Galatians 5:24-26 – “Going for the Jugular”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁴Now, those of Christ crucify the flesh together with its passions and lusts. ²⁵If we are living by [the] Spirit, let us also be ordering ourselves by the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not be becoming conceited, provoking one another and envying one another.

I’m not sure if Paul is here sort of “wrapping up” his thoughts on flesh vs. Spirit, or just adding more instruction. The same goes for all of chapter 6, as I look ahead. Perhaps after I’ve studied to the end of the book I can look back and see the flow of logic.

Regardless, after such a clear dissertation on the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, Paul makes this statement, ^“Now, those of Christ crucify the flesh together with its passions and lusts.” As usual, this one little verse is packed with instruction. We live in a world where there is the flesh and there is the Spirit. What makes believers (“those of Christ”) different? It should be this maxim, that they characteristically crucify the flesh.

Let me explain where this is coming from: There is an exegetical point that requires discussion at this point. Many translations will read something like, “those of Christ have crucified the flesh…,” pointing to as it were a past completed action.  I believe the best translation of the Greek words here is to simply say they “crucify the flesh.”

What is at issue here is the poor abused Greek aorist. The word translated “crucify” or “have crucified” is an aorist active indicative verb. Aorist is the “tense.” First of all, unfortunately, when we think of “tense” our consuming concern is time. In English our tenses are all past, present, future, past perfect, etc. – all concerned almost exclusively with time. Such was not the case with Greek. Their tenses were far more concerned with what theologians call “aktionsart” or “type of action.” Their aorist could have a past-time element, but it was more specifically their “default” tense, just to express the way things are. Dana & Mantey state that this is “the basal, unmodified force of the aorist tense,” describing an action “simply as occurring, without reference to the question of progress ... it may regard the action in its entirety.”   They would refer to this basic use of the aorist as “constative” or “gnomic.” I will refer to my choice as gnomic.

But what about time? The one place in Greek where time was most likely to be expressed is in the indicative mood, which is the case here. This aorist here is, in fact, indicative, and so could very well be expressing “past” time. That is why many choose to add the time element “have crucified;” and, I might add, grammatically speaking, that is a perfectly legitimate translation. But, on the other hand, it isn’t both. It can’t be both past and gnomic. This is the business of exegesis, to try to decide which it is and then offer to others the reasoning behind our conclusion.

Here is one of those cases, where, once again, my old maxim comes to play, the familiar, “If the plain sense makes good sense, why make any other sense?” The issue here is that all words and grammar have semantic range. They have a basic meaning, and then they have what I’ll call peripheral meanings. A very simple example in English is the word “to see.” Its basic meaning of course is to look with the eyes and observe something. But it can also have a more metaphorical meaning of understanding, as when someone exclaims, “Oh, I see!” When translating the Bible I try to stick to the most basic meanings of words, unless the context justifies choosing peripheral meanings. To me, to choose peripheral meanings, without defensible support from the text and context, is to leave the business of translation and to enter the world of interpretation. Sometimes we have to do that, but, for an exegete, I think it is important to realize when I’m doing it.

That is why here, I will choose the gnomic sense of the aorist, as D&M describes it “the most basal sense of the aorist” and translate it “those of Christ crucify the flesh...” Now, it is of course true that believers “have crucified” the flesh. Once again, that is a perfectly legitimate translation and it is also perfectly true. My issue is simply to ask, “But is that what it means here, in this specific text?” And although that is possible, I think not. I think Paul is wanting to express that it is characteristically true of believers that they crucify their flesh. It is characteristically true that they fight against its evil, that they try to let the Spirit rule instead.

