On the Fruit of the Spirit

IN THE MORE UNCERTAIN AND TENUOUS DAYS OF OLD, people were never as sure as we seem to be today of finding their way through life. There were fewer safety nets then and it was harder to know when you were on the right course, or doing the right things to guarantee happiness. To be sure, there was no welfare system as we know it today and health care (such as there was) was for the rich. The same was true with education. And in the realm of the spiritual, people were largely in the same predicament. Were they lost? Were they on the right course? How were they to know if they were truly walking in the way of the Lord, on God's pathways, with God's blessings?


The people of Israel had the Torah to help them find their right relationship with God, but even the most devout Jew would, from time to time throughout his or her life, stumble, thereby becoming a law-breaker. The Torah contains 613 commandments, found in the books Exodus through Deuteronomy. These commandments, or laws, told Jews how they were to live their lives and what their attitude toward God should be. But the laws were not exhaustive; they did not cover every single possibility, therefore there was always room for failure. Rather, the laws were models for how to behave and how to believe in general ways. For instance in Leviticus 19, verses 9 and 10, we read, "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyards a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien." If this were a specific injunction, then it would not apply to the farmer who, for instance, grew olives or pomegranates instead of grapes. He would not be beholden to keep the commandment since it would not literally apply to him. Although this was still a model for what God expected, it was external to the actual believer. It was not an internal, self-correcting mechanism for adjusting or monitoring one's walk with God. So the problem was this: "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in His ways as He wants us to do?"

With the coming of the New Covenant, something very radical occurred. Whereas before, God expected people to come to Him in worship and awe, now they were not. With the birth of Jesus, God instead had come to the people! In coming to us, He made obsolete the necessity of the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Torah—and which were the outworking of the Torah’s moral foundation in the corporate life of national Israel. Now doing good deeds, practicing austerities, obeying the laws or any other such thing was no longer binding on the believer (actually they never had been—salvation has always been a matter of grace and faith). For the New Covenant, consummated through the blood sacrifice of Christ, rendered the previous covenant redundant in the sense that Christ—as the goal of the Torah and its laws—fulfilled all its requirements. As is said by the apostle Paul in Romans, "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:21-22). And further, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law” (Rom. 3:28).

Jesus himself is our guarantor, for He says categorically "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And elsewhere He says "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21).Thus, we now understand that God is with us if we but believe and accept. But still, the problem remains, "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in his ways as he wants us to do?" Put differently, "How do we know we are being fruitful; that is to say, how do we know when we are filled with God's holy presence." Jesus Himself says "And I will ask the father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever--the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).

Jesus is telling us that we need to have the Spirit, His Spirit and the Spirit of God; that is, the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Paul confirms this for us in Romans, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death…. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you” (Rom. 8:1-2, 8-9).

Let's turn to Paul and hear what he has to say about life by the Spirit. "But I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law…. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16-18, 22-23).

What Paul is telling us is that there is a way to know when you have experienced Rebirth in the Spirit and a way to measure how well you are letting the Spirit work through you. He calls it the "Fruit of the Spirit". Let’s now have a little closer look at this Fruit, to see if we can understand it a little better, and let it work in us with greater impact in our lives and the lives of those around us.

What is fruit? Fruit is, as we all know, the nourishing part of the plant that encases the plant seeds. By making its fruit nourishing and tasty, as well as attractive to the senses, the plant is assured of progeny because the seeds are spread around, sown, if you will, by people and animals after the fruit has been eaten. Thus, fruit is--as it were--a kind of promise of immortality, of the continuance of life, albeit life in a different form. So Paul's use of the word fruit is not accidental or arbitrary, but carefully chosen to convey the very specific ideas of nourishing life and life everlasting.

