The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

Welcome! Today we will continue our series on the Holy Spirit, and will focus on the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is spelled out most clearly in Galatians 5.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. – Galatians 5:22-23a

One little sentence, and yet, so much to talk about! In the first two-thirds or so of this message, I simply want to expand on this verse, to paint a Biblical picture of what the grand scope of what is being said here, to explore what these words really mean. Let’s start with the word fruit. In Greek, the word is karpos. Karpos literally means, well, fruit! Jesus used the word repeatedly to describe the fruit of trees and vines. But more often, the word was used symbolically; the fruit of a tree or vine was used as a symbol of something else. In such cases, perhaps the best translation of karpos, other than fruit, is result. The fruit of the Spirit is the result of the Spirit. And by the way, this word karpos is singular; it is a singular fruit of the Spirit. What this passage is saying is that the result of the Spirit at work in your life is that your life will exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

So I need to work harder at showing love, having joy, being a peacemaker, staying patient, being kind, doing good things, being faithful, exhibiting gentleness, and controlling myself, right? Wrong! In fact, that is exactly the wrong thing to do. This passage says that these things are not the fruit, the result, of self-effort, not even really focused, really diligent, really trying super-hard self-effort; they are the result, that is, the fruit, of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God Himself as revealed and expressed through the Third Person of the Trinity. These things are the fruit, the results, of the Spirit.

I am going to come back to how this happens, and what our role is in the process. But first I want to look at the fruit in detail. The first characteristic of the Holy Spirit’s fruit is love, agape in the Greek. This is the word for love used in John 15:13 and Romans 5:8:

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. – John 15:13

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Rom. 5:8

Agape is the word for love used in I Corinthians 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. – I Cor. 13:4-8a

Agape love is sacrificial, sacrificial without limit. We, if we are experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives, should be demonstrating this kind of love in all of our relationships – with our spouses, our children and siblings and parents, with one another, and, most importantly, with God Himself.

Agape love is a choice. The world teaches that love, particularly romantic love, is something that just happens. From Cupid’s secret arrows to Bambi’s friends becoming “twitterpated,” from Romeo and Juliet to, what is the current example – teenage vampires? Love is embraced by our culture as something you just “fall into.” Of course, if you can fall into it, you can fall out. But as I Corinthians 13 states, agape love is not described by what we feel, but by what we do. Mushy feelings can be wonderful, but they are not the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is choosing to sacrifice, even to die, for another.

Joy is second in the list of the fruit of the Spirit. The Greek word for joy is chara, another chi-rho word. Last week we talked about two other chi-rho words, charis, which means grace, and charisma, gifts, literally grace things. By the way, I think it is no accident that another chi-rho word is Christos or Christ, the Messiah, Jesus.

Chara joy, like agape love, does not depend on our emotions. Chara joy, like agape love, is a choice. Joy doesn’t depend on our situation, our circumstances. The real-world truth is that we do not always have control over our circumstances; trials, suffering, illness, bereavement – these are parts of life, and we should expect them. But if our joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, none of these things will be able to take our joy away. Joy is tied in to hope, not an “I hope it works out” kind of hope, but the solid, secure hope that is based on the certainty of our eternal future with Christ. Joy can occur simultaneously with tears, because we know that a time is coming when Jesus will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more suffering, or pain, or death.

Joy goes so far beyond happiness! It is like the difference between seeing Jesus face to face and hearing Him tell you how much He loves you and receiving a generic “Happy Birthday” card from your insurance company. There are many verses that speak of chara joy, but one of my favorites is when Jesus is speaking to the disciples right before He is crucified. He says,

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. – John 16:21-22

That is the nature of joy – it is not something that can be taken away. And I also love this passage from I Peter:

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. – I Peter 1:8-9

I love that! Inexpressible and glorious! You won’t find chara joy explained on a Hallmark card.

Third is peace, eirene (ayraynay) in Greek. Peace is about surrendering ourselves and yielding to God’s control. Eirene peace, like agape love and chara joy, is not dependent on our circumstances or our emotions. We can experience peace in the middle of the most chaotic and uncertain of situations, if this peace is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Worry and fear have no place in a person experiencing eirene peace. As Jesus said,

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. – John 14:27

And there is this well-known verse:

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Phil. 4:7

This is not peace formed through self-effort or logical thought. It transcends all understanding. It is a fruit, a result, of the Holy Spirit. I love how this is described in the Amplified Bible:

And God's peace [shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace] which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. – Phil. 4:7 (Amplified)

I love that explanation – oh, yeah, "that peace" – as well as the word picture of soldiers keeping watch, guns ready, over your hearts and minds. That peace.