I suppose here is my rub: To simply say (in this context) that believers have crucified the flesh, gives me the immediate impression that the battle should be over, Sounds like the battle is won. There is a sense in which that is true, that we have in fact died to the old man, yet the very thesis of the book of Galatians is that the battle goes on. The question before us is not whether the battle is won or not. The question is how to fight? Do we fight the flesh with law or do we fight it with grace? The fact is that the battle is real and present and on-going. Everyone knows that, senses it, sees it happening. The question is how will we fight? The very natural, seemingly logical human answer is that we need law. We need rules to make us righteous. But Paul says clearly in Col 2:23, “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence (the flesh).” Rules do not address the real problem. That’s why they’ve never worked and never will.

That is the point here. True believers don’t just expect rules to make them better. They “crucify the flesh.” They put it to death. And they do it characteristically – not perfectly, not necessarily consistently, perhaps not even very successfully, but it is the business they are constantly about. In a sense, what he is saying is that we don’t tinker around with the problem, we go for the jugular! We don’t content ourselves with a few external improvements, we want a change that comes from our hearts. Can we say that is the most basic difference between “religion” and truly following Christ? “Religion” is very happy to embrace some rules that make me feel spiritual. True Christ followers cannot be happy with anything so superficial. Only real heart change satisfies their longing to be righteous. I need to know that I’m different, that the very core of my being has changed.

That is why he adds, “with its passions and lusts.” That, we recognize, is the problem. The problem is something going on very deeply inside of us. It is our wanter. Our wanter is broken. We are dealing with “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” At the very core of our being, we should want what God wants, but we don’t. We want what we want. And when we want it, none of us are above murder, lying, or stealing to get it – whatever it takes! We’ll even feign religion (Pharisees) and pretend to be loving and kind, if that seems like it will get us what we want. “Passions and lusts” are exactly that – very strong impulses that move us to think and speak and act, to do whatever it takes to get what we want.

True believers will realize that is the problem. That is where the battle must be fought – at the root. And it again isn’t about tinkering – the flesh, those “passions and lusts,” must be crucified, put to death, extinguished.

I need to see myself that what God wants is what is truly best until I want it too. I need to see that my own evil passions and desires are in reality self-destructive while God’s passions and desires mean life itself. And how can this possibly happen? How can I possibly “see” what I’m blind to? How can I change the very essence of what I want? It happens in the heart of true Christ-followers because “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal body, through His Sprit that dwells in you” (Romans 8:11).

God help me to never ever ever again think I’m satisfied when I’ve tinkered around with righteousness. May I be keenly aware of my passions and lusts. May it be true that I characteristically “crucify the flesh” and go for the jugular.

Galatians 5:22,23 – “Grace Triumphant”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith[fullness], ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I need to wrap up my study of these verses. It is hard to leave though. As I’ve said before, I could just sit and stare at this passage for hours. I wish somehow I could turn it into a pill, swallow it, and forever be all of these things. What a day that will be, either at death or the Lord’s coming, when He does in fact forever change me, when I’ll never again even want to do evil, when love and joy and peace will be as natural to me as barking to a dog! I realized early what a dignity and privilege the Lord gave us when He created us with the power of choice. In spite of my evil, I was so glad He didn’t make us robots. But then I wondered how in Heaven He could “confirm” us in holiness, so that then we “have no choice” but to do good. Now that what little hair I have is peppered gray, I see how it can happen. It is my choice. I want to be confirmed in holiness. If He were to ask me right now, I would cry, “Yes! Change me now! Take away my bent to sinning! Make my heart entirely Yours!” Yes, I will then “have no choice” but that is because I want it that way. Too long have “my eyes been open, knowing good and evil” … and having no power to conquer it all.

For now, I must content myself that this is the Lord’s plan. He could have saved me and immediately confirmed me in holiness. But instead He has ordained this process of progressive sanctification. The fruit of the Spirit is available to me. The Holy Spirit actually lives inside of me. But the home of my heart is a duplex and the other tenant is my evil self. For now, I don’t have the power to evict him. I simply must, in the power of the Spirit, conquer him.

The good news, to me, is that in fact all of these things are fruits of the Spirit! What I mean is it is so hopeful that the indwelling Holy Spirit actually wants to give me a heart of love and joy and peace and actually make me faithful. Because He is present I can be patient and kind and good. Because He is not only with me but in me, His control actually becomes to me self-control.

