The fruit of the Spirit – in us and in Christ

Let’s start with some pairs of things: light and darkness, day and night, black and white, high and low, sweet and sour, rich and poor, free and enslaved. What’s the common factor? They are opposites! There is no confusing them. Each member of the pair sharply contrasts with the other member. In Galatians 5 we have another such pair, this time from the moral realm. On the one hand there are what Paul calls “the works of the flesh”, or “acts of the sinful nature” (NIV) – “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies” (vs.19-21). The list is a sad commentary on the condition of the human heart. “All these evils”, says Jesus, “come from within, out of the heart of man” (Mark 7.21). Nor is the list exhaustive. From the fact that Paul adds after the last of them, “and things like these”, it is clear that he has only given us a selection.  

Alongside of these “works of the flesh” Paul then places something else – something of so entirely different a character that it contrasts as sharply with them as light does with darkness. He calls it “the fruit of the Spirit” – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (vs.22-23). It is another opposite! If the works of the flesh are morally ugly, the fruit of the Spirit is morally lovely. If the works of the flesh are offensive to our holy God, the fruit of the Spirit is delightful to him. And the more we have of the mind of Christ, the more our thinking is shaped by the Holy Spirit, the more clearly we see and feel that and long to shun the one and exhibit the other.  

The fruit of the Spirit in the lives of believers

We begin with the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of believers. In a later post we will take up our main topic – the fruit of the Spirit in the life of Christ. But before we come to that we need to give some thought to the Spirit’s fruit in the lives of Christ’s people. Believers in Christ have the Spirit of God living in their hearts. And this is one of the things that he does. He enables us to bear a certain kind of fruit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Apple trees bear apples, plum trees bear plums, peach trees bear peaches. And Christians, by the inner working of the Holy Spirit, bear love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. 

What makes these the fruit of the Spirit

Why are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control called here the fruit of the Spirit? There is an important reason for asking that question. Think of the kinds of fruit Paul lists here as character qualities. We can find each one of them in the lives of those from whom the Spirit of God is absent. People who are still “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph.2.1) can love, for example, and often with remarkable selflessness. They can be joyful and patient and kind and good and faithful and gentle and self-controlled. They can be quite at peace in their hearts. All these character qualities that are said in Galatians 5 to be fruit of the Spirit’s work can be found in those whose hearts are closed to him.  

Hence the question, ‘Why are they called the fruit of the Spirit?’  It’s helpful to think about it like this: the role of the Spirit is to take qualities that are common to human beings and do something unique with them; something only he can do through his presence and ministry in grace. Take, for instance, love.  It is common to Christians and non-Christians alike. Both love. But it is only Christians who love God and who under the impulse of that love obey and serve him. It is only Christians who have a distinctively Christian love for other Christians and show that by their prayers for them and concern for their Christian walk. In the hands of the Spirit love is enriched. It comes to have new objects and is exercised in new ways. So it is with joy. Like love, joy is common to Christians and non-Christians alike. Both have joy. But it is only the Christian who can rejoice in the Lord and in his great salvation and the progress of the kingdom of God. In the hands of the Spirit joy, like love, is enriched. It too comes to have new objects and is exercised in new ways. And what is true of love and joy is equally true of all the other kinds of fruit Paul lists.      

What we find when we look for the Spirit’s fruit

When we look for the Spirit’s fruit in our own lives and in the lives of others we find a great unevenness in the way in which these qualities are present. One Christian, for example, may be very loving but not very joyful. Another may be joyful but lacking in self-control. A third may be a model of self-control but not of patience. A fourth may be wonderfully patient but know little of God’s peace in their heart. 

Or think about it in terms of ripeness. You go into a supermarket and look at the fruit. It’s in various stages of ripeness. The apples and oranges are deliciously ready for eating. The bananas, however, are green; the peaches, pears, and plums are hard. They still have some ripening to do. So with the different kinds of fruit the Spirit produces in our lives as believers. They are at different stages of ripeness. In some, love is far ahead of peace; joy than self-control; faithfulness than gentleness. There is always more work for the Spirit to do!      

Charles Simeon of Cambridge once made a visit to Henry Venn’s rectory in Yelling. After he had ridden away, “first one Miss Venn and then another exclaimed” about his harsh and self-assertive manner. “‘Come into the garden, children’, their father said, and led them out into that favourite schoolroom. ‘Now, pick me one of those peaches’. But it was early summer, and ‘the time of peaches was not yet’; how could their father ask for the green fruit? ‘Well, my dears, it is green now, and we must wait; but a little more sun, and a few more showers, and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon’”¹. And so it is with us as well! The Spirit still has plenty of work to do in us before his fruit is fully and equally ripe. 

What we become when the Spirit produces this fruit

There is something that we become as the Spirit produces his fruit in our lives, and that is increasingly like the Lord Jesus. We often hear about it, think about it, pray about it – being like Jesus. But what does it actually mean? What do we look like if we look like Jesus? Tie it in with Romans 8.29. Paul tells us there that “those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son”. What do we come to be as God’s purpose is worked out in our lives? One way of answering that question is with reference to the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit comes to live in our hearts. He gets to work in us. He takes the common qualities of love and joy and peace etc. and begins to do something with them that only he can do. What are we becoming as he does his work; as under his influence we begin to bear this fruit? The answer is, like Jesus. And the more of the fruit of the Spirit we exhibit the more like our Saviour we become. But that is a topic for a later post!

¹ Charles Simeon, by Handley Moule, p.44