Patience is next. I should tell you that I once decided to pray regularly for patience, and shortly thereafter I was supposed to play piano for a wedding. Well, the whole wedding party came to the rehearsal the afternoon before, and the person who was supposed to be at the church with a key wasn’t there, and the whole wedding party had to wait a few hours until the church opened. I didn’t tell anyone I had prayed for patience, but I felt so guilty! Be careful what you pray for.

Patience, translated longsuffering in the KJV, is the word macrothumia in Greek. Not just thumia, mind you, but macrothumia. Macro, as in the opposite of micro. The opposite of patience is not just impatience, as in being in a hurry. It is also annoyance, sensitivity (as in being quick to erupt), as well as worry and distrust.

Macrothumia patience is borne of a mindset based on Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. – Rom. 8:28

Ultimately, those who don’t exhibit macrothumia really don’t trust God, not in the details, and maybe not in the big picture things either.

Longsuffering of course means to suffer for a long time, to put up with difficult or even seemingly impossible situations for a long period of time. Of course God is our ultimate example of someone who is longsuffering. He is described this way with regards to the situation right before the flood. To get perspective on longsuffering I like this verse:

Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. – II Peter 3:15

Once again, macrothumia patience is not dependent on our emotions or our situation. If anything, it seems to demand a difficult situation for it to mean anything. Nobody says they were patient all night if what really happened is that they were asleep all night! That isn’t patience! Patience is staying awake all night while your spouse or roommate snores, not saying or doing anything so that they could sleep. It isn’t longsuffering if it isn’t suffering.

Kindness is next. The Greek word is chrestotes (kraystotays). Another chi-rho word! Kindness involves showing a loving attitude towards others. It is not conditional on the behavior of the other people. I should point out that in our culture, kindness is not cool. If you watch enough TV, or just hang out with plenty of unbelievers, you will see that a certain level of cruelty is funny according to our culture, and doing it makes you cool. This is not a new phenomenon in our culture; it has gone on for generations, especially among children. Among the teenage set, this even applies to how they treat parents.

In contrast, the Bible emphasizes that we are to be kind to family (Deuteronomy 22:1), strangers (Leviticus 19:34), to those who are sick with the most disgusting or upsetting diseases, to those who are unsaved, flagrant sinners (for both just look at the life of Jesus), and even enemies (Luke 6:34-35). Again, our kindness is not to be based on either our emotions or on the situation, and in this way it is beyond what we can do in our own strength; it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Goodness is based on the Greek word agathos. Goodness is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking, even to those who don’t deserve it, even when doing so will cost you dearly. Goodness consistently done in public will turn you into a leader, whether you have a gift of leadership or not. Goodness attracts people to Christ, because they see Christ in you. Goodness includes the idea of purity.

Our culture rejects goodness just as much as it rejects kindness. We even use the word as a put-down; we say someone is a “goody two shoes” or a “do-gooder.” One of the reasons our culture rejects goodness is that others aren’t consistently good; they have their “gray things” that they justify by saying “everyone does it.” But the goodness mentioned here takes the “royal way.” The cost of holding to Christ’s standard of goodness is that you may become an outcast. But Scripture warns that people will hate us as they hated Christ. To the degree that we demonstrate this fruit of the Holy Spirit, this can happen. But at the same time, by not being hypocrites, seeing Christ’s goodness in us is a powerful testimony of the reality of Christ in our lives. It is a powerful witness.

Faithfulness, pistis in Greek, is more than just dependability. It includes the idea of authenticity, faithfulness not just in public, not just with certain people, but faithfulness 24-7. It includes faithfulness to God, even when you are alone. Faithfulness means committing to what you have said you will do, including your promises to follow God, no matter what the cost. Once again, this is a fruit not of our own strength, but only of God’s.

