A Pilgrim's Gold Standard

John carefully sets down his plate of pancakes and eggs as he watches me finish a sentence in my journal—this time writing about the Fruit of the Spirit.

He begins sharing his frustration with his current church.

“It just feels fake,” he says. “Like it’s all a show put on for the money.”
He holds out his hand, palm open, as if to say, “Time to pay up.”

I listen quietly as he names his concerns, thinking about my own past frustrations—frustrations that eventually led me to a pilgrim’s life, finding Jesus outside the walls of the institutional church.

Our conversation drifts naturally to deeper ground.

We talk about what it means to be an ambassador of Christ. We agree that where we gather matters less than the simple fact that we do gather. We talk about the need for ambassadors—whether pilgrims or denominationally affiliated—to be present in the world, reflecting the love of Christ as faithfully as we can.

Eventually, we arrive at the simplicity of the pilgrim’s walk.

I suggest that metaphorically, everything we need for the journey can fit into a backpack—one that holds a single gold standard for all our interactions along the way: the Fruit of the Spirit.

I imagine the Apostle Paul making sure his own backpack was full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as he took his first steps on his missionary journeys. As he wrote, “against such there is no law.”

Perhaps, then, as we reflect on our interactions with all people—believers and nonbelievers alike—we can hold ourselves accountable to God’s gold standard: the fruit His Spirit produces in us.

As ambassadors of Christ, each of us at different places along the sanctification path, we will always reflect these qualities imperfectly.

But if we intend to draw closer to that gold standard each day, maybe someone—somewhere—will catch a brief glimpse of Jesus smiling at them from across a crowded coffee shop.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22–23 (NKJV)