From Fruit to Root
Excerpts from the book "Gospel Fluency" by Jeff Vanderstelt
The fruit of our faith produces the fruit of our life...
[WE can] trace the fruit back to the root. If the fruit is not like Jesus, that is an indicator that our faith is not in him. Remember, we [believers are] all still unbelievers in many areas of our lives. We do not believe the truths about God as revealed in the gospel; therefore, we are living in unbelief. We are still being saved... The fruit of faith in Jesus is love for God and others.
Beneath every sin is a failure to believe a truth about God. I'm convinced the same applies to what we believe about ourselves. Because we believe lies about God, we also believe lies about ourselves. We believe God is unloving, so we, in turn, believe we are unlovable—disposable, unwanted garbage. We believe God is not our Savior, so we have to be the savior to our friends, our spouses, or our children.
In order to grow in applying the gospel to ourselves, we must learn to pay close attention to what we are believing in the moment... So often, we are not aware of what we are believing in any given moment. We just go along, living in false belief, as as a result, we continue to engage in sinful behavior.
So often, when people are led to confess their sins, they only confess their sinful behaviors. In other words, they confess the fruit. They say: "I'm sorry I lied. Please forgive me." Or: "I looked at pornography. I know that's wrong. Please forgive me." The problem, however, is that they need to confess sinful beliefs—the roots, the stuff below the surface that is motivating and producing their behaviors, the sin beneath their sins... And because we generally don't go beyond the fruit to the root, we end up aiming at behavior modification instead of gospel transformation...
When we address only the behaviors and push people to change what they do without a change in what they believe, the weight falls on us rather than God to handle the problems of the world and deal with the brokenness caused by sin.
I encourage you to begin paying close attention to the fruit in your life, but don't make the mistake of engaging in a self-change project. With the help of the Spirit, and ideally in community with others who love Jesus and believe the gospel, practice tracing the fruit to the root. Examine what you have been believing and where your beliefs are not in line with the truth of the gospel. Confess what you believe out loud. What is the sin under the sins? What sinful beliefs have you been holding?
Once you trace the fruit to the root, invite the Spirit to reveal the truth of who God is and what has been done for you in Christ. Ask Him to give you the ability to see and believe the truth, repent from lies or unbelief, and turn to God in faith through Jesus. In other words, work your way from fruit to root.
Book Example of Identifying Root of our Sin
Here's a person, a mom with children, who begins to recognize a set of feelings/emotions she was experiencing as a mother, related to her children's spiritual state and the spiritual influence they were receiving. She then worked to find the lie, the ungodly belief, behind these:
"I recognize the negative feeling/emotion of worry, anxiety, fear, and I have a desire to for control.”
After processing through her feelings/emotions in an honest way, this mother was able to admit that she was functioning out of a lie that God was not loving, that He was impotent (powerless to help in her situation), and just plain absent. She realized she had taken the reigns of "doing" and controlling things, to try to fix a concern she had about her children's spiritual state and the influences they would be receiving wherever they went (school, friends, church, etc). Notice the fruit below that she was seeing in herself (see image below).
The honesty and transparency of her sharing with her husband, a true confession of her sin, allowed her to see the "ugliness" of the lie she was functioning out of (of which she was unaware). She then proceeded to renounce and repent over these ungodly beliefs and began the work to receive and embrace God's truth, and then rejoice over it. Here's her confession of faith she embraced once again, and the fruit that came forth (see image below).
