So let us truly believe that even if he has gone, the Holy Spirit has stayed. Let us believe that even now the Holy Spirit of God is speaking to us, teaching us. Let us all try to humble ourselves, myself with you, under the teaching of God's Holy Spirit, under the power of the Word.Well, dear Brothers and Sisters, you know that today, from the announced programme, we are talking about the fruits of the Spirit. The fruits that I have just read about in Galatians. Many of you can tell by heart. I saw a very interesting picture once: it was actually a single bunch of grapes. The grapes were very beautiful, swollen grapes, and on each of the grapes was written: 'love', 'joy', 'peace', 'kindness', 'goodness', 'faithfulness', 'gentleness', 'temperance'. Well, it is a beautiful and majestic fruit, a great fruit: a single bunch of grapes. What a succulent, what a delicious, what a vitamin-rich, nourishing fruit it must be! And the Word says in Galatians that we must produce such fruit! How good it would be to see such fruit ripening in our own lives, in each other's lives! But the Spirit of God produces this fruit and the Word says that these are the fruits of the Spirit.
Yesterday we heard about the gifts of the Spirit. Out of an unheard of number of gifts, the preacher just mentioned prophecy, speaking in tongues, discerning souls and a few others, and he also said that not everything is given to a believer. It is given to the church of Christ, these gifts of the Spirit for the edifying of the body, for the benefit of the whole church. One gets prophecy, one gets healing, one gets speaking in tongues, one gets something else, but it is never the case that all the gifts of the Spirit are made real in the life of one person, all of them can be exercised. Now, the decisive difference between the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit is precisely that the fruits of the Spirit are all received together by the one in whom the Spirit of God is at work. So it is not possible for me to have joy but not peace: there can be no joy. It is not possible for me to have love, but not to have faithfulness, or kindness, or temperance, because the whole cluster is one, and the whole together is the fruit of the Spirit. It's interesting - I don't know if you've noticed - that in Galatians of all places, the apostle Paul doesn't even say, "Fruits of the Spirit," but simply, "fruit," and then he goes on to list the many kinds of fruit. As if to express the fact that they belong together, that they must all be present in the life of the man who is truly in communion with Christ by His Spirit, and that they must grow on the tree of life.
It is interesting how much Jesus talks about fruit. Among other things, let me draw your attention to one example, that of the fig tree, which does not want to bear fruit in any way, even though the farmer does his best: he did not intend it to be an ornamental tree, but a fruit tree, planting it, tending it, fertilizing it, watering it, tiring it, so that one day it can finally enjoy its fruit. Because if a fruit tree does not bear fruit, it has no place in the vineyard, it is a fruit tree that takes up space unnecessarily. For a vineyard is not a park, which is meant to delight people. Ornamental trees are fine, sometimes they are needed, but a vineyard is not an ornamental park, it is an orchard whose purpose is to benefit the farmer. That's why he tends it, that's why he bothers with it. Surely we feel that we are, in fact, these fruits. It is about us, it is about the Church of Christ. It is about each believer in Him individually, personally - that is, about the people whom Jesus cares for, prunes, waters, receives and really does his best to make sure that they finally see some fruit on that tree. The Christian man is not a tree of ornament, the Christian man is a fruit tree. And Jesus' death and resurrection and life and teaching and all his work was certainly not so that we who are tired of the noise of the world might have the opportunity to hear something else in the reverent silence of a church service, but it was all for the sake of fruit.
Remember when Jesus compares himself to the vine and us to the vine. He says, "He who is in Me and I in him bears much fruit." So, again, it is that in Jesus something so wonderful heavenly power has been brought into this world that through a relationship with Him - a relationship of faith - His life force wants to flow into our members, our thinking, our instincts, wants to transform our actions and bring forth those fruits in us. So the Word, I would say, is all for the fruit. It is all for the fruit: Christmas, Easter, Holy Thursday and Pentecost are all for the fruit. And we know what fruit is, don't we? The tree is a testimony of itself. As Jesus says: "By their fruit you will know them." It is by its fruit that you can taste, that you can determine what a tree is worth. A fruit tree is a service for the benefit of others. It may make the tree poorer, but it also makes someone else richer. So the fruit is something that the tree did not produce for itself, that it sheds from itself to feed others: a piece of the tree's life. Because there the whole being of the tree culminates, there the whole purpose of the tree is expressed, the whole purpose of the tree is expressed, that it bears fruit.
