The common meaning of bearing fruit is living a Christian life and having a Christian character. There is nothing wrong with this, but it omits some critical spiritual teachings in regard to bearing fruit. Bearing fruit in the scripture means to bring people into Father’s covenant. When the Pharisees and Sadducees came to John the Baptist, he told them, “Bring forth fruit meet for repentance” (Matthew 3:8). The word meet means to satisfy, so he told them to bring people who are satisfactory for repentance.
When Christ came, he brought a similar judgment to them saying, “The kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). The Pharisees and Sadducees believed that the kingdom was an exclusive group of people. Christ charged them with shutting up the kingdom saying, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees you hypocrites for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer those who are entering to go in (Matthew 23:13).
Since the beginning, the Children of Israel were not supposed to be a single nation of people. Moses knew that the Children of Israel would do this. God has never been a respecter of persons. It never mattered if men were not of Abraham’s seed. The Father told Abraham to enter those who were not of his seed into His covenant (Genesis 17:12). God also commanded the Children of Israel to give those who were not of Abraham’s bloodline an equal inheritance (Ezekiel 47:22).
Moses decided to write a testimony against the Children of Israel before he died. Moses suspected that they would not keep the Father’s commandment. Moses created a record against them saying, “When the Most-High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 32:8).
The bounds of the people are the limits of the people. The Father set the limits of the people equal to the number of the Children of Israel. This means that the Father allowed all people to be Children of Israel. Moses said the Father declared this from the beginning with the Sons of Adam. It was always the Father’s will that all nations enter into His covenant.
Today some men still practice this iniquity. We can see in some of our translations that we treat the covenant as if it belongs to an exclusive group of people. These versions say, “No one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”, but the King James version says, no man knows the Father except the Son and whomsoever the Son will reveal him (Matthew 11:29). When we are the children of God, we will to reveal the Father to every creature (Mark 16:15).
The scripture teaches us that the fruit are people. The fruit from the branches contain a seed. Christ taught us that the seed inside of us is the word of God (Luke 8:11). The seeds inside of fruit do not produce fruit. The seeds inside of fruit produce another environment. The seeds inside of an apple produce another apple tree. Character alone is not going to create an environment. To create an environment, we need the word of God. Christ promised his disciples that he would make them fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). He did so by giving them a solid understanding to teach (Matthew 16:18).
Christ taught us the ascension of perfection saying, I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit (John 15:1). The ascension to perfection teaches us that a branch that bears no fruit will do so for a lack of understanding. The founder who lacks understanding will be destroyed by evil. The Son promises that a founder with an adequate understanding will be able to teach it. His ability to teach this understanding will leave his branch pruned but never destroyed.
The ascension to perfection teaches us that on the appropriate understanding, the tree is good and so are the fruit (Matthew 12:33). When a founder has the appropriate understanding, evil people who come along to practice confusion will not prevail. When Peter realized that Christ was the Son of God, Christ said upon this understanding I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. At that point Christ realized that he had taught Peter enough to interpret the instructions that God had written on his heart (Matthew 16:18). Christ told his disciples, “now you are clean through the word which I have spoken to you (John 15:3).
