The Fruit of the Spirit
One cluster of nine facets the Spirit ripens in the believer: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance
1. One fruit, not many
When Paul lists what the Holy Spirit produces in a believer, he writes a sentence we should read with great care: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Galatians 5:22-23). Notice that he says fruit, and not fruits. He does not hand us nine separate items from which we may pick the two or three we like best and leave the rest. He sets before us one cluster, a single ripe bunch with nine facets, all growing together on one stem. Where the Spirit is truly at work, He grows the whole cluster at once; we do not get love without joy, or peace without patience. This is the first thing to fix in our minds. The Christian life is not a shelf of virtues we assemble by effort, but a living fruit the Spirit ripens in us as we abide in Christ. And mark the word fruit itself, for it tells us how this comes. A gift is handed over in a moment; fruit grows slowly, ripening through sun and rain and the long patience of the seasons. So it is with these graces. They are not screwed on from the outside; they grow from within, as the life of the Spirit works its way out into all we are.
2. Set against the works of the flesh
Paul sets this fruit in deliberate contrast with something else. Just before our verse he lists "the works of the flesh," which are "adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like" (Galatians 5:19-21). Set the two lists side by side and the difference leaps out. The works of the flesh are called works, for they are what fallen human nature produces on its own, churning them out as a factory turns out its goods. But the graces of the Spirit are called fruit, for they are what a new life bears when the Spirit dwells within. The flesh works; the Spirit bears fruit. One is the restless labor of a nature at war with God; the other is the quiet harvest of a nature being made new. And this tells us where to look when these graces are missing. We do not manufacture love by trying harder, as the flesh manufactures its works. We yield to the Spirit, and He bears His fruit in us.
3. Love
First in the cluster, and the root of all the rest, stands love. The word Paul uses is not the love of mere feeling or attraction. The Greeks had several words we render by our one word love; one for the love of friends, one for the love between man and woman, one for natural affection in a family. But the love the Spirit gives is agape, a love that is more than any of these. It is a love that goes out to people whether they deserve it or not, a love that reaches even the unlovely and the enemy, because that is how God Himself loves. It is the very love with which God "so loved the world" (John 3:16) that He gave His Son for rebels. I once heard of a man whose son was killed in the Korean War, and who later took into his own home, and raised as his own, a child of the very people who had killed his boy. When asked how he could do such a thing, he said he had asked God for a love big enough, and God had given it. That is agape, and no man works it up in himself; the Spirit pours it out "in our hearts by the Holy Ghost" (Romans 5:5).
4. Joy
Second comes joy, and we must not confuse it with the happiness of the world. The world's happiness depends on what happens; let the circumstances turn sour and the happiness drains away. Mark Twain, for all his wit, grew bitter and sad in his later years, for his laughter rested on nothing deeper than the passing scene. But the joy the Spirit gives does not rest on circumstances at all. It is a deep gladness rooted in God Himself, and it can sing in a prison at midnight, as Paul and Silas sang (Acts 16:25). It was "the fruit of the Spirit" in them that no chains could touch. Jesus promised His own "that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11). This joy can live beside great sorrow, for it does not depend on having an easy life; it depends on having God. The believer may weep and rejoice at the same moment, "as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing" (2 Corinthians 6:10), because the spring of his joy lies far below the reach of his troubles.
5. Peace
Third is peace, and the Spirit gives it in two forms. There is first peace with God, that great quarrel ended, for "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). The war is over; the rebel has laid down his arms and been received as a son. But there is also a second peace, an inner calm that the Spirit keeps in the heart through the storms of life. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and He left His own a legacy: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you" (John 14:27). This is the peace that "passeth all understanding," which guards the heart and mind of the one who brings everything to God in prayer (Philippians 4:7). It is not the peace of having no troubles, but the peace of having God in the midst of them. The world cannot give it and the world cannot take it away.
6. Longsuffering and gentleness
The next graces show how this fruit looks toward other people, and often toward people who are hard to bear. Longsuffering, which we might call patience, is the grace that endures long with others without flying into temper. It is the patience that bears with the difficult person, the slow person, the person who wrongs us, just as God "is longsuffering to us-ward" (2 Peter 3:9) and does not deal with us as our sins deserve. Beside it Paul sets gentleness, which is kindness, love put into action toward those around us. It is the gentleness of a heart that has been treated kindly by God and now treats others so. Where the flesh is harsh, quick to anger and quick to wound, the Spirit makes the believer patient under provocation and kind in the daily round, "forbearing one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2). These are not grand and showy virtues, but they are the ones our families and neighbors feel every day.
7. Goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control
The cluster ripens further into goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Goodness is uprightness that does not merely avoid evil but actively does what is right, a kindness with a backbone in it. Faith here means faithfulness, the dependability of one who can be trusted to keep his word and stand by his post, reflecting the God who is "faithful" (1 Corinthians 1:9). Meekness is one of the most misunderstood of all the graces, for it is not weakness; it is strength under control, great power held in a gentle hand, as a strong horse is held by the bridle. Moses was called "very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3), yet he was no weakling. And last comes temperance, or self-control, the grace that governs all the rest, holding the appetites and the temper in their place. Of this whole cluster Paul adds a quiet word: "against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:23). No law was ever written to restrain a man who is full of love, joy, peace, and self-control; the fruit of the Spirit needs no fence.
8. How the fruit grows
How then does this fruit come to ripen in a life? Not by gritting our teeth and resolving to be more loving and more patient. Fruit does not grow by struggling; it grows by drawing life from the vine. Jesus said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). The branch bears fruit by staying joined to the vine and letting its life flow in; and the believer bears the fruit of the Spirit by abiding in Christ and yielding daily to the Spirit who dwells in him. So Paul closes the passage with a command that is really an invitation: "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). We are to keep step with Him, day by day, surrendering the old works of the flesh and letting Him bear His fruit through us. The cluster will ripen slowly, as all fruit does, but it will surely ripen, for the One who grows it is faithful, and He has promised to "perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).
From Dr. Cook's Pulpit
On love as the root of the whole cluster, and the fruit as the proof of the Spirit's indwelling — Galatians 5:22-23Notice that love stands first, and I believe it stands first because every other grace grows out of it. Here is something worth pondering: love is the one grace that Scripture calls by three names. Jesus said love is the greatest commandment — love God, and love your neighbor. Paul said love is the greatest gift, for without it the other gifts are nothing (1 Corinthians 13). And here Paul says love is the chief fruit. Love is therefore a commandment, a gift, and a fruit, all at once; and where the Spirit pours it in, the joy and the peace and the patience all come following after.
A few years ago the doorbell rang at my home, and there stood two Jehovah's Witnesses. I invited them in and let them talk, for it has been my long experience that no one is ever argued into the Kingdom of God. When they had finished I turned them to this very verse, and I told them my own testimony — how the Holy Spirit had given me a love and a peace and a joy I never had before Him. Then I asked them, kindly, “Now you tell me how the Holy Spirit has produced these fruits in you.” There was a silence; and then the only answer they could give was, “Well, we had better be leaving.” They could not speak of the love and the joy and the peace, because it was not there to speak of.
That is what this fruit is for. You do not screw it on from the outside, nor work it up by trying harder; you abide in Christ, and the Spirit bears it through you. And when He does, the people at your door, in your house, and across your table will know it — often before you have said a word.