One thing that is interesting to me is that in the Greek, there is no real distinction between faithfulness and faith. Pistis is used in both instances of meaning. To our culture’s way of thinking, though, having faith is somewhat divorced from faithfulness. Our culture talks about having faith in a hyper-spiritualized way, as if the emotion of faith is separate from the object of faith. This distinction is not present in the Bible. It makes no sense to talk about being a person “of faith,” Biblically speaking, unless there is someone that is an object of that faith. And it only makes sense that that person is an object of faith if they have proven themselves to be consistently faithful in whatever tasks they have said they would do. I remind you that Christ is absolutely faithful, and it is on this basis we have faith in Him. This is the Biblical standard of faithfulness. The fruit of the Spirit is that we be 100% faithful so that people can have total faith in us to do what we say we will do.

Gentleness, praotes (praohtays) is pretty foreign to our culture, especially for men, if movies are any indication of our culture’s values. Our culture confuses gentleness with wimpiness, yet in reality, gentleness is all about strength under control. The opposite is to be out of control. The word does not mean avoiding conflict; in fact, it speaks loudly about how one should deal with conflict. For example, Paul, when instructing Timothy how the “Lord’s servant” should be, says,

Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. – 2 Tim. 2:25-26

Think about how powerful God is! Yet, now think about how He deals with man – this is an example of strength under control. For us, gentleness requires that we really trust that God will take care of justice, that His mercy is His to give, that we should forgive as He has forgiven us. I think many people think they have gentleness “under control” because they don’t get in bar fights, etc. But God’s standard of gentleness goes so far beyond this. Gentleness includes our words. Gentleness includes how we treat our children, even when they do all the things children do. Under God’s standards, gentleness, like each of the other character qualities, becomes something we cannot attain to in our own strength. We need the Spirit.

The final quality is self-control, egkrateia (enkrataya). Self-control is about our giving in to temptation. The opposite is self-indulgence. It applies to lusts for food, lusts of the flesh, anything that threatens to consume us for a time. This is the topic our culture simply doesn’t want to talk about. It is the giant elephant in the room that is ignored. Beer companies advertise people having tons of fun by drinking beer and then tell people in the last two seconds to “drink responsibly.” How? Like that two-second statement is going to help someone? (Please don’t misunderstand me – I am not saying that all consumption of alcoholic beverages is wrong.)

To me, it seems like our culture treats those who fall to self-indulgence like a herd of antelope in an area where there are lions. It knows there are lions, and it knows that each time the lions come, some of them will be struck down, but it is usually the weaker or slower ones, and hopefully it won’t be them. Our culture knows that people are falling to sins of addiction and self-indulgence, but it doesn’t really want to know the numbers, and individuals naively assume that it won’t happen to them. The reality that our culture doesn’t want to face is that there are lions, many lions, and their name is Satan. And anyone who chooses a lifestyle of self-indulgence is playing with lions.

So what is self-control? Is it simply avoiding falling into addiction? No, once again, the standard is Christ. How often did Christ give in to temptation? Never. That is the standard for us, and once again, it is unobtainable in our own strength.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. – Gal. 5:22-23a

So, hopefully, now, you see the standard, you see how we cannot do this in our own strength, and you see that we need the Spirit. As the verse says, this is His fruit, His results, not ours. Just to emphasize this further, if we back up a bit in Galatians we have this:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? – Galatians 3:1-3

So the question is what do we do? I believe the answer can be found by looking throughout Galatians. First, I want to turn to Galatians 2:20. Paul writes,

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20

I remember when I first read this verse it stopped me in my tracks. I remember reading it and thinking, “This is really deep. I have no idea what it is really saying. I know it is important, but I just don’t understand it!” Well, I thought it would be helpful to break it down. Janet recently mentioned that she actually enjoyed diagramming sentences, a lost art in modern public education, so I asked her to diagram Galatians 2:20. There are two sentences, so it takes two slides. Here is the first:


The reason I think this passage is hard for us to understand is that it just doesn’t match our understandings of reality. I think it is easier if we start from the bottom. Christ lives in me. Christ lives in me. Do you believe it? Do you really believe it? We are sealed with the Holy Spirit at salvation. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. It is all one and the same. Not a force, but a Person lives in you. OK – moving up: I don’t live any longer. Really? This is harder to grasp. Becoming a Christian is agreeing to die. When you become a Christian, when you put your faith in Christ, you agree to no longer live for yourself. And to loosely adapt a word picture John Piper has used, it is like there is a dragon in a cave in your soul. Christ hands you a sword, His hand in yours holding that sword, and He points to the dragon a few feet away and says, “That is you. That is your flesh. Kill it. I will help you.” And hand in hand on sword, totally by His strength, you pierce that dragon, mortally. Your sword goes through its forelegs at what we would call the wrist and through its rear legs at what we would call ankles, and we pierce its side. And we ask, “Is it dead?” And Christ says, “Yes – it can no longer live. But it is still going to thrash around for a while. You must keep your hand in Mine and walk step by step with Me if you do not want to be injured by it.”

