Good Fruits and Bad Fruits
How often do you eat fruit in a week? Do you have a favorite? As we all know, fruits are healthy and provide important nutrition for our bodies. When you go grocery shopping, I’m sure you take your time when selecting which fruits you’re going to purchase. You look for the ones that are ripe (or soon to be ripe), but stay away from ones that are beginning to spot or are a little too squishy. But sometimes grabbing a rotten fruit is unavoidable and you take it home.
Let’s say you’re not paying attention and you end up eating a rotting fruit. If it’s rotting, do you think it will still help your body? Probably not. You’re more likely to get a mild stomach ache or maybe something worse. In general you don’t eat rotten fruit because you know it’s bad for you.
Physical and Spiritual Fruit
When you eat healthy food, your physical body becomes healthy. Healthy foods provide all kinds of vitamins and other things our bodies need. If you eat junk food then your body will get some nutrients, but it will also get a lot of harmful things too.
Our bodies may feel “full” or “good” for a time, but will they really stay healthy if we keep eating junk? Soon we’ll be hungry again and our insides will have a harder time performing at their best.
God’s Word also talks about fruits. Some fruits are good and others are not. In Genesis, we read about the Garden of Eden and two particular types of trees. One tree was the “Tree of Life,” which bore fruit, and the other was the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” which also bore fruit.
Do you remember which tree God wanted Adam and Eve to eat from? Why do you think He restricted them from one and allowed them to eat from the other? And do you think the Bible is really talking about literal, physical fruits here?
God’s Fruit
God’s Word is like fruit, or healthy food, for our spirits. In John 1:1-4, it says that in the beginning was the Word, that the Word is God, and in the Word there is life. In the Garden of Eden, God wanted Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Life because its fruit would give them life. Where does life come from? God. So God’s Word is spiritually good fruit. It nourishes our spirits and makes them “healthy”.
So, what about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Satan’s Fruit
If the Tree of Life’s fruit gave life, then what would the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’s fruit give? Death. We see God warn of this in Genesis 2:17.
“…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
We can then understand that the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not something that belongs to God. It is not God’s Word that gives life. So, then whose word is it? In Genesis 3, we read about the serpent, Satan. He sowed doubt into God’s command and gave Adam and Eve the desire to eat the fruit that did not belong to God. It’s his fruit that he tempts and deceives Adam and Eve into eating.
Think about many of the foods we eat today. A few of them, if not handled correctly, are poisonous to us. Take the almond, for example. The almonds we eat have been pasteurized, much like milk, because in their raw form, almonds are poisonous. They contain a natural cyanide. We may not be able to tell from just looking at it, but once we eat a raw almond, we would feel its effects. However, after they’ve been pasteurized (cleansed of poison), almonds are safe to eat.
Results of Eating the Fruit
Now let’s take this example back to these two kinds of fruits in the Garden of Eden. God’s fruit, His Word, is pure and holy. If we eat it, it won’t harm our spirits but instead give them life.
The fruit from the devil, however, may look “good” or normal on the outside, but is like poison once it’s taken in. When the devil spoke to Eve, he made his “fruit” (his words) look good and pleasing by adding his own interpretation, got her to eat it and then Adam followed too.
When they ate the devil’s fruit, that is, listened to his words, what happened to their spirits? Just like how poison harms our bodies from the inside, the devil’s fruit, his words and lies, harm our spirits from the inside.
You see, the devil caused Adam and Eve to doubt God’s words, and that doubt led them to disobey God and sin. In James 1:15, it says how desire (or greed) leads to sin, which leads to death.
Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
We see those very words play out plainly in the Garden of Eden.
How About Today?
We aren’t living in the Garden of Eden today, but that doesn’t mean those two kinds of fruits have disappeared. A lot of the fruits we see and eat today actually looked very different hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Over time, farmers have cultivated them to look like how we see them now. Their appearances have changed, but they’re still fruits. Some are still poisonous and others are completely safe and healthy to consume.
Fruit from Jesus
In the Bible, we see how even when one era ends and another begins, the spiritual fruits remain. At the time of the first coming of Jesus, the battle between the words that led to life and the words that led to death can be seen between Jesus and the Pharisees.
Jesus spoke God’s words because God’s spirit was within him. Jesus himself was like the Tree of Life. He spoke God’s Word and his words gave eternal life (John 4:14).
“Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”
John 14:10
Fruit from the Pharisees
On the other hand, the Pharisees, the religious leaders (pastors) of that time, were like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Over the hundreds of years of building their authority and power, they had also added their own interpretations and traditions to God’s Word (Mark 7:9-13). By doing that, the Pharisees poisoned the Jews’ spirits with their spiritual fruit. This ultimately kept the Jews from understanding God’s Word and from coming to Jesus Christ.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to…
…You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appeared to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Matthew 23:13, 27-28
Spiritual Fruit Today
That was during Jesus’ first coming. There were words that gave life coming from Jesus, and words that brought death coming from the religious leaders. So what about for us alive now in modern times?
If we take a look at Christianity today, we can see that there are many denominations. Each one has their own traditions and interpretations of the Bible. There are countless different fruits out there for us to eat. But how can we know which ones will give us life and which ones are poisonous?
In Job 34:3, it says that the ear tests words like the tongue tests food. We need to test the words we hear using the Bible as our standard. If we know and understand what the Bible says, when we hear others talk about it, we can check what they say against the standard.
If what they say is according to God’s Word, and brings people closer to God, then would it be a spiritually “good fruit” or “bad fruit”? And if it’s a spiritually bad fruit, would you still consume it?
Choose Your Fruit Carefully
We should always check ourselves to see if our faith and understanding is according to what God’s Word says, or if it’s based on our own (or someone else’s) interpretation. We see from the example in the Garden of Eden that the results are ultimately life and death.
Take some time to think about yourself too. Have you (unknowingly) been eating the wrong kind of spiritual fruit? And if you find that you have been eating the wrong fruit, how can you make sure to not eat it again and instead replace it with the fruit that gives life?
Ask God for deeper understanding and guidance. In the end, He is our Father who wants us to have a healthy spiritual diet so that we can be together with Him forever.
Written by Kenny
Read More!
Want more explanations about the Bible? Check out these posts too!
What Is Sin? Sin and the Purpose of God’s Law
Have You Put on the Full Armor of God?
The Danger of Adding Our Own Thoughts to the Bible
Also, make sure to follow us on Instagram for daily verses, prayers and encouragement!
Subscribe to As It Is in Heaven!
If you’d like to stay up to date on our newest posts, make sure to subscribe below!