A couple weeks ago, I introduced this phrase, eternal fruit, as we were considering John

chapter 15, the night before Jesus died when he talked to his disciples about the vine and the

branches. Jesus dropped a lot on his disciples the night before he died, but one of the most important

portions of that

was when he says, if you want to know what this relational dynamic is like, it's like,

I'm the vine, you're the branches, my father is the gardener, and the only way you can bear

fruit is if you are connected to me. For Jesus, bearing fruit for God was synonymous with

being alive in him.

And so a couple weeks ago, I know it's hard to remember because we've just been watching

the fruit of what God has been doing the last couple of weeks.

But I talked about, by the end of this series, I want you to see eternal fruit as synonymous

with eternal life.

That for God, what it means to make you alive in Christ is to make you fruitful.

Some of you think Jesus died and rose from the grave just to make you eternally conscious.

That is not the case. Jesus did not die and rise just so that you would be awake. He died and

rose so that you be made fully alive with purpose, meaning, vision, and

fruit being born in your life. And we said, fruit is kind of seen in your life in an internal

way and an external way. On the inside, it's the character of the person that's being formed

into the image of Jesus. And on the outside, it's the impact of what's happening through your

life in other people. And I don't really know how I didn't pay that much attention to it because I think of like a gardening illustration in scripture and I go, I don't have a lot of relationship with gardening. And I look at that and I go, great example, Jesus, that's helpful. But I think about other things. And then I was reading cover to cover through the scriptures and thinking like, man, this whole idea of fruit bearing is all over the place from the book of Genesis all the

way to the book of Revelation. And it hit me that in Romans chapter 7, what Ashley just read,

literally Paul says that the result of Jesus walking out of the tomb and giving you new life is that you would bear fruit for God.

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