Another aspect of fruit is that it is an outcome, that is to say, the result of something preceding it. Let's use the example of the grape on the vine. From the seed comes the vine itself and then the branches and finally, on the branches, the fruit. The grape is the result of all that has preceded it. Again, we speak of fruition when we wish to describe the logical and progressive outcome of a set of actions. What Paul is telling us is that once we have the Spirit in us, once we have been reborn in the Spirit, the Spirit will naturally--just as the vine brings forth the grape--bring forth its own kind of fruit in us, for remember, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Therefore, if we have the Spirit in us, we also will have its fruit; that is, we will begin living our lives according to God's will, for He is in us and works through us by way of the Spirit. Paul does not stop here however. He goes on to enumerate the traits or qualities of this fruit growing within us. It is seeing and understanding the very specific qualities that enable us to answer our central question "How are we to know when we are keeping God's commandments and walking in his ways as he wants us to do?" By examining the qualities of our own lives and comparing them with the qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit we are better able to understand how the Spirit can work through us and to see when we are allowing thorns, weeds and briers to grow up around the vine, choking the tender fruit that should be so precious to us.

The first quality that Paul describes is love. Jesus and the apostles understood love in different ways. Eros, Phileo and Agape are Greek words describing the most common ways. Eros is personal, intimate love. It is the human, warm personal love that is so commonly sung about on radio and television. It is the love of passion. It is the love of Valentine’s Day, of sentimental letters and of the broken-hearted.

Phileo is the love that friends and comrades share. It is the love that is expressed by philanthropists and moralists. Both of these forms of love return a reward to the giver in the form of some kind of emotional gratification, even the painful gratification experienced by the spurned lover. Both Eros and Phileo are forms of feeling love. Agape, on the other hand is that impersonal kind of love that finds its fullest expression in the altruistic, the selfless, and the noble. It is the love of doing. In this kind of love, there is no gratification to the giver, no self-serving feel-goods, no emotional kickbacks. It is the quality of love that is completely unconcerned with the self. One of the Lord's best examples of this kind of love is the parable of the Good Samaritan. "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' Now Jesus asked his listener "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him". Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:30-37).

Sometimes Eros and Phileo will rise to such heights--as in the self-sacrifice of parent for child--and then become Agape. Agape is the love God has for us. There is nothing that God needs from us since by His very nature He already has everything. There's nothing in it for Him, yet He gives us His love anyway. This love is about sacrifice, pure and simple. It is about giving absolutely everything to the beloved and for the beloved. It is a no holds barred, no quarter given kind of love. Agape is the love of giving for the sake of giving, helping for the sake of helping, dying for the sake of life in the Other. More than this, it is the oneness that comes when all dualities disappear, when there is no distinction between thee and me. This is the love Jesus spoke of when He said, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love…. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:9-11).

So when we have love, we don't just feel for one another; we do for one another. In this doing, comes a sense of righteousness that we experience as an inner and sublime joy.

Let us understand that by joy we do not mean mere happiness. Here joy refers to self-surrender, the knowledge that overtakes one who is relinquishing her own sense of self and all that goes along with it. Joy depends on love. When we love someone, as the Samaritan loved the injured man by the side of the road, then we experience joy, that sense of the fullness, richness and rightness of one's actions. Experiencing joy is what Christ does and wants us to do. When we are truly walking with Christ, and the work we do becomes an authentic expression of the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we are joyful. But if we are not with God, if we cloud over or allow His light to be denied us so that the Spirit cannot perform His work (Eph. 4:30), then we are truly miserable. And misery is the absence of joy. When we experience misery we know that something has come between our Dear Lord and ourselves and we need to go back to the Well to drink, "'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him'. By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive” (John 7:37-39). This joy then, is not worldly happiness. It is not that feeling we get when "life is good". This joy is the knowledge of our right relationship with Christ; the mutual joy felt by the father and his prodigal son. Who can dismiss this joy: "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:20-24). This joy is as natural and sustaining as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

Now, when we have love and joy in our lives we become peaceful. And when we are peaceful, we are restful; we experience stillness. And I think this is the thrust of the meaning here. To have peace is to have rest. "By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Gen.2:2). It is when we are truly restful and at peace that we can fully experience any given moment. This is how, I believe, God experiences His creation. In this sense peace, stillness or rest is the positive experience of God in our souls. And there is peace even in our daily activities. For peace does not describe the absence of activity, rather it describes a state of mind, an attitude that is unshakeable because it rests in the unshakeable, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal” (Isa. 26:3-4).

