i can only give a hypothetical answer..... and continues to
maintain the stand that perhaps we are splitting too many
hairs....
on your question.... the issue of what this "fruit" is, can be a
contentious issue.....
taking into the assumption that the "fruit" of the spirit (Gal
5:22,23) is "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness and temperance"... is it really conceivable
that anyone, in any given amount of time, do not display any of
these at all.... or do we mean that all the nine attributes need to
be present at the same time? or does God accept "work-in-progress"
Christians....
what if, again hypothetically speaking, one of us in sgforums
got so worked up and start to flame each other over our theological
stand, therefore, perhaps, losing, the longsuffering and temperance
aspect of this "fruit"..?
to some, this fruit means bringing in new believers.... so what
happens to Christians who had never, directly, bring others to
Christ?
theoritically, it is all so simple - bear fruit and you
are fine and dandy.... but practically speaking.... how does that
all work out?
can you, omnia, for example, claim to have the fruit of the
spirit? seriously, the only person i can think of having such
attributes to almost a perfect level was mother teresa.
also, is it conceivable that anyone goes through his entire sad
life not doing at any one time, any of the attribute?
.... if our conclusion now is...as vince said ....only God can
judge.... that what the heck are we talking about???
How all this works out is that after we become Christians, we
have to continually strive to keep our faith, to do good
works and to avoid sin (to repent when we do fall into sin), all
through the grace of God, if we want to enter heaven one day.
Justification and salvation is a process that
carries on until we stand before God at judgement.
When we talk about bearing fruit, doing good works, avoiding sin;
it is not a one time thing, eg: do one good work and
you're set for heaven. There is no good works 'passing mark'
because we need to keep at it till we leave this world. Does this
mean that we have no absolute assurance of salvation ?
Yup. We can all have confident hope (if we do as
mentioned in the above para) but not certitude of
salvation. We need to heed the words of St Paul to "work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12).