The Fruit of the Spirit I am not a minister and I’ve never
been to seminary, but I’ve been very curious about the fruit of the Spirit, and
decided to share what I’ve learned from the Bible about exactly what the
phrase, “the fruit of the Spirit,” means.
For the longest time I thought the “fruit”
were rewards. For example, Jesus stated at the end of the parable of the sower
and the seed in Matthew 13:23: But he who received seed on the good ground is
he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces:
some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Did that mean some received one hundred blessings, thirty thousand dollars? A better house? Better health? A
longer life? Better relationships?
“Later, I thought that I was “bearing fruit”
when friends accepted my invitation to come to church. I was really excited and
happy about that, actually thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’m bearing fruit!” When
those people came a couple of times and didn’t come back, I was deflated and
realized that couldn’t mean what the “fruit of the Spirit was all about.
I see now, after
reading Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,
Against such there is no law. The original King James Version says, “love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness faith, meekness, temperance.’ Having
the attributes of the Spirit spelled out in this way, I see that both of the
above interpretations: one of rewards, the other of trying to bring people into
the church was both self-centered. Amazingly, however, and this is due to the
goodness and generosity of God, the real fruit of the Spirit can actually lead
to actual life rewards and really leading people into the fellowship of faith.
I now think that
the fruit of the Spirit are actually attributes of God Himself that He deposits
into us when we accept His great gift of salvation. Just as we don’t become
converted overnight when we receive Christ, (although we actually do in the spiritual realm,) we don’t always
immediately feel or appear as though we’ve received these attributes until
we’ve been on our journey for a while. Usually, we look back and think, “Wow I
remember when I used to get so mad when such and such happened, now I don’t.
I’ve really changed.” I don’t think that it’s something we can consciously
strive for ourselves; I think that God does the work because it’s His intention
for us to conform to the image of Jesus.
