Spirit of Torah; part 7
The Fruits of the Holy Spirit
By MMin Kevin “Oriyan” Phipps

…as a young man marries a young woman, your sons will marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, your God will rejoice over you. [Yesha’yahu/Isaiah 62:5]

 So what, you might ask, does imagery of marriage have to do with the fruits of the Spirit? To answer that I have to refer to part of Designed by God, Built by Man, my book where I describe the different parts of the tabernacle in relationship to the body of the Believer. At this point in the tabernacle tour, the reader has gone past all the rest of the tabernacle and its furnishings and has finally reached the most important part, the Holy of Holies.

 Now we finally come to the central, most important, and most holy part of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. Here is where the very shekinah, or presence of God dwelled. Before us is a thick, yet ornate veil, which separates the holy from the most holy. None but the High Priest could ever enter, at that only once a year at Yom Kippur. Within this room was the Ark of the Covenant, containing the commandments of God to His people. Above the ark sat the lid, also known as the mercy seat. On it were two cherubs with open wings facing eachother, and between them, as a King sitting on His throne, was the shekinah of God Himself.

 Here is where the analogy to the body becomes difficult for some to accept. First, we have to come to understand a few things about who Messiah is and who we are as His servants. Scripture compares Messiah with a bridegroom, and His people as His bride. It is God's desire, as already stated, to have a personal, intimate relationship with His people, both collectively and individually. He loves each of us as a husband loves his wife. We serve and glorify God, as a devoted wife does the same for her loving husband. In this bride and bridegroom analogy, that we find in Scripture, it is no accident that much of the terminology relating to the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant, relate to the reproductive parts of both the male and female bodies.

 The purpose of the veil was to create a separation between the most holy place and the priest of God. At this point, sin has been atoned for at the altar. So why this separation? We see in a marriage ceremony, the bride wears a veil to cover her face from her husband until the ceremony is complete. In a similar way, her womb has a seal or sorts to provide  a proof of virginity to her husband when the marriage is consumated. God requires of His people to worship no other gods but Him. To do so is idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. In order to come to God as His bride, we must be pure, a virgin. The veil was a symbol of that. 

 The sacrifice at the altar provided a temporary atonement. A marriage contract is forever. Until a final, perfect atonement could be made, the marriage contract between God and His people could not be complete, thus the continuation of the veil. At the death of Yeshua, there was darkness and earthquakes and the veil in the temple was torn in two. This was to signify that the final atonement for sin was made and the marriage union could take place.  

 In the Holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant. The sign of the covenant was circumcision. In fact, the Hebrew word for covenant is b'rit, which has the idea of cutting flesh as part of its meaning. This in itself comes from a treaty in those day where animals were split in two and the members walk between the carcasses to seal the agreement. This is exactly what Avraham and God did with the Avrahamic Covenant, and is what essentially happens with every male at circumcision.

"Here, the days are coming," says ADONAI, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra'el and with the house of Y'hudah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them," says ADONAI. "For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra'el after those days," says ADONAI: "I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people. [Yirmeyahu/Jeremiah 31:31-33]
 
 The law of God was contained in the Ark of the Covenant. In the new covenant, which was brought about with the coming of Messiah, the law was put in “the inward parts” or bowels/womb of His people. The Hebrew word is qerev, the root word of which is qarav, from which the word qorban, or offering comes from. This points us back to the altar and atonement, without which any relationship with God is impossible, much less something as intimate as Him, as a husband, putting the seed of His law within the center or inward parts of our being. Here, again is the reason the veil was split at the death of Yeshua. This is the moment the New Covenant took place and the law was placed within the people of God. 

 This imagery would imply offspring wouldn't it? Indeed it does. The word for seed is zera, which means both child and fruit. The end result of the law planted within us is the “fruit of the Spirit”.

And it is perfectly evident what the old nature does. It expresses itself in sexual immorality, impurity and indecency;  involvement with the occult and with drugs; in feuding, fighting, becoming jealous and getting angry; in selfish ambition, factionalism, intrigue and envy; in drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you now as I have warned you before: those who do such things will have no share in the Kingdom of God! But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  humility, self control. Nothing in the Torah stands against such things. Moreover, those who belong to the Messiah Yeshua have put their old nature to death on the stake, along with its passions and desires. [Gal.5:20-24]

 So, here we see, from our good old rabbi to the Gentiles, Shaul, in the book of Galatians, no less, a description of two natures. One is the old nature, characterized by all sorts of sin, and controlled by the Adversary and a corrupt heart and mind. The other nature, which requires a relationship with Messiah Yeshua, is controlled by the Spirit and characterized by the fruits of the Spirit, which is in complete agreement with Torah. In fact, we read in other portions of Shaul’s writings that the Torah was ineffective because the sinful nature is incapable of following it, but the nature controlled by the Spirit is capable of following it and ought to. 

