Cultivating Christian Character: The Fruit of the Spirit
Overview
Cultivating Christian Character is an insightful and inspiring work focused on the themes of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It goes beyond a superficial understanding of these graces to show how they are rooted in God and serve to glorify him. It is a balanced book that presents a biblical perspective on issues of importance in the contemporary church and helps to cultivate Christian character. The fruit of the Spirit promotes harmony in the church and testifies to the watching world that God has given something special to his people. This Christ likeness assists the proclamation of the Gospel by enabling believers to live out the reality of God’s grace in their homes, workplaces, colleges, and communities. It is a clear explanation of the biblical text in a fresh and forthright manner with a voice that is both authentic and authoritative. You will find it reverent in handling Scripture, readable in style, and relevant in its message.
With Logos Bible Software, this volume is completely searchable, with Scripture passages appearing on mouseover and linking to your favorite Bible translation in your library. This makes this text more powerful and easier to access than ever before for scholarly work or personal Bible study. With Logos’ advanced search features, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, every mention of “peace” or “Galatians 5:22.”
- Discusses the relationship between Christian character and Christ-like conduct
- Explains the meaning of each virtue
- Examines biblical examples that illustrate each quality
- Provides a guide for further study
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Patience
- Kindness
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Gentleness
- Self-Control
Top Highlights
“Meekness describes a condition of mind and heart whereas gentleness is more about how one conducts oneself in relation to others. In short, meekness is about attitude whereas gentleness is about actions.” (Page 168)
“Here he is talking about people who habitually live like this and refuse to repent. Such people are not born of the Spirit, and people who profess to be Christians and continually engage in such practices are not, in fact, believers at all. The reality of the believer’s new life is seen in the fruit of the Spirit. It is not that the believer never sins rather he has a heart that is tender to the things of God, repentant when sin is committed and open to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Although the Christian always retains the capacity to sin, the inclination diminishes and the pleasure of sin becomes sour and unpalatable.” (Page 14)
“The Spirit is not only to reside in our hearts but also ought to reign there. The Spirit is to be sovereign rather than subordinate in our intellects, emotions and wills. We need to be submissive to the divine will and reliant on divine power so that God works in harmony with the regenerate human heart.” (Page 7)
“Meekness is a quality of great value in God’s estimation” (Page 167)
“This kind of understanding of meekness is completely wrong. It is wrong because it assumes that the meek disciple of Christ lacks assertiveness. It is seen as a frailty of the feeble minded. But Jesus was meek and yet he taught fearlessly, with authority. He had power beyond measure with infinite resources at his command. He is the ultimate model of meekness and in imitating him we can accept resentment, ridicule and rejection without recrimination. Christ was selflessly consumed with the will of the heavenly Father and in that frame of mind meekness was the inexorable outcome.” (Page 168)
- Title: Cultivating Christian Character: The Fruit of the Spirit
- Author: Kieran Beville
- Publisher: Day One
- Publication Date: 2005
- Pages: 208