Are you living a fruitful life, or a productive one?

Easter week, as we contemplate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is a great reminder that God didn’t go through all the trouble involved in saving us and reconciling us to Him for us to do nothing with the lives He has given us.

Indeed, from the very beginning, God expressed to the first man and woman that it’s His desire we live fruitful lives …

“Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground,’” Genesis 1:28.

Echos of this divine instruction are found in part of the reason why Jesus came to Earth …

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life,” John 10:10.

And from the beginning to now, we keep misinterpreting what God said. We take His words as this kind of exhortation: “Go make something of yourselves!” when what He has been saying all along is: “Go make something of your lives!”

Not of your self but of your life!

God directs us to be fruitful, but we interpret that as “productive.” While “fruitfulness” has its own kind of productivity, we can be wildly productive without being the least bit fruitful, resulting in an empty, lost life …

“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” Mark 8:36.

Notice when the Apostle Paul describes what fruit generated in our lives by the Holy Spirit looks like, not a single thing listed is a worldly description of “human productivity” …

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Galatians 5:22-23.

Priest, professor, and theologian, Henri Nouwen captures this idea of fruitfulness being something altogether different than productivity in his writing in “Lifesigns” …

Living with … handicapped people, I realize how success-oriented I am. Living with men and women who cannot compete in the worlds of business, industry, sports, or academics but for whom dressing, walking, speaking, eating, drinking, and playing are the main “accomplishments,” is extremely frustrating for me. I may have come to the theoretical insight that being is more important than doing, but when asked to just be with people who can do very little I realize how far I am from the realization of that insight … Some of us might be productive and others not, but we are all called to bear fruit: fruitfulness is a true quality of love.

How about you? Are you striving to make something of your self through human productivity? Or are you seeking to make something of your life by being fruitful through the Holy Spirit working in and through you?

Scotty