ver.: 09 January 2008
This harvest of spiritual fruit is ripe for the picking :
The most famous Bible passage about the 'fruit of the Spirit' is in Galatians 5:22, where the apostle Paul gives us a list of fruit. (Paul was into making lists.) The list is meant as a contrast to the list of the 'deeds of the flesh' found in 5:19-20. The fruit list is clearly not intended as an exhaustive description of the fruit, but was given to highlight the fruit that Paul wants the Galatian church to keep in mind. He lists the following fruit:
(Check out the links for each word above, and throughout the page. The Galatians passage can also be read as listing the other eight as subsets of the first : love. Many Bible students insist that the singular of 'fruit' be used, and not the plural.)
When Paul follows the list of the fruit of the Spirit by saying "against such things there is no law", he was talking about the fact that the religious authorities and the Hebrew Torah (law) are positive toward behavior that shows these characteristics. Even a staunch enemy of the church will likely find these qualities appealing. These are known to be positive characteristics by almost everyone, in most eras, in most lands.
Paul's Galatians list is made of stuff that is both something you are and something you do. It is the Spirit giving you the character of Christ. There are other such lists in the Epistles, and they are also relevant to any talk about the 'fruit of the Spirit'.
In 1 Corinthians 13, in the midst of Paul's description of the gifts of the Spirit, there is a section on love. While not directly about 'fruit', it is about what springs from love, and it is in much the same vein. According to verses 4-8, love:
In Phillipians 4:8, Paul advises us to think on things that are:
In Colossians 3:12-16, the church members are told to put on (wear) these things:
Then, they are further instructed to:
All this character stuff is to be done in the name of Jesus, to further the purposes He came for.
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These fruit lists describe what a Christian's character grows into, over time. There was no word in there about being given the Midas touch for resolving all financial woes. There's not even the slightest signal in there about tongues being the evidence of the Spirit's presence. There's nothing about crusading for a just society, though there is something about being just. These lists are completely silent about miraculous deeds or the gifts of wisdom or knowledge or discernment as signs of the Spirit's rule within a person. The lists give no special credit to official power or office or responsibility. It sounds instead like a repeated refrain from Jesus ( Matthew 7:16, 20) that one knows God's followers 'by their fruits'. Or, like Paul's urgings that the Roman church bear fruit for God, or James about being full of mercy and good fruit. Or John the Baptist, or even the proverb which says that "the fruit of righteousness is a tree of life" (an early example of 'fruit' to describe results). These matters of character are the stuff which gives life-ness to life. It is holiness taking root in you. It is something you are, not just something you do or think.
In Jeremiah (6:19), God speaks of the disaster which is about to come, and speaks of it as "the fruit of their plans" -- that which comes from evil scheming. So bad character can also come to fruition.
The early church continued this concern about how those with the Spirit develop a character like Christ's. Some of them spend much of their writing time on describing what this character is. Polycarp, for instance, in his letter to the church in Philippi, wrote that the church's leaders are to have "a wide compassion for humanity", which does not put off doing kindnesses. (Think here of Jewish mitzvot ; it's about going beyond merely doing good, into being someone who is characterized by doing good, to honor God and for the sake of others.) He, like Paul, also writes about what is not a part of this character : gossip, the undermining of others, easily believing ill of others, loose sexual behavior, empty speech, quick temper, and most especially the eagerness for money.
The early Protestant pietists shared this concern. They knew from Scripture that if the Spirit dwells in a person, that person will start taking on the characteristics described as the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit works to change Christians so they have the depth of character the Bible talks about. It's not automatic or sudden. Like everything else in this broken world and its broken people, it's something that arises in part, not completely, in this life. We are always 'under construction', just like any good web site is. The Spirit never leaves "well enough" alone, but is always working for something better.
Many later pietists and Holiness believers, unfortunately, forgot how deeply marred we are by sin, and saw failure to live in these 'fruit' as proof that the Spirit was not at work. This resulted in a new legalism made of a decision to obey behavioral rules rooted in law, not in a soul which grew through the Spirit's work to bear good fruit.
We don't need to turn to the Law to give rise to character in ourselves and our children. We need to turn to the Spirit, and trust that the Spirit will be working overtime to change us, working literally till Kingdom come, refashioning us into being like Christ.
The early church understood this. They didn't go around saying they
had the Holy Spirit and thus needed no human teachers. They instead took each other aside and corrected each other, and those who understood the Christian way best (especially the apostles) taught it to the others. Even the apostles were not above correction, as Paul so sharply points out in Galatians. They understood that by way of mutual education and the use of discernment,
in the power of the Holy Spirit, they could grow as Christians. The evidence
of growth was the fruit. The "fullness of the Spirit" is when the gifts are applied fruit-fully.
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Unity is a fruit of the Spirit, found in the "one anothers" of Colossians. But it is not always immediately so. Jesus' work set father against son and mother against daughter, and the Spirit takes after Jesus' ministry. In Acts 15, even though the Jerusalem Council was being guided by the Spirit, division arose. It takes some wrestling with the matter, a struggling done with an attitude of submission, of 'show us, Spirit!'. While this is going on, we may differ, even vigorously. But the disagreement itself can be part of the process the Spirit uses to get the matter sorted out.
Often what results is a surprising unity, in which we have spiritually grown and stepped toward the future in a vision for mission. Sometimes the disunity may represent differing paths which may have to co-exist in tension, at least for a while, to inform and correct each other. Either result can be fully in keeping with the Spirit's work.
The organism known as the Christian Church is able to hold and to benefit from the human race's many cultures, outlooks, theologies, histories and styles. Yet the Church can only be truly catholic ('of the whole') when it embraces and sustains the whole truth. It means not just being broad in most ways, it also means being clear about what to reject.
Conformity and uniformity tend to be deadening, but at specific times may be crucial to the task at hand. Try, for instance, fighting to defend one's country against invaders. If everyone had a different type of gun, the supply of munitions would be impossible and the nation would fall. Or, can you picture how repairs would be done if every individual car's parts were all unique to that particular car? The core identity of the Christian faith is what identifies church from non-church, it is what allows us to operate together, even for a moment, even on any one matter, as if we were one body. In a way, we are, or so says the Bible.
The fruit of the Spirit are like most things from God, in that they are both a personal way of life and a corporate way of life. The fruit don't have a 'communal' or 'individual' side; one is the other. It is in this way of life that Christ will be seen by others.
Check out this other helpful stuff :
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