These are not “far-away” possibilities that I hope to attain to. That again is so OT. No! They are very present realities right in the very depths of my heart because there is a holy Spirit living there! As Jesus predicted, He is not just with me (OT). He is now in me (NT). All of these beautiful qualities are to me as close as the choice to let Him be my spirit, be my attitude, my motivation, my desires, my outlook. Alas, it is not a pill I can swallow. The battle must go on; but it is so encouraging to think that the fruit of the Spirit is already present with me. All of this is the NT miracle of Holy Spirit indwelling. “Oh that they had such a heart in them,” the Lord lamented. Now we do! Oh may we all see that this is faith; not the legalistic circus we conjure but the reality of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness in our hearts.

Back to the text, the Lord concludes the matrix with the six (Greek) words, “Against such things [there] is no law.” I note first of all that it is “such things.” In spite of the beauty of the 3x3 matrix, He did not intend for this list to be exhaustive. He did the same thing with the works of the flesh. He concluded that list with a “and the such like these.” He didn’t intend either list to be exhaustive. There are far more than nine fruits of the Spirit! Obviously, the Lord also wants to grow in us the many other Christian virtues such as hope, righteousness, justice, humility, compassion, mercy, wisdom, endurance, purity, etc. All of these things are also “fruit of the Spirit.” As I noted above, even confidence in others is something already present with me and something He actually wants to help me express. What a priceless treasure to be given this diamond with a million faces all sparkling in their own beautiful way!

And again, back to the text, He says, “Against such things [there] is no law.” In a sense, this is the point of the whole book. The Galatians want to go back and embrace law as the essence of their faith. The Lord here would have them (and us) realize you can’t make enough rules to create in people love or joy or peace. Although you might make up rules to get people to do kind things, you cannot make them kind. You can’t make people good by giving them rules of what they can and can’t wear, what kind of music they should and shouldn’t listen to, what they can and can’t drink, how often they should be in the church building, which Bible they should carry, and on and on and on. The human problem is not that we need more rules or less rules, new rules or old-fashioned rules. The problem has nothing to do with rules at all. The real problem is our heart. To make us people of love and joy and peace is not a matter of rules, it is a matter of something that can change us from the very core of our being, the very depths of our heart – and that something the Lord has provided by this amazing New Covenant gift of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, “Christ in us, the hope of glory.”

This, again, is the wonderful world of grace. Not the tutelage of the law but the fullness of grace. Not a different set of rules but blood-bought forgiveness and the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Not a “do this and live,” but a “Now you’re alive, do this!” God’s law is no longer words etched on stone tablets but the very beating of my heart. “Oh to be like Thee, blessed Redeemer, This is my constant longing and prayer; Gladly I'll forfeit all of earth's treasures, Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.”

I wish I had understood this thirty years ago, but, alas, here am I. By the grace of God I am what I am. May grace make me who I should be.

“Tis grace hath brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home!”

Galatians 5:22,23 – “Freed to Freedom”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith[fullness], ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I want to briefly record some thoughts about the last two fruits which I have translated “gentleness” and “self-control.” “Gentleness” is one place where a word study is seriously needful. The problem is that this is one of those instances where there simply is no English word to express the meaning of the Greek word “prautes.” It gets translated as gentleness, humility, mildness, and the old KJV meekness. Vine says, “The meaning of prautes is not easily expressed in English … It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting … the meekness manifested by the Lord and commended to believers is the fruit of power [not weakness].”

