We have already pointed out that the Apostle in the preceding context
varies his terms, and catalogues the actions that come from the godless
self as works, whilst those which are the outcome of the Spirit are
fruit. The distinction thus drawn is twofold. Multiplicity is contrasted
with unity and fruit with works. The deeds of the flesh have no
consistency except that of evil; they are at variance with themselves--a
huddled mob without regularity or order; and they are works indeed, but
so disproportionate to the nature of the doer and his obligations that
they do not deserve to be called fruit. It is not to attach too much
importance to an accidental form of speech to insist upon this
distinction as intended to be drawn, and as suggesting to us very solemn
thoughts about many apparently very active lives. The man who lives to
God truly lives; the busiest life which is not rooted in Him and
directed towards Him has so far missed its aim as to have brought forth
no good fruit, and therefore to have incurred the sentence that it is
cut down and cast into the fire. There is a very remarkable expression
in Scripture, 'The unfruitful works of darkness,' which admits the busy
occupation and energy of the doers and denies that all that struggling
and striving comes to anything. Done in the dark, they seemed to have
some significance, when the light comes in they vanish. It is for us to
determine whether our lives shall be works of the flesh, full, perhaps,
of a time of 'sound and fury,' but 'signifying nothing,' or whether they
shall be fruits of the Spirit, which we 'who have gathered shall eat in
the courts of His holiness.' They will be so if, living in the Spirit,
we walk in the Spirit, but if we 'sow to the flesh' we shall have a
harder husbandry and a bitterer harvest when 'of the flesh we reap
corruption,' and hear the awful and unanswerable question, 'What fruit
had ye then of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?'