FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT – A DEVOTION
The fruit of the Spirit is different from the fruit of the self-help movement, and it’s also different from those qualities we call virtues. Virtues typically refer to the way a person’s character has been formed. Is she courageous? Is he truthful? Virtues are valuable, but they only go so far. Virtues are mostly focused on the individual; they refer to the way one person acts, and they direct praise toward that person for being virtuous.
There’s a tendency to regard the fruit of the Spirit like virtues, as though living in the Spirit will produce better character traits for us as individuals. That’s only partly true. The fruit of the Spirit fully blossoms only in the body of Christ, which is never complete with just one person. Real fruit of the Spirit shows up not only in our personal journeys but also in community. Things like love, peace, patience, and all the rest are not solo experiences. In contrast to the way of the flesh, which keeps us self-focused, the Spirit’s way helps us grow in our concern for others. We yearn to bear fruit for the benefit of those around us, not just for ourselves.
When fruit ripens in community, the world can better see how something is at work among us that surpasses our human inclinations. Our calling is to bear fruit in the communities of faith to which we belong.
LOVE
The first fruit of the Spirit is love, which echoes other scriptural references to the primacy of love—for instance, “faith, hope, and love abide . . . but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13) and “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
In his notes on Galatians, John Wesley called love “the root of all the rest.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any of the other fruit being present without love being there first. When it comes to living by the Spirit instead of living by the flesh, love is first in line for clearing a way toward renewed relationships with ourselves and others. The path out of self-destruction follows the trail of love.
The lyrics of a popular Beatles’ song suggest that “all you need is love.” Well, maybe that is all we need (assuming it’s the right kind of love). But when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit, love isn’t all we get. So much more grows out of love. Divine love generates a more abundant harvest. Think about Matthew’s account of Jesus’s baptism in the river Jordan, where God’s voice declares Jesus the Beloved (Matt. 3:13-17). Jesus’s belovedness blossomed into a mission and ministry that bore the fruit of the Spirit in its fullness. If you’re looking for the Spirit’s fruit in your own life, ask first whether you have embraced your identity as God’s beloved. Yes? Then trust that this love will bring new growth.
JOY
What comes to mind when you think of joy? What was the last experience you had that you would describe as “sheer joy”?
Joy is different from happiness. “The pursuit of happiness” is prized in the American Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right. Many people spend a great deal of time, money, and energy trying to chase down happiness. Joy comes by a different route, though. It’s not an inalienable right in the political sense but a byproduct of a deep experience in which, at least for a moment, we truly feel the fullness of life. Such experiences tend to happen not when we are pursuing joy, but when joy is pursuing us. Like C. S. Lewis, we’re surprised by it. Joy isn’t something we can manufacture on our own, but we can receive it, enjoy it, and share it with others.
Joy multiplies as it is shared, whereas happiness often reflects an attitude of scarcity. One person’s happiness might come at the cost of another’s, when there’s only so much to go around. Joy, in contrast, only becomes more abundant as it radiates out from the joyful person. There’s plenty to go around, like when the angels cried “joy to the world!” at Jesus’s birth. It was a message of inclusion, a word of welcome, beckoning anyone and everyone into the joy God offers in Jesus. Could joy be pursuing you today? Where is it ready to spill over from your life into someone else’s?
PEACE
Paul lists “strife,” “rivalries,” and “dissension” among the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:20), but peace blossoms from the work of the Spirit. We cherish peace at many levels—a peaceful moment free from noise, a break in the fighting between siblings or nations, a ceasing of the same old arguments, a breakthrough that finally puts a stop to deeply entrenched conflict.
The peace that the Spirit brings forth is unmistakable—it is wholeness, shalom as the Hebrew language names it. It is a peace that not only stops the discord but heals, restores, and lives up to a new vision of unity. The scattered parts—of ourselves, our relationships with others, our relationship with God—are put back together.
Peace brings reconciliation between us and God, and us and our neighbors. This is certainly not a peace we can create on our own—our natural inclinations tend to lead us back into conflict at some point. The peace comes when, by the Spirit’s power, we yield to the ways of the Spirit. The old self yields, and yields again and again, to the new self that the Spirit brings forth in and through us. The Spirit of the one who reconciled us to God, while we were still running rampant in our sinfulness (Rom. 5:8), is able to grant us perfect peace. Let us in turn share the peace of Christ with a warring world.
PATIENCE
No one advertises a smartphone, computer, or tablet as “nice and slow.” Each new technological gadget is faster than the last. Our sense of what is “slow” and what is “fast” gets pretty warped as a result. When we catch ourselves sighing impatiently at a website that takes a few seconds to load, or when we hurriedly tap our feet as we wait in line, we are confronted with just how much we prefer our own pace to the unpredictable pace set for us by external circumstances.
Thankfully, the Spirit grants us the fruit of patience, which can recalibrate our sense of time. Patience, or “forbearance” as it is sometimes translated, allows us not only to tolerate a pace we don’t get to set—not just find it bearable—but also to find true gladness in it. Patience acclimates us to a pace that allows us to tend to the needs of others instead of following our own agenda.
An older translation of patience in this verse is “longsuffering” (KJV). Patience teaches us to put up with things that would otherwise test our limits. There will always be things (and people) that “try our patience,” but the patience God cultivates in us allows us to endure in ways we might not have thought we could. God’s own longsuffering nature gives us a model to emulate. If there is someone in your life whose patience is being tried right now, consider how your gift of patience might help ease that burden.
KINDNESS
One of my favorite poets, Naomi Shahib Nye, wrote a poem called “Kindness” in which she depicts kindness as something we can only really know when we have also known sorrow. I like this contrast; it evokes the sense in which kindness is so much more than just “niceness.” Being nice can be a superficial endeavor, but to show kindness usually requires drawing a little deeper on our reserves.