So the fruits are the Christlike motives, the actions that make human coexistence pleasant, juicy, refreshing. In other words, they are not luxuries at all, but vitamins, which are in great need of all living beings, especially human beings. Now then, Brothers and Sisters, let us try to look more specifically at these fruits of which the Apostle Paul speaks. Unfortunately, the fact is that we could actually give a separate sermon on each of them - I don't want to go through them all, but I would like to pluck a single eye from this beautiful bunch of grapes and try to taste what it tastes like.
So here we have love - love as the fruit of the Spirit. And I would like to emphasise very strongly that this word has such an unheard-of richness of content that it can almost only be spoken of in contrasts - in contrasts that compare love that is not the fruit of the Spirit with love that is the fruit of the Spirit. So, to sketch just a few of the features of the love that comes from us: for example, one of these pairs of opposites is that the love that comes from us is, I might say, reciprocal love; the other, that which comes from the Spirit, is initiating love. We know what reciprocal love means: when we are constantly expecting, "People, I am here, so love me, why don't you love me? Be good to me, so appreciate me! I do not hurt anyone, and I can love those who love me" - this is reciprocal love. The other, initiating love, is as it is recorded of Jesus, "He loved us first". So before I did anything to love Him, He already loved me. In fact, when I have done everything to have no reason to love, He comes before me in spite of this and loves me - He preserves me with His love. So the fruit of the Spirit is the outpouring of love that goes out to the other with love. It does not wait, but takes the initiative; it does not want to receive, from which it can then determine how much it can give itself, but unconditionally, always giving.
Then the other is love according to merit. Merit-based love means that, yes, whoever is worthy of it, of course I would like to! There are so many people in the world who deserve to be loved by me, so I love them because they are worthy. Generally speaking, to love because... it's logical, I can explain what justifies it, to love. The other is love according to need, which says: that I love because... and here is the great big difference - "because that wretch needs me to love him so much..., because that man will perish without love..., I love him, I love him, because that wretch gets no love from anybody, so what will happen to him if I don't love him..., so I love him because he is hateful, because he is dirty, because he is filthy, because he is sinful - or maybe because he hates me..., so I love him." So love according to need. What a wonderful love Jesus had - he always loved best those who were the most miserable, those who were ostracised, hated by people. For example, the Gadarene devil: he crossed over to the other side of the lake for him, the one person everyone feared, the one person who was ostracised, so he crossed over to the other side of the lake. Or the inferno, the one everyone was terrified of, and they avoided him far away, in fear, when they saw him, because everyone was afraid of him, afraid of the disease spreading to him. Or the tax collectors: Zacchaeus, whom everyone despised with all his heart - and despised justly, humanly speaking - his greeting was not received. So 'according to merit', 'according to impulse', is there not a vast difference between the two?
Then again, another pair of opposites: the love that comes out of me is boastful love, and the other is love in hiding. The boastful love pretends to itself that it is good... How much he has helped me! - and then he likes to mention it, often, as often as possible, so that as many people as possible may know that I am a great man! I can love him and him and him... And he is rewarded by people's praise, he gets more praise. The other is hidden love: it doesn't boast, it doesn't get uppity, it doesn't get a big chest, "Oh, you see who I am!" - it somehow remains, as Jesus says, "even the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing". As Jesus Himself did when He fed five thousand people - never before in the world had one man fed five thousand starving people on his own - and the disciples moved, not Him. He was in the background, they couldn't even thank Him, so they had to thank the disciples. But they said, "Don't thank us!" - "Well, who?" - "Jesus!" - "Where is Jesus?" When they wanted to thank Him, to thank Him, in their great, fervent enthusiasm they wanted to exalt Him as King, they wanted to honour Him as King - by then Jesus had disappeared from that region.
