The Fruit of the Spirit

I love the passage from Galatians that lists the fruit of the Spirit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. Gal 5:22-23 KJV

Though I love this passage, I have struggled most of my Christian life for a practical way to apply it—always viewing it as an unattainable goal—something to work on “when I get more holy.” Recently though, I have come to realize that the fruit of the Spirit is not something I am trying to attain, it is something that is already in me.

Joyce Meyer made a comment about the fruit of the Spirit that truly blessed me. She said to think of the list like a train. Love is the engine; all the other fruit follow; and self-control (or temperance) is the track that keeps all the other fruit moving along.

I would like to take just a moment to define the different words used in this passage.

First of all, love, (God’s kind of love) or agapeo means to have esteem or high regard. This is not the impulsive, feel-good type of love (phileo) so common in our culture today. It is head-love, not heart-love. It is the kind of love that is described in I Corinthians 13.

When you learn to walk in God’s kind of love, agapeo, you will naturally begin to develop all the other fruit of the Spirit.

The second fruit listed here is joy from the Greek chara. It means “the calm delight which comes from a focus on the character of God; gladness.” This is not happiness, which is dependent upon your circumstances. This is a choice to remain glad regardless of circumstance.

Next is peace (eirene) the inner tranquility and poise of the Christian whose trust is in God.

Longsuffering is an Old English word for patience. We all know what patience is, don’t we? That’s something that we all wish we had more of.

Gentleness (chrestotes) is kindness, consideration; a spirit of fairness and compassion.

Goodness (agathosune) the quality of being good; praiseworthy character; moral excellence.

The word translated faith here is pistis, a belief in or confident attitude toward God.

Meekness (prautes) is an attitude of humility toward God and gentleness toward man.

Temperance (egkrateia) a self-control that masters all types of sensual desires. Sensual here means “pertaining to the senses;” those things that we see, touch, hear, taste, and feel. It would include things such as the temptation of overeating, looking at things we shouldn’t be watching, or hearing things we shouldn’t be listening to.

Now that we have defined the fruit of the Spirit, we can perhaps see how we can make the statement that the fruit of the Spirit are driven by love.

When we read about God’s kind of love (as defined in I Corinthians, chapter 13) we see that it does encompass all of the fruit of the spirit.

I love this passage in the Amplified Bible.

Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own right or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end].

Now, I think that we can all agree that this passage is a wonderful commentary on the fruit of the Spirit. We can see that the fruit of the spirit is love at work with joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and meekness following behind. And self-control is the quality that keeps everything in line and on track.

This is all well and good. It sounds so simple, but we know that it isn’t easy. How then do we learn to walk in love?

We learn to walk in love when we spend time with God. The more time we spend with God, the more we get to know God. The more we get to know God, the more we understand Him. The more we understand Him, the more we become like Him. The more we become like Him, the more we will walk in love—because God is love (I John 4:8, 16).

Begin today by making a commitment to spend time with God. You do not need to make a commitment of “an hour a day in prayer,” or any such thing. Start with five minutes a day praying and five minutes a day reading your Bible. Everyone has an extra ten minutes in their day. Start with an amount of time that you can commit to. I promise that if you will start somewhere and you are faithful with that amount of time, you will find that your spirit will crave more and more.

God bless you on your Journey Toward Consistency and Obedience!