Stele is the Greek for still or stillness. It means essentially a post in the ground. It is this sense that we have described by Paul. This unshaken firmness gives us equanimity not at the mercy of the ever-changing whims of the world. In this peace, we are able to see things of our world very clearly, just as God saw His own creation clearly, while He rested on the seventh day. In the state of rest or peace, we are not influenced by the glamour of the Deceiver and so are not shaken by calamity or sorrow for we know that in the still clarity of the heart, we see all things just as God intended for us.

The positive expression of this state of inner peace, resting firmly in our love of Christ, is patience. Patience normally means forbearance but here I'd like to push that idea a little farther. I'd like to consider the possibility that here Paul means forgiveness. Patience here is expressed in Paul's words, "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:13-14). We don't normally think of patience in this way. In the King James Version of the Bible, the word used in place of patience is long-suffering, which I feel gives a more accurate description of what Paul had in mind. Only a long-suffering, forbearing person is able to turn the other cheek, "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:29-31). So what Paul and Jesus are asking is to go beyond forbearance, to go into forgiveness. This is not easy. We must be aware that too often those who wish to harm or exploit us misread patience as weakness or cowardice. We must take care that we do not allow ourselves to be hurt yet we must seek ways to let the quality of patience transcend mere tolerance of abuse into the transformation of both abused and abuser. To bear one's own abuse by another is to contribute to it and Jesus cannot be asking us to do that. The secret of patience is found in the Golden Rule, treat others as you would like to be treated by others: with respect. But don't misunderstand. Patience by itself is not possible in that it cannot last. It becomes possible and lasting by the experience of love, joy and peace that comes from letting the Spirit of God into your life. When you are infused with the Holy Spirit, it becomes easier to forgive, because it is God's nature to forgive. When you are feeling resentful or vindictive, hurt or abused ask yourself "Am I now, at this moment, in the presence of the Kingdom?" Surely the answer must be, if you are honest with yourself, a resounding "No!" And if you are not in the Kingdom of God, it means you are tottering on the brink of the Abyss. By letting patience into our lives, we are allowing ourselves to forgive. Then and only then will we find the Kingdom.

And this forgiveness can lead us to kindness. Kindness in this case means something like magnanimity or grace. Kindness then is a flow of giving to those who lack, not because they deserve it but because we have it in ourselves to give, in the same way God has it to give us. The receipt of kindness is not earned by the wretched. Are we kind only to those we believe are deserving of it, or do we give it freely? God gives His grace--His kindness--to us freely and abundantly, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:4-10).

This is the grace--or loving-kindness--shown so often by Jesus to the lame, the blind, the deaf and even those who, in our own eyes sometimes, perhaps didn't warrant it, as in the case of the woman caught in adultery or the Canaanite woman who asked Him to heal her daughter. In these cases, Jesus showered his kindness--His grace--upon them, deserving or no. When we have the patience or forgiveness that comes as a natural consequence of the Holy Spirit, kindness--which is our grace--streams naturally out of us and cannot be constrained unless we constrain the very Spirit of God that is in us.