The word is actually expressing an idea of submissiveness. The problem for us in English is that every word we can come up with, whether gentleness, humility, mildness, meekness, or submissiveness, they all bear for us a connotation of weakness. But as Vine alludes above, this fruit is not a matter of weakness but of power. It is submissiveness but not as an expression of weakness. The word contains no hint of weakness. The best illustration I have ever heard was that of a horse. A wild, unbroken horse is a creature of stunning beauty, speed, and power. Then someone “breaks” it and what do you have? A creature of stunning beauty, speed, and power – with one difference: now it is willing to yield all of that beauty, speed, and power to another’s control. We use the word “broken” which would convey weakness, but no one ever understands a “broken” horse as something weak. That is the picture here – of a gentleness or submissiveness arising not from weakness but rather from a deliberate choice to yield ourselves to another’s control.

Jesus, of course, is the ultimate example of prautes. “… although He existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). As we are all very aware, Jesus’ death on the Cross was in no way or form a result of weakness. It was the supreme example of power submitted to the Father’s control. “Not My will, but Thine be done,” He prayed in the Garden; and when Peter thought he should take the day with his sword, Jesus chided him, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). It was not weakness that made Jesus “as a sheep before its shearers.”  It was a deliberate choice on His own part to submit Himself to the Father’s will. This is what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 11:28,29, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” There is our word prautes again, here translated “gentle.”  

You no doubt can see the problem here. There simply is no English word to express the idea of submissiveness without a connotation of weakness. There is no English word that expresses both submissiveness and power in the same word. Rather than thinking the word “gentle” (or submissive, or mild, or meek) we just have to somehow envision this picture of power deliberately yielded.

That is the idea of this fruit which I have translated “gentleness” (for lack of a better word). As I would ponder this fruit, the only thing I know to do is to keep the illustration of the horse and the example of Jesus in my mind, keep the picture in focus, and forget trying to describe it with an English word. There simply is none.

When I go to live out this fruit, this submissiveness of power, it not only expresses itself in my relationship with God, but also with the people around me. When the Lord calls us to “submit ourselves” to one another, this is what He is looking for – not the bedraggled slave who has no choice, but a person who retains all of their dignity, all of their strength and power, talents, and mental abilities, but yet is willing to defer to those around us. This shows up very specifically at work, where we are to “submit” to our bosses, and in other authority relationships, then throughout our lives as we, in love, deliberately defer to others. The Holy Spirit is not producing weak defeated drones but powerful, capable people who are willing to submit their resources to God and others – people like Jesus.

Then, of course, there is this final fruit listed, “self-control.” In this case, it means in Greek exactly what it means in English – self-control. Vine gets right to the point when he says, “…the various powers bestowed by God upon man are capable of abuse; their right use demands the controlling power of the will under the operation of the Spirit of God.” The fact is, God made human beings as creatures of amazing beauty, strength, talent, intelligence, and innovation and He placed us in a world full of opportunity. Our problem is that we so easily take all of that and turn it into evil and self-destruction. Self-control is simply the idea of holding mastery over oneself, as Paul refers to in I Cor 9:24-27:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

I doubt if any thinking person can even read the word “self-control” and not immediately be aware of many areas in our own life where this virtue is needed. In a sense, we’ve come full circle. The first fruit given was love, yet it takes a lot of self-control to be loving, it would seem. Then it is interesting that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit – hence, if I yield myself to the control of the Spirit, I get self-control. Spirit-control produces self-control! I suppose that sounds ludicrous but I know how true it is … and how hopeful it is! I am all too aware that I am my worst enemy, that I am a slave of my own evil habits. It is all too common to have to cry out, “Who shall save me from this body of death???” The good news is that I am not on my own. The more I, in fact, yield myself to the indwelling Spirit’s influence, I can actually break free from “myself,” the self that keeps me beaten down, that keeps me self-destructing in the same stupid ways over and over and over. Spirit-controlled self-control is the very freedom that Jesus promised when He said, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

These last two fruits we’ve studied, prautes and self-control are so encouraging. It is great to have the freedom to see “submissiveness” not as some kind of surrender of myself to mindless stupidity but rather to understand it as being everything God created me to be, simply yielded to Him and appropriately to others. Then, since everything it seems comes down to self-control and since I am a hopeless victim of my own lack of self-control, isn’t it awesome to know that it is actually a fruit of the Spirit – of His control??