 The imagery I have described is one of a marriage contract. Our relationship with Messiah makes us a part of His bride. We have “echad” unity with the God of the universe. We dwell in Him, and He in us. No legitimate marriage is without a contract between the husband and the wife. Our relationship is no exception. Torah is our marriage contract. As we are led by His Spirit, we are lead down the path of righteousness. He fills us with His life, His light, His power, His wisdom, His love, and everything we need to fulfill His will in our lives and in the world. 

 If we truly have union with God, His Spirit will yield fruits in our life. The fruits differ from the gifts in that, the gifts are part of the planting process, where the fruit is what we harvest. The gifts enable us in particular ways to do incredible things in our world, in order to better show people the reality of our God. The fruits are character traits that ought to be common amongst all Believers who are united with God and living according to His will. 

 The word love, and the various forms of the word incorporate over 500 verses in the Bible. For joy, it would be over 300. For peace, it would be close to 300. Patience would be almost 40. For kindness, you would have close to 300 again. Goodness is over 700 verses. For faithfulness, there is over 150. Humility takes about 100 verses. Self control is almost 10 verses. This is a total of around 2400 verses, which is more than the entire book of Psalms. If you include synonyms, the list grows to over 5,000 verses, which is nearly 20% of the entire Bible. 

 Needless to say, the fruits of the Spirit are well documented in Scripture, in one way or another. The fruits of the Spirit are about being. Torah is about doing, but what we do is designed to teach us how to be. It does no good to go to class and not learn the lesson.

Human being, you have already been told what is good, what Adonai demands of you — no more than to act justly, love grace and walk in purity with your God. [Micah 6:8]

  Torah leads to legalism, unless it leads us to the fruits of the Spirit. In most circumstances, it would not make sense for a couple to get married and never have children. Neither does it make sense for us to be united with God and not bear fruit. If we are with Him, we will become more like Him. The more like Him we become, the more of the fruits of the Spirit are evident in our life. Without the fruits, our spiritual life is barren, like a woman who never provides offspring for her husband. In the Bible, this problem would cause much grief, and trouble in a marriage. The same ought to be true of us, if we claim to have a relationship with God, but do not have the fruits of the Spirit evident in our lives. There ought to be concern for a brother or sister in Messiah who also claims to have a relationship with God, but bears to fruit. Keep in mind that the fruit is not particular actions, but the character traits that living according to God’s Word and His will ought to develop within us. There are many who go through the motions of spirituality, going to church, reading the Bible, praying, tithing, living a “good” life, and so on, but are still just as bitter and ugly in their spirit as any unbeliever, and sometimes even worse. What kind of a witness is that? There is far too much bad fruit in this world to begin with. God’s people ought to be doing everything to replace bad fruit with the fruit of the Spirit, not add to the bad fruit with attitudes and behaviors no better than anyone else.

 In this series on the Holy Spirit, we have seen throughout the Bible, men and women who were filled with the Ruach and accomplished amazing things for the Kingdom of God. One of them even brought the Messiah into the world. In every case, the work God accomplished through them created light in the midst of darkness, order in the midst of chaos, goodness in the midst of evil, and created a bridge between a fallen world and the God who created it. When acting under the power of the Spirit, we become superheroes for those we touch with the power of God. We do not control the power, but the power controls us. We live by the rules of the King, and live to accomplish His will in this world, just as Messiah did. Without the Spirit, we end up living for God on our own strength, in our own way, which will always lead to failure. With the Spirit, life becomes an exciting journey, where we never know where God will lead us next, but we know that whatever happens, God works on our behalf and uses us as a beacon of His light in our world. Living according to the Spirit is not easy. It requires humility and knowing that our life is no longer our own, but knowing that it is now owned by One much greater than ourselves, and we are joining Him in His work, which is much greater than we can ever imagine. If we continue to follow Him, however, the Spirit will lead us to the Kingdom of God, where He has prepared a place just for each of us who have served Him faithfully. 

 Even if I increased this study on the Spirit a hundred times, I would still only be scratching the surface of what can be known and what is possible through union with God’s Spirit. There is much for all of us to continue to learn, and much of that learning will only come as we take what we do know and put it in practice. Through experience, God teaches us more than we can ever learn through study.

 In the coming weeks we will be exploring just how we go about putting into action the power that God has put within us. Some would call it evangelism. I prefer to look at it as simply living in the Spirit for all to see, so others can experience the awesomeness of our Messiah.