Have you ever heard of the durian fruit? It’s a large, spiky fruit from Southeast Asia with a smell so foul it’s been banned from hotels and public transportation. People describe the odor as garbage, sewage, and rotting flesh all at once. The outside looks exotic, but the inside is straight up nasty.

Galatians 5 points us to spiritual fruit that are equally awful. They kind of look exciting on the outside, but when the peeling comes off, it’s absolutely gross: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these,” (Gal 5:19-21).

These things are putrid and do nothing but destroy. They destroy relationships. They destroy communities. They destroy you.

And they come with serious consequences. Apostle Paul’s warning is blunt: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God,” (Gal 5:21). To be clear, he is saying you will go to Hell.

The flesh always overpromises and underdelivers. It looks like freedom but smells like death. It’s spiritual durian fruit. Like the hotels and public transit of Southeast Asia, strive to ban them from your life. Don’t sow to the flesh. Don’t be ruled by your flesh. Don’t give in to your flesh. Or these nasty fruit will grow and will lead to death forevermore.

Change begins in you!