I’ve been considering that well-known passage in Galatians regarding fruit of the spirit, and I think perhaps that we often have it wrong. We tend to think about this passage in terms of the Spirit giving us peace, the Spirit giving us joy, etc. After a careful examination of the text, however, it seems to me it’s not about how we feel at all, or even about what we receive. It’s about how we act and how we treat others. And that makes this a challenging, difficult lesson – especially for me. I look at myself in this mirror and find myself wanting. Still, if you are up for a challenge, read on.
Galations 5
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self‑control. Against such things there is no law.
Christians and That Pesky Sinful Nature
With the possible exception of impurity, all of the sinful nature items are actions. Most, like witchcraft, are things we Christians don’t often do. What we should do , on a regular basis, is consider whether we are doing anything from the sinful nature list. Could we be jealous? Do we have fits of rage? The problem is we don’t want to think about the possibility we’re doing such things. We’re the Christians! We’re the good guys!
We don’t want to believe we might be doing bad things. We want to be the good guys in the story–and we want someone else to be the bad guy. That means we consider whether other people doing things from selfish ambition or are creating factions. However, to be the good guys, we have to do the hard thing and consider where we might be failing. If we don’t, we’re in danger of falling prey to the sinful nature and not noticing.
We know there is occasional sexual immorality in the church. Idolatry, as in worshiping Baal or some such, doesn’t happen. In the United States, however, we do worship money and fame, even power. We can worship such idols without knowing it because everyone around us worships them too. Worshiping money leads to selfish ambition too–because that’s how one gets ahead and gets more money. Few of us have escaped worshiping money in some form, even if just coveting or hoarding it. It’s certainly true of me. I want more of what money can buy. Besides taking care of my family, I want to travel, drive a nice car, live in a nice house. (Not a mansion, just nice.) The problem is we don’t want to admit that to ourselves; doing so means we aren’t the good guys we’d like to be. Plus, everyone else is doing it.
Hatred, discord, dissensions, and factions are more interesting, and even more difficult to hear. We should ask ourselves if we are in close enough in tune with God to hear the message here. It’s like the first drop on a roller coaster. Are you ready? Here we go.
What if our Christian politics creates divisions in our country? What if we alienate people from Christ? What if we quarrel and argue, split churches and form denominations? All of these things are the result of our sinful nature. We make excuses and justify our actions, saying if the other people only agreed with us (since we’re right), then it would all be fine. The truth, however, is if we changed our actions there wouldn’t be a division either. We can justify any action, come up with reasons why we’re right in doing what we’re doing. And thus we create dissensions and factions, we drive people away from the Church and Jesus because of our sinful nature. And perhaps worst of all, we won’t even admit to ourselves–let alone other people–that we’re doing creating dissensions and factions. The problem is if we compare this sinful list with the Spirit’s list, these actions are sinful. We don’t want to hear this, but there it is in scripture.
What Does it Mean to Bear Fruit?
Now, we come to the Fruit of the Spirit, a succinct list of actions performed by those who follow God. However, when we look at this second list, we too often we see love, joy, and peace, and pretty much stop listening. It’s good to be loved. It’s good to be joyful. And it’s great to be at peace with ourselves and with God. All these things are true – we are loved, God does give us peace. There are many other passages that say so, like what Jesus says in John just before the crucifixion. But that isn’t what God is telling us in this passage. That isn’t the point. Consider the other words in the list and what they mean:
- Patience takes place in relationship to another person. It’s something we do (or don’t do)
- Kindness is something we do to or for other people
- Goodness, again, is in relationship to others
- Faithfulness: Notice this doesn’t say “have faith,” but faithfulness, or being faithful
- Gentleness, again, how we behave toward others
- Self‑control is how we behave
The main point about this list is simple, but even more challenging than the one about the sinful nature. Do you see the pattern? Every one of these things is a verb, describing an action not a state of being.
The Peacemakers
If all the other items in the Fruit of the Spirit list are actions, what about peace? I submit that peace, in this context, is not something we have but something we create when in tune with the Spirit. Consider the Beatitude; Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. (Truthfully, we don’t often consider what that means either.)
My pastor once told a story of a Jewish college professor from Harvard who went to Iraq. They loved him there. Everyone got along with him. Why? According to him, Harvard has a tradition of debate without malice and disagreement without rancor. This man was a peacemaker. Where he went, there was peace. How many of us can make such a claim? I can’t. I cause all kinds of discord.