It all spells freedom to me. I’ll come back next post and try to wrap up this study of the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22,23 – “Faith, Confidence, Faithfulness: All of the Above”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith[fullness], ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I am in the middle of studying the words themselves in this passage. I love to do word studies in the Bible. As I related earlier, it is not that the words mean anything different in Greek than they do in English, but rather that they mean so much more. Once again, a person can read any reasonably faithful translation of the Bible and find enough truth to keep them growing through a lifetime. Because the logic of the Bible is fractal, its truth is indestructible. So, are word studies essential? No. But are they rewarding? Yes!

Case in point: our next word I’ve translated “faith[fullness]”. “That’s odd.” you say, “Why the brackets?” Because our word in Greek is so full of meaning, I’m not absolutely sure exactly how to pin it down in English. Here’s what I mean: the Greek word is pistis, which is normally translated “faith” (this was in fact, the KJV translators’ choice). There is another very similar word, pistos, which is normally translated “faithfulness.” The problem is that both words’ semantic range includes the other. So was Paul here thinking of faith or faithfulness? The NIV translators went with faithfulness. I would guess they were thinking something like this, “The list is in a sense the products of faith, not faith itself. We’re looking at the fruit, not the root. Faith itself, it would seem, is the root by which the fruit of the Spirit will manifest itself in a believer’s life. Therefore, in this list Paul must be thinking of the virtue of faithfulness.”

I personally find that logic compelling. It makes more “sense” to me here to choose the translation of “faithfulness” rather than “faith” for our word pistis. I have a secular Greek/English dictionary that fully allows for the word pistis to be translated “faithfulness,” so based on my Bible lexicons and even on non-Biblical references, faithfulness is a legitimate translation.

I could quit there except that to do so violates one of my usual rules of Bible translation, which is this: Whenever I am looking at a word’s semantic range and there is not enough context to pin it down, I try to stick with its most basic meaning rather than choose from its more peripheral alternatives. I fear that, when I’m choosing a peripheral meaning without clear contextual justification, I have gone beyond translation and entered the world of interpretation. That is okay to do, but a diligent exegete needs to be very honest with himself and recognize when he’s done this. As I have said before, I believe the first task of an exegete is to clearly determine exactly what God has said and what He has not. Only then am I prepared to move on to interpretation and application. Hence my brackets. For my own work, I want to be reminded that there is a choice to be made, but that I feel the choice is a matter of interpretation, not literal translation.

Having said all of that, there are actually three (not just two!) translation/interpretations of our word pistis that I think are all valid and worthy of consideration. The most simple translation of the word is, in fact, “faith.” In this case, we would be saying that, though faith may be the root, it is also the fruit. I could buy that easily. Faith does beget faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. Peter wrote, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow by it.” Because of faith (believing God’s Word is true), I read the Bible, grasp His truths, claim His promises, and grow in faith. Faith begets faith. And Who is making that happen? The Holy Spirit, of course. So, a fruit of His presence in my heart is that I grow in faith. So, I conclude that “faith” would be a very reasonable and even logically defensible translation in this passage.

I want to inject at this point the thought that this very business of faith itself is so very important, not only as the root of my Christian walk but also as the fruit. As Peter says in his second epistle, “Through these [His own glory and goodness] He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world through lust.” His very great and precious promises. To grow is to feed on His promises and the outcome of that growth is a greater ability to feed more. When I say the fruit of the Spirit in my life is faith, what I want to mean is that it enables me more and more to really depend on God’s promises throughout my day. That includes even the power of the Holy Spirit to change my evil spirit and attitudes and thoughts. As I have related before, I “feel” like my flesh is way more powerful than God’s Spirit. It is a faith-thing to even believe He can help me stop being resentful or sullen or lustful or whatever. It is a faith-thing to believe that the Holy Spirit is present, that He is powerful, that I am free, that I can be different, that I can escape my corruption. Whatever tiny victories I may enjoy only give me greater confidence that God’s Word is true and that He will in fact help me in the future. Faith is both the root and the fruit of the Spirit’s power in my life.

