Bearing Fruit

I’ve often heard teachers say that Christians are supposed to ‘bear fruit’. I’ve also heard them teach that we don’t earn our way into heaven. Those two ideas are seemingly contradictory, until I finally understood the true meaning of the word ‘bear’ as it’s used in ‘bearing fruit’.

‘Bear’ is a word with many meanings, but my misconception was that the ‘bearing’, in this context was a result of effort.

Dictionary.com has it’s fourth definition of ‘bear’ as:
– to produce by natural growth: a tree that bears fruit.

The key to this definition to me is ‘by natural growth’. Natural growth implies without effort – completely contrary to my prior understanding. This means that I am not expected to ‘bear fruit’. I will simply do it, as a natural result of my relationship with Christ! I’m under no obligation! I am free from expectation!

This illustrates the importance of diligent study in the context of linguistic accuracy. In other words, what I assume something means may not even be what it says, let alone what the author originally intended.

Now, I wonder if there is significance to His using ‘fruit’ rather than flower, or vegetable, or nut or something. I’m sure there must be significance beneath what we interpret as natural language. It may be that the use of ‘fruit’ as the natural language choice is natural because it was used in this way by Christ. This is speculation…