But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance: Galatians 5:22–23, King James Version (KJV)
Many of us grew up in churches where our Sunday school teachers did their best to explain this verse, and the best and most experienced one would be the diagrammatic depiction where the Holy Spirit is shown as a tree with nine different fruits like this:
This is a commendable effort. I mean the fact that we are meant to produce each of these fruits in our lives is right enough, but that is not a revelation we should live by concerning the fruit of the Spirit.
Why?
How can a tree grow nine different types of fruit?
It is impossible; even the Bible says a tree cannot produce two different kinds of fruits, although the Bible was referring to a good fruit and an evil one. But even on the tree with good fruits, we don’t see a good, ripped orange, apple, and banana on one of them.
We can easily identify why the text in Galatians 5:22 was not talking about a varying number of fruits because the text did not say “the fruits of the Spirit are…” suggesting plurality, but “the fruit of the Spirit is…” which means there is one fruit the Spirit produces.
And like any other fruit, this one also contains multiple vitamins. So, through the Spirit, a believer produces a type of fruit, and that fruit has such and such vitamins, nutrients, or minerals as listed in Galatians 5:22.
Why is it dangerous to stick with the former illustration?
Believing that there are several fruits a Christian should produce makes people think they can be permitted to bask in joy and slack in love, have mountain-moving faith but not tolerate others, or struggle with meekness but claim to be patient.
It breeds lopsided believers. So, the balance must be maintained, and this is achieved by expecting all of these characteristics from this one fruit. Two different watermelons cannot produce different types of nutrients; because their compositions are the same, so do all who produce the fruit of the spirit.
Are there nine or twelve products of the fruit?
There is this controversy as to whether the effects of the fruits of the spirit are either twelve or nine. They both have compelling arguments that are based on manuscripts and translations, and apologetics could agree otherwise.
But my point here is gleaned from this:
Augustine's commentary on Galatians 5:25–26 says, "The Apostle had no intention of teaching us how many [either work of the flesh or fruit of the Spirit] there are, but to show how the former should be avoided and the latter sought after."
So taking our time to understand these characteristics of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and living them out in our lives is a more spiritually rewarding endeavor than confirming whether the number is this or that.
Starting with love, we are going to get wiser about what these nine characteristics entail and how we can live them out.
See you on the next one, Blessings.
THIS IS REALLY GOOD!
Really.