The Fruit of the Holy Spirit - Chapter 1
Christian Characteristics
We are going to think about the Fruit of the Spirit as it is described by Paul in his letter to the Galatians chapter five, verses twenty-two and twenty-three.
Let us think first of the message Paul is trying to communicate. If you look at the beginning of the letter you will find that he starts much more abruptly than in his other letters. At verse six he says, ‘‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who has called you by the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel’’. You see, something had gone wrong. They had turned away from the real truth of the gospel, and were believing in a different gospel. What was this false gospel to which they had turned, which Paul says was really ‘‘no gospel at all’’?
False teachers had come among them who were telling them that faith in Christ alone was not sufficient. They must keep all the forms and ceremonies of the Jewish religion if they were to be real Christians. Forms and ceremonies, and religious ritual cannot save us, says Paul. None of them can bring us forgiveness of sin and peace with God, nor can any of them set us free from the sinfulness of our lives.
Just before the verses where he describes the fruit of the Spirit, Paul gives a list of what he calls the works of the flesh, and an awful list it is! Forms, ceremonies and ritual cannot set us free from these. Only Jesus Christ can do this, and only as we submit to Him and by faith become one with Him. As we do this we share His life, love and holiness.
Notice how Paul puts it. He says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. He calls all these ‘‘the fruit of the Spirit’’.
This reminds me of the parable that Jesus told, which you will find in the Gospel of John chapter fifteen. Jesus is speaking of the vine, and He says that He is the true vine, and that His Father is the gardener. Those who belong to Christ are the branches of the vine, He says. The gardener takes care of the vine, and does everything that is necessary for it to bear fruit. This fruit bearing is the whole point of the vine. It is no good if it does not bear fruit. How does the fruit come? It is the result of the life flowing up from the root through the vine and out into the branches. As a result the fruit is produced quite naturally, and all that is needed is for the vine to be kept pruned and healthy. Nothing has to be added from the outside because the fruit comes from the life on the inside.
So it is with the Christian life. When we believe on Jesus Christ we are reconciled to God and united by faith with the Lord Jesus, so that the life of God flows into us. In this way we can bear in our own lives this fruit of the Spirit of God which Paul is speaking about.
This fruit should be there right from the start of our Christian lives, and should grow as we walk in the Spirit with God. At the end of chapter two of Galatians Paul says that the secret of his Christian life is that Christ now lives in Him (Galatians 2 v. 20). In the same chapter, where this fruit of the Spirit is spoken of, he tells us to live by the Spirit, and to keep in step with the Spirit. It is as Christ lives in us, as we yield ourselves to obey the promptings of His Spirit, that the fruit will grow naturally in our lives.
This life, though, is not always simple and straight-forward. In the natural realm of growing crops and fruit, a lot of work has to be done to keep the plants and trees and vegetables healthy. We have to keep away the thorns and weeds, and the diseases that spoil the fruit. Paul says something about this in relation to spiritual things. He speaks of the ‘‘flesh’’, or as some versions of the Bible translate it, ‘‘the sinful nature’’. He says in chapter two verse twenty of Galatians that he has ‘‘been crucified with Christ’’ and that it is no longer Paul that is living, but it is Christ living in him. Paul is speaking figuratively here. He is saying that when the Lord Jesus was put to death it was in Paul’s place, as his substitute. So, in the sight of God, Paul, and all who come to faith in Christ, died with Him.
Paul is saying in Galatians chapter 2 that those who belong to Christ have by their faith in Him crucified their sinful natures with all its evil passions and desires. So we are not to live according to our sinful natures, but we are to live under the control of the Spirit. What does all this mean? Let me explain a little further.
When Christ died for us on the cross, He not only bore our sins but took to the cross our old sinful nature. This is what we read in Romans chapter 6 verse 6 - ‘‘For we know that our old self was crucified with him (Christ) so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless’’. This is why Paul declares, as we have just seen, that they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh. Our being united with Christ by faith, when we first trusted Him as our Saviour, means that we recognise and agree that we can have no more to do with the old sinful, selfish way of living.
However, Paul makes it clear in verses 16 to 18 of this chapter that there is a conflict that still goes on after we have become Christians. There is so often a desire within us that does not want to go Christ’s way, and that shows itself in an opposite way to the fruit of god’s Spirit. So, if the fruit of the Spirit is going to grow and mature in our lives, something has to be done about this conflict. Paul tells us to be sure on our side that the old sinful nature is really crucified - put to death - and that we are walking according to the Spirit, in other words that He is really controlling our lives.
We can put this another way - we are to see that every part of our being is yielded to the Lord and that He is really Lord in every part. As we yield to Christ as Lord, we allow His Spirit to fill us and take control of all our thoughts and actions and attitudes. Then the Lord can make His fruit grow and ripen in us. In this way He shows through us His own love and character. It is in the growth of this fruit that the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified in the way we live.