Fruit of the Spirit. (5.22-26)

by Kent Leslie ✉️

Same as with works of the flesh, I could go into tons of detail about each fruit. Another time.

One thing you should immediately notice is that all these fruits, all these character traits—love, joy, peace, etc.—are character traits of God. The Holy Spirit is God. This is who God is. This is what following the Spirit does to us: When he’s living in us, overflowing out of us, this is what he makes us. Our character is gonna transform into God’s character.

Unless we’re not following him; then we’re not gonna change so much. Or unless we’re following him off and on, or badly; then the change is gonna be slow. The more we follow the Spirit, the more we act like the Spirit.

I also gotta remind you: Jesus is also God, and these are character traits of Jesus. He has the Holy Spirit without measure, [Jn 3.34] and the Holy Spirit in his life overflowed in the very same way. In fact, I will go so far as to say if we ever hear an interpretation of Jesus where he’s not loving, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled, it’s wrong.

And I’ve heard such interpretations. Especially End Times interpretations. But if Jesus, of all people, doesn’t display fruit of the Spirit, the very same fruit he expects us to display, it’s wrong.

The law is not against such things. [Ga 5.23] Not surprisingly, we’re gonna see legalists who think it’s okay to not exhibit the Spirit’s fruit—not be loving, joyful, peaceful, etc.—because they gotta be strict. And y’know, if they were really pursuing God, we should see fruit in them as well as all the legalism. But we don’t. Wonder why. (Nah, I don’t really wonder why.)

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh. [Ga 5.24] There are those Christians who claim the Spirit’s fruit is automatic; that it just happens once we become Christian. We used to be selfish pagans, but then we came to Jesus, a switch got flipped in our spirit, and now we’re loving, joyful, peaceful, etc.

And those people are seriously delusional. Yeah okay, there are exceptions. Some Christians do radically change once they come to Jesus. But you’ll notice the people who change so drastically, are people who were huge sinners before Jesus—who immediately realized they had to make a radical lifestyle change, and started following the Spirit right away. On the other hand, when we have someone whose lifestyle is already sorta socially acceptable, they don’t feel they need to make a lot of changes, or need the Spirit’s correction so much. So they don’t listen to him as much as they ought, don’t change as quickly, and grow good fruit way slower than they should.

Anyway, we know good fruit isn’t just an automatic thing, because Paul says we “have crucified the flesh.” We, not the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is definitely here to help, but we still gotta do some work!

If we live by the Spirit, [Ga 5.25] as we claim, let’s keep in step with the Spirit. Not get conceited, not provoking one another, not envying one another. [Ga 5.26]

We shouldn’t see Christians bragging about how spiritual they now are. We shouldn’t see Christians trying to make each other angry, which is a work of the flesh. [Ga 5.20] I hear a lot of angry Christians trying to rile the rest of us up, especially in election years: “Did you hear what that politician said?” or “Do you know what they’re teaching in the public schools now?” Like James said in his letter, human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. [Jm 1.20]

Angry Christians are fleshly. They’re likewise trying to trigger our flesh—our self-preservation instinct, which our haywire sin nature uses to preserve more than just ourselves from harm; it tries to preserve all the things in this world that we like. Whether we oughta preserve them or not.

We gotta fight our knee-jerk reactions, and turn to the Holy Spirit instead. And remember his response to things is gonna be—you know the list—loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. If it’s not—if the message you think you got from the Spirit is, “Yeah, I hate that stuff too, go fight ’em!”—we know that’s not really the Spirit. That’s us. That’s our fleshly brains making up a message from him. (Or a devil, but the devil doesn’t have to tempt a person who’s so very eager to follow their inner chimpanzee.)

So let’s resist being so easily swayed. Really hard to do sometimes! But we always have the Holy Spirit to help us.