Fruit vs root

I have been thinking lots about how we can lead the church into a gospel centered ethos.

Someone triggered a thought about how often we focus on the fruit our lives produce rather than the root that causes that fruit (good or bad) to be so abundant.

Often churches have sought to impose moral constraints on people and whilst moral constraints are good and necessary, they cannot produce lasting change..they are a fruit, the only thing that produces lasting change is a new root...a living relationship with the true vine, Jesus.

Something that got me thinking was how we counsel people in a gospel ethos rather than some of the other models of counseling. So someone comes to you who is trapped in debt. Moralism says : debt is bad, the Bible counsels against it, so you better stop.

Behavior modification says lets try some other ways of managing your money, lets get rid of the temptation.

Both of those arguments are looking at the fruit and not the root. A gospel answer would be along the lines of: Jesus came to set you free, why would you put yourself under bondage again? This is a gospel based thinking that gets to the heart of the problem...sin and our relationship to Jesus.

Unless the church gets back to the gospel and helps those under its influence to meet the one who is at the heart of the gospel, we will never really be able to help those who most desperately need the one who not only has the answer, but is the answer to every deep question of the human heart.

My prayer is that the church would rise up in the living hope of the gospel that have us birth!