What of Love and Joy?
That brings us to the remaining two words in the list, the first two; love and joy. While we want to be loved, are we not as Christians also called to love others? To love our neighbor as ourselves? To even love our enemies? Therefore again, with love, we’ve found an action for us to do.
And then there is joy. Since all the others are actions, what about this one? As we make peace, perhaps we can also bring joy to others. I’ll say that again; let us bring joy to others. Thus, in this context, joy is something we do.
Jesus often compared the faithful to a vineyard and vines that bore fruit (and He added a warning about vines that don’t produce fruit. That, together with the Fruit of the Spirit, ought to scare us). Even more, something we rarely consider is that a tree or vine does not produce fruit for itself. The fruit is always for the next plant, or even the birds, caterpillars, and squirrels. More, in the Bible, it tends to be an agricultural metaphor. God owns the vineyard. We are the vines producing fruit for someone else to eat, because vines don’t eat grapes.
Thus, the fruit of the Spirit is not something produced for us, but something we produce for others when are in tune with God’s will. When our relationship with God is good, we are gentle and kind. We are patient and bring joy to others. Perhaps to sum it all up, we are loving. As a pair of companion verses, consider the sermon on the mount: “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you,” and then look once more at I Corinthians 13. That one is the blueprint on how we should behave toward our enemies. Let me say that again; I Corinthians 13 is a blueprint for how we should behave toward those we wish would disappear. When we follow God, we produce this fruit, so the Fruit of the Spirit (and the sinful nature list) tells us how we’re doing.
The question to ask ourselves, therefore, is how often are we kind, gentle, good, and patient? It seems, since this passage is about letting the Spirit work through us, that the closer we are to God, the more faithful we are to others, and the more self-control we have. This is the opposite of the sinful list, because self-control would mean we don’t have fits of rage. In other words, we would not be angry at the sinner (or sin) that bugs us the most. In fact, we would be patient, kind, and gentle with that sinner, as Jesus was with all sinners.
This gets uncomfortable because it doesn’t describe me. Nor does it describe what I often see in churches. We don’t want to be kind to sinners; we want to judge them, because then we look better by comparison. We’re the righteous. I certainly don’t want to hear this kind of message, but there it is.
Not Against the Law
There is still one more line in this passage – an introspective, difficult line that is easily passed over. Paul ends with: “against such things there is no law.”
I can put that another way; if what are doing or want to do is against the law, it is almost certainly an action from the prior list, the sinful nature list. Even if someone wants to make a law against what we’re doing, it probably belongs on the wrong list.
In the Russia, North Korea, or the worst times in Communist China, there was never a law against being kind, gentle, patient, and loving. Now, there are exceptions. In Nazi Germany if you were kind to Jews you might have gotten arrested. That, however, is a rather extreme case. We can complain all we want about being persecuted and put upon, how the nation is ignoring God’s laws and what is right. Even then, however, there is no law against being kind, gentle, and patient, against bringing peace and joy to others. So, in order to judge our own actions and whether they are the Fruit of the Spirit, we can ask first if it is against the law.
Bearing Fruit When We Don’t Want To
The truth is still that we don’t want to compare our actions to this list–either the good or the bad. We want to think we are right and justified even if there is a law against what we want to do. But consider this; our college professor was able accomplish things we would have thought impossible (like surviving, for one), by being a peacemaker. What could we accomplish–even where people aren’t out to kill us–by being kind, gentle, and loving? Could it be that the places where we are most angry and passionate about our causes are the places we aren’t following God? That’s not an easy thing to consider, but there it is in these two lists, because when we are angry and passionate, we sow discord and even hatred.
Rick Warren starts The Purpose Driven Life by saying, “It’s not about you.” The Fruit of the Spirit is the same. It’s not about us. It’s about how God works through us to help and heal others, to create an environment of peace, joy, and kindness. The two lists, then, give us a tool to see how well we’re doing. I, for one, often don’t want to know that, because I usually don’t do so well. Still, for myself, I would rather know than think I’m doing well when I’m not.
Fortunately for all of us, even the ones who know what God wants and don’t do it, there is forgiveness. We say we want to know the Truth. If so, let us look in this difficult mirror of the Fruit of the Spirit with diligence, honesty, and courage. And more, let us strive to be closer to God. Let us love Him, follow Him and become more like Him. Then, day by day, we can begin to bear more fruit, to the benefit of the neighbors and enemies we are asked to love.