Left to our own devices, we might only summon the energy to be nice to those we like, or who like us, or who we get along with, or with whom we have a lot in common. That’s the way of the flesh. May the way of the Spirit prevail, and kindness abound.
GOODNESS
We use the word “good” in all sorts of ways. The food was good, my day was good, the kids were good, the movie was good, his Spanish is good, I’m feeling good. What might “goodness” as a fruit of the Spirit refer to? I don’t think Paul is simply describing good behavior, or even a measure of quality or excellence. After all, he’s trying to help the Galatian Christians see the differences between the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. The way of the flesh has its own sense of what is “good.” How does the Spirit’s way give us a different measuring stick for goodness?
Perhaps the goodness that the Spirit brings forth is most similar to the goodness that we hear about in the first chapter of Genesis, where God repeatedly declares that the created order is good. “Behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). The creation was good because it hummed along the way God designed it to, with humans and animals and plant life all in harmony. The goodness of creation was a reflection of God’s ultimate goodness. Humanity’s subsequent descent into brokenness has left us longing for God to restore creation to the goodness and wholeness God still intends for us. Maybe the Spirit’s fruit of goodness gives us a taste of that promise of restored goodness. It’s the sort of goodness that catches the rhythm of creation and foretells the goodness of the new heaven and new earth.
FAITHFULNESS
“There is no shadow of turning with Thee.” That’s how we describe God’s faithfulness in the familiar hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” This image reflects loyalty and commitment—the one who is faithful can be trusted to follow through.
An interesting debate continues among those who study Galatians and other letters of Paul. It centers on a grammatical issue. There’s a phrase that could be translated as faith in Christ or as the faith of Christ. The ambiguity in Galatians leads some to wonder about the difference between our human faith in Christ, and the faith—or faithfulness—of Christ. So when “faithfulness” gets listed among the fruits of the Spirit, there are echoes of the same double meaning. Whose faith is in focus here? When it comes to the fruit of the Spirit, I think it’s both. The faithfulness that the Spirit produces in us derives from the faithfulness that Christ modeled. It’s the faithfulness that led Christ to be baptized, to go into the wilderness, to preach good news, to heal the sick, and to suffer crucifixion for our sake. To whatever extent we as Christ-followers are faithful to the mission and ministry to which Christ summons us, it is Christ’s example that patterns our discipleship. Christ’s faithfulness led him to a point where he experienced God-forsakenness. Our journey of faith may also lead to difficult places, but the One whose faithfulness guides our steps will see us through. He lives, and so shall we.
GENTLENESS
For some reason, when I think about gentleness in contemporary terms I picture someone standing up to a bully. Not fighting back against the bully, but not tolerating him either. This kind of gentleness has the strength to confront violence and injustice. Some translations use “meekness” instead of gentleness, a word that some like to interpret as “strength under control.” Gentleness is not about being weak, or a pushover. It’s about having wisdom in how you choose to use your presence, your voice, and your strength. Gentleness knows how to speak bold truth to power, and it also knows how to handle vulnerable matters with care.
Apart from the Spirit’s work, our impulses lead us to harsh words and careless displays of might. In contrast, when gentleness blossoms in us, both as individuals and in community, we learn how to be wise in our interactions with others. Gentleness characterizes disciples of Jesus Christ—the Spirit gives us strength to use our efforts for the good of God’s kingdom, not for our own ambitions. When Paul told the Philippians, “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Phil. 4:5 NIV), he conveyed how important it was that Christians demonstrate this “strength under control.” The gospel is not pushed on others by force, as though the kingdom of God were a harsh dictatorship. Instead, when gentleness and love prevail, people are beckoned by the gospel’s own inherent power.
SELF-CONTROL
Last but not least, self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. Self-control, or any moderation for that matter, is a stark contrast to the works of the flesh that Paul lists (Gal. 5:19-21). We can work hard at altering our own behavior and temperament, but the self-control that the Spirit nurtures in us is of a different sort. It’s the self-control that is motivated by more than just wanting to “be a better person.” It goes beyond our ability to stick to a goal or resolution. Sometimes our preoccupations with self-control give the impression that our chief aims in life are to consume fewer calories and spend within our budgets. These are worthy pursuits, but self-control in the fuller sense is meant for the good of others, not just ourselves.
Restraining our egos and appetites benefits those around us, both those we love and those we may never know. Self-control means holding back so others can have a share of what we already have in excess. Sometimes it means “living simply so others can simply live.” In North America, where we consume so much more than our fair share of the world’s resources, the fruit of self-control can bring good news to those who live in want. Self-control allows us to hold back and trust that there will be enough to go around, and that we can be satisfied with modest portions in order to foster the well-being of others.
In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus warns about false prophets, and he twice reminds his listeners that they will recognize the false prophets by the fruit they bear. There are outward signs of our inward disposition, and just as false prophets can be detected by their failure to produce good fruit, so we too can bear fruit that reveals what is at work within us. At its ripest, the fruit of the Spirit draws attention not to us and our actions but to the One who is working through us. I’m reminded of the song about how “they will know we are Christians by our love.” A tree’s fruit reveals what kind of tree it is. Likewise, the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control witness to the power of God’s Spirit at work within us. From our roots to our branches, the Spirit is moving, producing a harvest that nourishes us and all of God’s people who are hungry for a taste of good fruit, not as the world gives, but as only God can give.
Friends, stay rooted in prayer, discernment, and the word of God, and may you bear much fruit to the glory of God!
As you pray, ask God to cultivate in you a bountiful harvest of the Spirit’s fruit.
Reference: Words of Hope Daily Devotion