And so we come next to goodness. And what of goodness? I'd like you to consider the first five qualities of the fruit of the spirit--love, joy, peace, patience and kindness--as outwardly directed, that is, directed toward others, with goodness as their perfect summation and conclusion. These qualities then, stream out from the Spirit of God within for the benefit, succour and relief of outward creation, which is creation apart from us, other than ourselves. And goodness is the crowning glory of them all. In goodness, the other five qualities are joined in perfect balance and proportion so that to be good is to be loving, joyful, peaceful, forgiving and kind. In the end, only God is truly good and to be truly good is to be godly. Here Paul is telling us that the five qualities gathered and expressed together lead one to be good. Good to whom? Good to others. But what of yourself? Are you not part of the equation? If the fruit of the Spirit is only for others, how then are you to grow in God's love and goodness and become better in His sight? How does the Spirit affect you? What does the Spirit do for you?

The final three qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit are for your righteousness and goodness. They are God's gifts just for us, for our own quality of life. With faith, gentleness and self-control we see how the Spirit affects us most personally and intimately.

Faithfulness can be considered as the loyal adherence to the object of one's faith. I think Paul has two objects in mind here. One is God, specifically the Holy Spirit. He wants us to adhere or cling to the Spirit in spite of the vicissitudes of the world. He wants us to give our undeviating allegiance to God because only God is worthy of such an allegiance. One early biblical example of this faith was Abraham who was so faithful to God that he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar. Job is another example. Job was severely tested. Yet, in the end, his faith in the ultimate goodness of God sustained him through all his trials. It is through faith that we are given the assurance that suffering will end as well as the poise, strength and equanimity to endure until it does. And this leads us to the second object of faith. When we truly have faith in God and his innate goodness, we become faithful to ourselves for through faith in God, become worthy in His sight. We are worthy, not because we deserve it or are qualified for it. We are worthy for one reason alone. We are worthy because God loves us. His love makes us worthy to ourselves and it is that worthiness of oneself that Paul describes here as faithfulness. When we are worthy, we have a reason to have faith and obtain it through grace. It is not something we have to work for but simply accept. This faithfulness is our own authenticity. It is our integrity in spite of all the trials we may have to endure. It tells us about us and how we are to react to the trials and joys that life in the world sends our way. In faithfulness we are more able to be calm, unshakeable and honest--with ourselves and with others. It is this calm certitude we have when we are able to live as Jesus describes in the parable of the house built on rock, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt. 7:24-27).

Through faithfulness in ourselves as instruments of the holy will we become gentle. For what need is there to be anything but gentle, not only with others but with ourselves especially. Gentleness with ourselves results in knowing that nothing good can be forced. Since it is God's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, nothing we do can make any lasting difference, nor alter His will for us. When we know this, we are able to be gentle with ourselves and consequently life becomes less of a struggle and more of a journey. The only thing remaining to us then is to get closer to God; to align ourselves as closely and intimately as we can with Him. This truly is the blossoming of the interior life and the riches of God's kingdom will be available to us every moment of every day. And when we are able to be gentle with ourselves, self-control becomes easy and effortless because self-control is transmuted into God-control.

When most of us think of self-control we are flooded with impressions and images of struggle and effort. And so long as the self instead of the Spirit governs us, it will indeed be a constant struggle. But imagine one who has undergone Rebirth in the Spirit. She has gradually let the Spirit of God blossom within her as the mustard seed in the farmer's field; she has let the leaven of the Holy Spirit transform her very substance so that even the very molecules of her body have become holy. Is it conceivable that one such as she could ever struggle with the temptations and turmoil of the World? Would she have to fight, to struggle? No more. To the degree that she has experienced a true conversion, life's temptations will become easier to understand and to overcome.

We struggle a hundred times a day with issues of self-control. Should I have that last pastry? I'm attracted to my secretary, but I'm married. What am I to do? Can't I have just one more drink, please? The answers will become easy only when the questions become unimportant. Hopefully by now we can see that these and many more such questions are answered automatically when, and only when, we have experienced genuine Rebirth in the Spirit. For the Spirit Himself will not only open our eyes and lead us into the Light, but the Spirit is that very Light by which we see.

Our question, that was before impossible to answer, with life by the Spirit becomes impossible to ask. Paul's words are affirming as well as comforting "There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus."