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.”

Galatians 5:22,23 – Written on Our Hearts

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.

As I studied this passage, I of course had to look into the meanings of the words. As is often the case, the Greek words don’t mean anything different than what is presented in English, but they mean so much more. Words are not usually technical things; they’re actually pictures. I suppose if I use the word “one,” as in “one house” I may mean nothing more than to communicate that there was one single house as opposed to many. That’s being technical and it probably wouldn’t matter if I spoke in English or Greek or … Chinese for that matter. One means one. But, to use words like love and joy and peace, the speaker always has a picture in his mind, not something technical but rather something expressive, a painting of sorts, something his own heart sees clearly but then is endeavoring to communicate with words. The person hearing or reading those words may actually comprehend that picture or they may not, depending on their own personal perceptions of the words. Perhaps the problem is least an issue say within a close family or between two long-standing co-workers. But the less context shared between the speaker and the hearer, the more likely they understand the words differently, to whatever extent. This becomes a challenge when suddenly we are trying to translate words expressed 2000 years ago in another language and in a totally different culture, as we must do with Bible work. Once again, my experience has been to find not that the words mean anything different, just so much more. Love is certainly love in any language. But even in English it can mean so much more. In English, we tend, I think, to depend on context to try to communicate the fullness of the picture we try to paint. If we’re speaking of a mother’s love for her baby, we all know that is something different than a husband’s love for his wife, or a brother’s love for his sister, or a man’s love for his new Corvette, etc. Often times in Greek or Hebrew, they may actually have different words to do the painting. I’m reminded of the Eskimos who had like 26 different words for “snow.”

I guess my bottom line is just to express the value of word-studies. Are they absolutely necessary? No. People can read their Bible in any reasonably faithful translation and spend their entire lives growing on what they’ve read. But for a person who loves to dig and study, there is certainly a treasure-trove of delightful discoveries awaiting them as they would try to grasp the fullness of the pictures the ancient authors sought to paint. I feel that way even with these nine seemingly simple “fruits” of the Spirit. Each word is a jewel worthy of an entire study in itself. In fact, I may come back and do such a study. For now, I will [try to] content myself with recording a few of my observations made as I perused the words in this study.

In the last post, I noted that love, joy, and peace are special treasures from Jesus Himself. The words themselves I think mean pretty much the same in English as they do in Greek, with the understanding that they are Jesus-gifts. What I mean is that “peace” is in Greek the same calmness and serenity it means in English, but we have to add the thought as Jesus said, “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives …” We can (for now) leave the study of these three precious jewels, love, joy, and peace, if we understand we’re talking about something way deeper than this world offers, and something that grows out of our intimacy with the Lord. They are very specifically His love, His joy, and His peace. He is the vine, we are the branches, if we abide in the vine, the fruit we’ll bear is love and joy and peace – His love and joy and peace.

The word patience is again, in a sense, the same in either Greek or English, but, on the other hand, it is instructive to realize that there are two Greek words which get translated “patience.” Our word is makrothumia, while the other is hupomone. The first is more literally being “long-fused,” while the second is more literally “endurance.” The first (our word here) paints a picture of person who doesn’t blow off easily. It is the virtue of encountering something adverse and being able to calmly, deliberately decide on the most appropriate response. The second word paints a picture more specifically of the ability to bear the adversity for a long period of time, keeping up one’s own composure, love, joy, peace, kindness, etc., in spite of the adversity in our own life. Certainly, patience in either language includes both ideas, of being long-fused and of bearing up under adversity, but it is of interest in our present passage that the fruit of the Spirit here presented is that of being “long-fused.” The Holy Spirit’s presence in our heart and control over our lives will help us more and more be “long-fused” people who don’t “fly off the handle” at every little irritation, who can compose themselves and respond deliberately to our perceived adversities.

The next two words I have translated “kindness” and “goodness.” I can’t help but note that these words have considerable overlap to the point where the lexicons and translators end up producing pretty much the same list of English words for both. But I personally think there is a notable distinction between the two. The base word for kindness actually refers to something useful, beneficial, or favorable. It includes the idea of action. The word translated “goodness” is just that, goodness – it refers not so much to the actions produced but to the nature of the thing producing them. Goodness is simply the virtue of being “good.” As Jesus said, “A good man, produces good things out of the goodness in his heart.” Kindness is those “good things.” The Holy Spirit helps us to be good, to choose to think thoughts which are true and lovely and of good report, so that what’s going on “inside of me” is actually goodness (as opposed to the endless rottenness I’m prone to). But then He also helps us to express that goodness in acts of kindness.

As good people often point out, everyone we meet is bearing some kind of burden. If we allow the Holy Spirit to help us be good (to be thinking loving, compassionate thoughts), then He also helps us to choose deliberately to speak kindly to store clerks, to the drones who handle phone calls for the health insurance company, to the dental assistant, even to the policeman handing us a ticket. The Holy Spirit also wants to help us see the needs people have which we may actually be able to meet, whether they be those little acts of kindness (like an encouraging note), or holding the door for a young mother with her arms full, offering someone to borrow our ladder, or, if we have the means, paying someone’s child’s way through college(!). Goodness and the kindness it incurs change how we treat everyone from our spouse and children all the way to the nameless strangers we pass in the store. Our world is full of needs. Jesus wants to raise up good people who see those needs and will be His hands and feet (and mouth) to touch those lives with His love. Of ourselves we’re too selfish to ever pull it off, too consumed with our own petty issues and affronts. But Jesus put His Holy Spirit in our hearts to make goodness and kindness a growing reality in our lives.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness – six virtues which in themselves transform us from the proud, angry, selfish, wounded buffoons we are in ourselves and instead allow us to be the very presence of Jesus Himself in our world. There are three more to take up in my next post!

Oh, may God help true believers (starting with this one) to stop camping on all the muckety-muck we mistakenly call faith, and actually allow Him to cultivate in us genuine Holy Spirit fruit. Before the world around us “hears” the Gospel, may they first “see” it written on our hearts.