And then again another pair of opposites, that the love that comes out of us is heard, and the other love is seen. You know what that means: "can be heard": in beautiful, kind, gushing words, in outbursts of mood and emotion... What's it worth to the other person? And the other love is visible - quite simply visible. It may be seen in a note, it may be seen in the cleaning of someone's apartment that was dirty before, or in the darning of a stocking that had holes in it. It may be seen in a movement, but in which one has felt something of the warmth of the love that comes from Christ. It can be seen in something, it can be seen, because love that cannot be seen or felt has no meaning.
And let me point out one more pair of opposites: our love, so to speak, which is all we can do, towards sin, towards the sin of another man, is either blind or stumbling. And that other love is such that it does not condemn evil. Even if there were so much on the other's account, it does not disgrace it, and covers everything, it covers everything with its love. Do you know this - oh, but we often hear, "I have forgiven, but I can no longer forget..." And what if God said, "Son, I forgive, but I can't forget?" And when one keeps account of the sins of others and then, at the appropriate moment, submits the bill? Like I have an acquaintance, a woman who keeps a diary of all her husband's rudeness, all his annoyances, all the things he often gives her, without her husband knowing it: he did this, he did that... She keeps a list of the other's faults, then she lives in peace, and when the peace is shattered, this woman takes out the list: 'Well, do you remember? On 24 January, for example, you did this, you said that..." and so she lists them one after the other, accusing them of evil. Do you know, Brothers and Sisters, what is the true test of true love? It is how we relate to the enemy. Whether we can bless the one who curses us and love the one who does not love us? Can we say good things behind our backs about the one who scolds us? That would be the true test of true love. Well, that is the grape with the word 'love' written on it, and that is the love that the Spirit of God brings to maturity in a person's life, if the Spirit is truly at work in them.
I am going to pluck another grape. Let's try to look at this one too. Here is joy, for example. We are not talking about the cheerfulness, the joy that comes naturally, of its own accord, when one feels good, when an external influence causes it, but about the joy that is within, as the fruit of the Spirit. Let me say in this connection that God is a cheerful God, a joyful, happy God. The joy, the delightful joy of God has three main directions:
1) Rejoicing, God delights in himself, in the riches of his own life. When Jesus appeared there on the bank of the Jordan River, and when the Spirit descended like a dove from on high, then was uttered this saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I delight. God delights in himself and has every reason to delight and rejoice in himself. That is the most beautiful, the purest, the most perfect, you have never seen anything more beautiful!
2) Then when He delights in His created world, this great big, really beautiful universe. Not for nothing is it written in the story of creation, as it were in a refrain, "God saw that, behold, all things are very good" - for they are indeed very good and very beautiful and very great, and God has every reason to delight in His own creation.
3) And God delights in the recreated world with the joy of the father of the prodigal son. Let us hear: when his son returns to him dirty, muddy, debauched, they sit in joy. And Jesus says, "There is joy in heaven among the angels of heaven when a sinner turns to God and the reality of grace is revealed to him. So God surrounds this world with joy, with divine joy, and if our lives are involved in the mighty work of God's life, then our lives should be filled with joy.
Every real approach of God is indeed something of special joy for man. Let us recall the exultant joy of our very first encounter with Jesus, when one thinks as if heaven were stretching out its lungs, its heart, with all its momentum and bliss... And yet there is so much sadness in this world: so much unpleasantness, so many abominations, this external life always providing us with some trouble that overshadows our joy - can we ever be happy? The Apostle Paul has a very strange saying, "as one that sorroweth, though always rejoiceth". The apostle Paul learned the great secret of the Christian question, of life, to see these two things at the same time: to grieve and to rejoice, so that while he grieves he can also rejoice. And this simultaneousness, this is a great great thing! Jesus did this - in less than ideal circumstances - and yet how richly, how joyfully, because the life of his Father was pulsating in him. When He went to the cross, He had every reason to weep, to despair. Then he said to his disciples, "I have spoken these things to you so that my joy may remain in you." "My joy" - even then there was joy in Him, even in the march to the cross, and He said that where He was, there was a wedding feast, a joyous feast. So, "Though sorrowful, yet always rejoicing".
It is in the world, as the Word says: "Even in laughter the heart aches and at last joy turns to sorrow". But in the Lord, in Christ, it is the other way round: even in the sorrow of an aching heart, in the sorrow of a sorrowful heart, the soul smiles, and the sadness of a man's soul is illuminated by a pure joy from above. Thus, joy can only truly be found through the Holy Spirit, but only through the Holy Spirit! For this joy is the fruit of the Spirit.
And then let me pick up one more, here is peace: inward and outward, within the heart and outward, between one another. As the Apostle Paul says: "May the peace of Christ reign in your hearts" - that's all that matters. It doesn't take two people quarreling with each other for there to be peace, fighting, discord, but alone, alone in a room, terrible fights can rage within me. Because fear, and vanity, and feelings of hurt, and hateful thoughts - these are the things that make one unpeaceful from within. No matter how peaceful the environment, he will remain unpeaceful on the inside until the peace of Christ overcomes these emotions. So it "prevails" - not only does the peace of Christ lurk somewhere in a little corner of the soul, but it prevails. That's why the apostle Paul says: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts" - and having said that, the apostle goes on to say: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live in peace with all men". It is not entirely up to us, because the heart of another man is not in our power. We cannot control the other person's instincts as the Holy Spirit flows, but "if it is up to you" - let us at least do enough to do so, so that there may be peace outwardly.
There is a terrible lack of peace in this world! Many people come to me with all sorts of problems - if I were to add them up, unrest would take the first place. Discord between family, spouses, parents, children, relatives, co-tenants, office colleagues, clients, friends, everywhere, everywhere almost the same refrain of repetitive discord. He started it, it's his fault, he's to blame. If it was up to you, have you really done all you can, have you really done all you can?If you have done all you can, then at least you can have peace and then the war with the other person will be quiet. So, to the extent that it is a reality for us that God has peace in us, to the same extent there will be peace in us and around us.
We could go on about peace, goodness, gentleness, but let me try to tear off just one last eye and make us all taste it: moderation. Do you know what strange questions are raised here about this? How much do we eat, how much do we drink, how much do we sleep? For example, can we stay awake with a patient if we need to? Can we give up some pleasure, comfort or desire of our body? If necessary, how do you take care of your body? Yes, your body - not your soul, your body! How do you usually bear pain, bodily pain: how do you bear toothache or headache? Well, it has a lot to do with the Holy Spirit: on the one hand, because it's actually about what we call: self-restraint, self-discipline, self-control, restraining the body. It also has a lot to do with the spiritual life. Temperance comes last, but we know that the whip will crack at the end: the Holy Spirit will only really reach me when he reaches my whole body. Because if it does not reach my body, all the rest is an illusion. Love, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, everything is an illusion, because my body is the instrument through which love is realized, joy is radiated, goodness is manifested, Christian life is incarnated, it is embodied. That's why I said that until the Holy Spirit penetrates my body, he has not really penetrated me. That's why Paul says: "Make your body a servant, make it a martyr." This is not self-torture, not beating ourselves up, as they did in the Middle Ages, but it means to restrain myself in such a way that my flesh does not rule over me, does not dominate me. For day after day I am beset by gluttony, fatigue, restlessness, laziness, lust. I have to fight against them every day, I have to make sure again and again that it is not true that this mortal body rules over me, there is another rule, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus also rules over the body.
For joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, temperance are heavenly fruits. And Jesus says: "He who is in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit". He who is in Christ will bear all this fruit - Christ will bear it through him, by the power of His Spirit. And, brethren, this is the fruit the Lord is looking for in us, this is the fruit God expects of us. In fact, let me put it this way: this is the fruit that the world, the people around us, expects of us. Someone once said, with a very, very pained face, "How beautiful life would be if there were no people!" How terrible it is that people make life difficult, terribly difficult! I once visited an elderly colleague who had retired. He was very disappointed, very disappointed! I asked: what are you doing? He said: 'I cut down trees because at least they don't hurt me, they are grateful'.
That's how we are, Brothers and Sisters, we can only make life tiresome, agonizing, unbearable for each other. But the Spirit of Jesus, through love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, moderation, can make life beautiful, easy, happy for ourselves and for others. Am I a fruit tree? I am a fruit tree, and the purpose and meaning of our life is to bear fruit, to communicate Christ, to be a Christ-giving life!
Amen.
Date: Saturday 5 June 1965 (Evangelization)