We've been talking this week about the fruit of the spirit that Paul mentions in Galatians

chapter 5. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

I said they seem to come in groups of three, and to be honest, my plan was to take three at

a time this week so that we could spend a week together thinking about them.

But I hope you don't mind that I've changed my mind and we're going to spend two weeks on them.

So the fruit of the spirit is love and then joy.

Perhaps we think of joy as the kind of characteristics some people have by nature and others don't,

and perhaps you feel that you fit into the second category.

If so, I can sympathise with you.

I doubt if joy is one of the leading characteristics of people who have Celtic blood in them.

But the joy that Paul is speaking about here is not the natural characteristic of a sunny disposition. And the reason

I say that is found in the passage I mentioned earlier in the week, Romans 5, 1 through 11, because

Paul there describes a triple joy that has got very little to do with a sunny disposition.

He says, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but more than that, we rejoice in our

sufferings.

And what that underlines for us is that the joy of which Paul is speaking as a fruit of the

Spirit is not a result of our genetic structure,

but of our being justified by faith in Christ, and therefore having a new relationship to God

and being at peace with Him. And that's not just a sunny disposition, is it? You and I know people who have sunny dispositions, but they don't rejoice in any of these things.

As people might say at home in Scotland, Christian joy is no natural.

It's not natural.

It's something that's produced in us by the Holy Spirit.

...