All of that assumes Paul’s meaning of the word pistis is “faith.” Obviously (to me), this translation and meaning are both defensible and valuable. However, as I alluded above, there is a second possible translation/interpretation of the word, which is more the English idea of “confidence.”  Eadie comments, “[pisitis is] trust generally, trustfulness toward God and man. Confidence in God, in all His promises, and under all His dispensations; and a spirit of unsuspiciousness and generous confidence towards men, -- not moved by doubts and jealousies, nor conjuring up possible causes of distrust, and treasuring up sad lessons from precious instances of hurtful experiences.” I have to say, I find this translation/interpretation also compelling. I don’t think I have ever thought of faith as expressing itself in a confidence toward other people. I know I’ve often wondered at Paul saying things like, “I have confidence in you all …” I’ve read that and thought, “Why? I don’t see that they’ve given him any reason to have confidence.” All day every day, people certainly give us a lot of reason not to have confidence in them! But on the other hand, I know what it feels like when someone expresses confidence in me, and especially so when I’ve given every reason that they should not! I know how it inspires me when someone expresses “confidence” in me. I also know how easy it is to be suspicious and doubtful of everyone else and how that paints my world an ugly black.

Interestingly, Martin Luther held this very view: "In listing faith among the fruits of the Spirit, Paul obviously does not mean faith in Christ, but faith in men. Such faith is not suspicious of people but believes the best. Naturally the possessor of such faith will be deceived, but he lets it pass. He is ready to believe all men, but he will not trust all men. Where this virtue is lacking men are suspicious, forward, and wayward and will believe nothing nor yield to anybody. No matter how well a person says or does anything, they will find fault with it, and if you do not humor them you can never please them. It is quite impossible to get along with them. Such faith in people therefore, is quite necessary. What kind of life would this be if one person could not believe another person?"
 

In my redeemed heart, I’d rather believe the best of people, to be confident in them, to be forgiving of their failures and trustful of their future behavior. When I’m thinking that way, it feels good, even godly, inside of me. So is that actually a fruit of the Spirit – to be confident in other people?

Very interesting. I have held it as a maxim for years that when people don’t know, they assume the worst. That is why communication is of paramount importance. I need to give people the positive truth, because if I do not, they will assume something negative. If I promise someone to give them something by a certain day, I need to “keep them posted,” to assure them along the way that I am working on it, that I am intending to keep my promise. Why?  Because if I don’t they will assume the worst, that I am not, and harbor thoughts of ill-will against me. I have seen it happen too many times and know it is true in my own heart. In a sense, we could say, “It shouldn’t be that way. We shouldn’t assume the worst.” But we do. And people give us almost daily reason to conclude we were right! So how do we overcome this nascent negativity? This is a new thought for me: confidence in others is a fruit of the Spirit! Yes, I need to be “wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove.” I need to discern who are the “swine” so I don’t “cast my pearls before them.” But I also need to trust God above other people, that He is, in the end, in control even of them and how they affect me, and I need to try to harbor the love that looks for the best in others and communicates that kind of confidence in them.

I will never forget my high school track and cross-country coach (and algebra teacher), Louie Baker. Other than my parents, he was one of the few people in my young life who always believed in me. Even when I was “down” he was so confident in me. Once I was really struggling with a weird soreness in my ankle and feeling like I wasn’t pulling my weight very well on the varsity squad. He sat down beside me and showed me records he had been keeping telling me that I wasn’t “that far off” what I’d been doing. For a 16 or 17-year old kid, that was a very dark time for me. But in the middle of it, Louie Baker’s positive confidence really lit up my world. He really thought I could do it and told me so. I can totally see where the Holy Spirit would want to grow in us that kind of person – someone who instills light and hope and confidence in other peoples’ lives.