Here is the second part of the verse:


The cave is dark. We cannot see the dragon, but we sometimes hear something faint. And we cannot see Christ, and His hold on our hand is loose. At any point we choose, we can let go, and we are left in the cave with that dragon. Christ is walking. He is leading. And we need to choose to keep in step with Him, every step. If we stop, we are alone with the dragon, and before long we are injured. If we then cry out to Christ, He is immediately there again, holding our hand, leading us again step by step. But we have to let Him lead. We have to have faith in Him. We have to have no faith in us. We might think He is walking right into the dragon, and we want to go the other way, but if we do, the dragon will have shown that he has deceived us, that Christ was right, and we are wrong. Sometimes the cave will brighten and we will see something desirable, and Christ will tell us it is the dragon. We don’t believe, or want to believe it, or we think letting go to see this desirable thing for a moment won’t hurt, and sure enough, it turns into the dragon, and we must cry out to Christ again. Immediately, he is there again, holding our hand. If we don’t cry out to Christ, if we persist following desirable things, we become more and more injured. Sometimes we wonder what in the world we are doing, but we are torn between the desirable thing and giving it up again. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Listen: we have to walk, that is, do everything, by faith in Jesus. I believe this analogy captures the essence not just of Galatians 2:20, but of other verses in Galatians speaking of the Spirit.

So I say, live by [walk in] 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. – Galatians 5:16-18

The literal word there in the Greek is walk. Walk in the Spirit. Be led by the Spirit. Every day. All the time!

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. – Galatians 5:25

This verse goes with Galatians 2:20. Since we are alive in Christ, our old self crucified, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Practically, what does this look like? I can tell you what I have experienced. How often do I experience this? Not enough. But I have experienced it a lot this past week.

To keep in step with the Spirit is not just having a quiet time every day. Having a quiet time is certainly not sufficient, and although spending daily time in the Word is good, let me even say that it is not always necessary. (We shouldn’t be legalistic about quiet times, although we shouldn’t be foolish in our freedom either.) What is necessary? It is that I am thinking and acting, moment by moment, in accordance with the truth that I am being led by the Person of Christ.

Getting back to the fruit of the Spirit: You aren’t going to find fruit in your life if you are leading yourself! And you shouldn’t go looking for the fruit in a secular way – you won’t find it there! The fruit of love will not be found in your love for other people unless it is first there in your love for Christ. You should love Christ! You won’t find your joy in things, or your peace in political victories, and so on.

When I am truly keeping in step with the Spirit, quiet times are not a burden; they’re a joy! I can’t wait to get back to them! I think about my time during the day. I pop a quick moment to read a verse again. Prayer becomes natural, not a burden.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. – Galatians 5:22-23a

Truly, when I am in step with the Spirit, I have joy; I have peace. The other qualities I am growing in – not by my effort, though! I can just see that it is beginning to happen more and more. But it is the fruit of the Spirit – it is His doing, His results. I just need to walk with Him, to keep in step with Him, moment by moment, day by day.

How do you “jump start” this process? By repentance, confessing your sins, agreeing that you have not allowed Christ to lead you. But don’t stop there! This is the mistake I used to make as a young Christian. I would immediately go back to leading myself! I would try to be good, just like the Galatians. Don’t do this! There are so many ways to keep yourself connected to Christ throughout the day – recite to yourself Scripture that you are memorizing. Read Scripture. Read part of a book that explains Scripture. Meditate on Scripture. This is so valuable! I don’t mean to chant and go “ohm,” but to think about a passage. Think about how it applies to you. Think about other passages that are related. Think about how our culture doesn’t “get it,” anything related to the Scripture! Be transformed by the renewing (ongoing, throughout the day) of your mind.