Kingdom News: What are Fruits of the Spirit?

The Apostle Paul describes “the fruit of the Spirit” as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23) These qualities reflect God’s character and the behavior of those living according to God’s Spirit.

When we participate with God, we’re like new branches that are grafted into a living vine, which begin to yield the fruit of that vine (see John 15:1-11) So if God is loving, patient, and always emanating peace, then as we participate with God, we will bear that same spiritual fruit, like love, patience, and peace.

We can better understand the nature and purpose of these spiritual fruits by exploring their source and the nuanced way they connect with other parts of Scripture. The Source of the Fruit of the Spirit: By describing these characteristics as the fruit of the Spirit, the Apostle Paul is saying they come from the Holy Spirit, who is God. The Spirit cultivates them within us as part of God’s work of restoring all of creation.

We cannot produce spiritual fruit on our own; we can’t simply will ourselves to be more gentle or work harder to be more joyful or faithful. But Scripture does suggest that human beings somehow take part in providing the conditions for the growth of spiritual fruit. In order for the life of the vine to grow fruit in us, we have to firmly connect ourselves to the vine by pursuing God’s way of life over our own. So Paul teaches them to return to Jesus’ real Gospel and to participate with (rather than oppose) the Spirit’s work, which provides the conditions needed for spiritual fruit to grow. Paul encourages people to “walk (or live) by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16)

But what does that really mean? Some traditions describe walking by the Spirit as a kind of personal surrender to the Spirit’s transforming work in our minds and hearts. As the Spirit changes our hearts, our behaviour also changes, leading us to bear fruit. Other traditions suggest that walking by the Spirit is about choosing to trust God by following his instruction. For example, the choice to love and forgive our neighbour is also a choice to participate with God’s Spirit, which leads to more and more spiritual fruit.

Paul lists “the individual fruits of the spirits” in Galatians 5:22-23)
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Love: Love tops Paul’s list, which is not surpri-sing because he frequently teaches that love is more essential to human life and spiritual flou-rishing than anything else. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, he compares it to other fruits of the Spirit to demonstrate the superiority of love, which, as New Testament scholar Ernest DeWitt Burton says, may suggest that Paul sees love as “the source from which all the rest flow.”

In the Bible, love is an enduring commitment to be with and to be for another person. In other words, love always chooses to act in ways that support their greatest good. Love often involves feelings of tenderness or affection but is not solely governed or defined by emotion. Most essentially, love is action.

Joy: Joy is a heart-swelling kind of delight. This spiritual fruit can grow out of gratitude for God’s many gifts or out of hope in God’s promise to make all things new.

Joy is not dependent on good experiences or comfortable lives full of delight. We can also find joy even through hardship.

Peace: The Greek word for peace, eirene, refers to both internal peace in our hearts and relational peace with others. In Galatians 5, Paul doesn’t specify which he means, and he likely has both in mind. Jesus tells his disciples that even in the midst of trouble and persecution, they can be filled with peace because he has “overcome the world” (John 16:33).
So Paul invites us to bring all our concerns to God because he holds the world in balance and reigns supreme over all earthly rulers. This allows his peace to grow in our hearts and minds (Phil. 4:6-7) as spiritual fruit.

Patience: Imagine someone with a nose stretched out like a flute, or perhaps an elephant’s trunk. This bizarre picture can help us visualize the idiom “long of nostrils,” which is a key image in the Hebrew Bible that represents patience. But what does “long of nostrils” have to do with being patient?

So the Hebrew idiom “long of nostrils” is often translated as “slow to anger” (see Exod. 34:6) and early Greek translators used the root makrothum, or “patient,” to communicate the idea.

The New Testament says God is patient in bringing judgment because he is “not wanting for any to perish, but for all to move to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Kindness and Goodness: These next two spiritual fruits overlap. Early Greek translators used both khrestotes (“kindness”) and agathone (“goodness”) to represent the Hebrew root tov, which describes what is good, beautiful, right-functioning, and just.

Khrestotes is a narrower term, referring to “active goodness” directed “toward others.”(2) God shows his khrestotes, or kindness, by offering humanity true life through Jesus (Eph. 2:4-7) and also by doing good to “ungrateful and evil people” (Luke 6:35).

Faithfulness: In the New Testament, the Greek word pistis often refers to “trust” or “faith,” and it can also mean “faithfulness” (see Rom. 3:3)

For biblical authors, faith and faithfulness are two sides of the same coin, capturing ideas like fidelity, reliability, trustworthiness, and allegiance.

Having faith does not mean simply believing in or agreeing with statements about God (see Jas. 2:19).

Faith is active, and it requires dependence on God, a sense of trust so deep that one chooses to walk in God’s ways.

Gentleness: The Greek word prautes is translated as “gentleness,” which involves acting tenderly or softly and having an attitude of humility.(3) The biblical authors often portray God with images of superior strength and sove-reign power. But they also use images like a mother bird protecting her chicks under her wings to suggest that, while infinitely powerful, God’s strength can be seen in his gentle and tender care for his people (Ps. 91:4) shows us God’s tenderness as a shepherd who gathers lambs in his arms, carries them close to his heart, and leads the nursing mothers along.
And when the prophet Elijah encounters God, he expects the divine presence to show up in a powerful earthquake or glorious fire; instead, he finds God in a gentle “whisper” (1 Kgs. 19:12).

Walking by the Spirit: God created us in his own image, and, from the beginning, he’s been teaching us to reflect his divine character. We do this by bearing good spiritual fruit as we do what’s right in God’s eyes and care for his creation and everyone in it. When we serve ourselves and do what’s right in our own eyes, we reflect a corrupted image of God. Because God is not at all self-centered; God is pure love, always working for the good of others.

As human beings, we cannot lose God’s image, but we often end up distorting it, and this allows God’s spiritual fruit to wither and die. We mista-kenly exchange the good life for something as valuable as a rotten apple.

But biblical authors invite us to trust that when we live in the way of Jesus—who bears every spi-ritual fruit—we also participate in the Spirit’s work. God renews his own image within us (see 2 Cor. 3:18).

So walking by the Spirit creates the conditions necessary for God to cultivate within us the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the priceless fruit that brings healing and life to everyone. (BibleProject Scholarship Team)