So perhaps the fruit of the spirit is faith, in the sense not only of confidence in God but also in people? The people part is a totally new thought to me. Then there is a third possibility which is the NIV translation of “faithfulness.” That faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, I have no doubt whatsoever. Whether that is the particular quality being enumerated in this list, I’m not so sure. But wow is it a total God-thing in our lives! As Paul says in II Cor 1:18, “But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’” What he’s saying is that because God is faithful, we must be too. This almost cannot be overemphasized. The whole reason we can “trust” God is because He is faithful. What that means is that He does what He said He would do. We can count on Him. We need that, desperately. But it is also true that we all depend on each other too. We build our lives, our schedules, our plans based on what other people have said they would do or what they should do.

If a store opens at 8:00, we expect to be able to go there at 8:05 and find it open. When we hire a man to check our furnace, we assume he is being thorough and it won’t quit on us on the first cold Friday night. When someone tells us to meet them at a particular time and place, we expect them to be there. When someone doesn’t do what they said or what they should, when they’re “unfaithful,” it really lets us down, wastes our time, and might even cause us a lot of problems. For a Christian, it is absolutely paramount that we become people of our word, people who can be counted on to do what we said we’d do when we said we’d do it, to do the things that are expected of us.

Paul says of workers in Titus 2:9,10, “Teach workers to … show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” The old KJV called it “adorning the Gospel.” Don’t miss his point: Our faithfulness [at work!] adorns the Gospel(!). People live in a world of let-downs, of people who fail and disappoint them. He wants us to be living portraits of faithfulness, as you and I go through the humdrum of our everyday lives at work, at home, at the grocery store, at our kids’ track meet.  Once again, faith is the root of it all. Faith in God is counting on His faithfulness. He is faithful to us. We need to be faithful to others. Somehow (and perhaps it is simply miraculous), God wants to adorn His gospel with our faithfulness, He wants to “make it attractive,” somehow He wants to engender faith in people’s hearts as they observe faithfulness in us. We hold this treasure in earthen vessels – but we do hold it!

Once again, I do not doubt whatsoever that faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, something that will grow in people He indwells. Whether that is the particular thought Paul had in mind here, I don’t know. Was he thinking of faith particularly in God (probably the most basic and defensible understanding of the word pistis here)? Or was he thinking of faith as a confidence not only in God but also in people, as a form of love and inspiration to them? Or was he thinking of faithfulness, that character quality which particularly in the context of our work is specifically said to “adorn the Gospel”?

One last exegetical observation I’d like to make is to note that, while “love” is at the head of the list, our word “pistis” (faith, confidence, or faithfulness) is the 7^th word in the list. Perhaps that wasn’t intended to be significant, but then again, in a perfect 3x3 matrix of nine fruits, embedded in a perfect 3x7 matrix of 21 words, I at least think that is noteworthy. The passage is as orderly as a well-cut diamond. I suspect every single face is significant. Whatever the Lord particularly meant with “pistis” here, it is something to pause and consider carefully.

Bottom-line, I guess is to say that you could convince me of any one of the three translations. They’re all Biblical and they’re all of paramount importance. I think I’ll just conclude by saying:

Lord, may Your Spirit in me give me faith not only as a root but also a fruit. May even the tiniest victories of faith in my evil heart only serve to increase my faith. May Your great and precious promises be ever more and more my portion, both the root and fruit of all I do. But help me too to learn how to have a Holy Spirit confidence in others, a confidence that keeps my eyes open, yet allows me to be to others a source of light and inspiration in their too often dark, doubtful world. Then please help me too to be faithful. Help me to be a man of my word, to be careful what I promise, then diligent to do what I said. Help me to understand more and more what I “should be,” what ways others depend on me, and help me to be found faithful at it, that the world might somehow know that You are faithful and worthy of their faith.

Lord, I am not sure which idea you had in mind when you moved Paul to write that “pistis” is a fruit of the Spirit. God give me “all of the above.”