The Fruit of the Spirit

The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-26

“For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

A few years back I tried to be part of a bible study that was put on by the church I attended. It was on the Fruits of the Spirit and examining ourselves to see where we were lacking fruit in our lives. I did not finish it, in fact I didn’t get past the second chapter. I contribute that to my lack of interest at the time which was fueled by my complete immaturity. I didn’t believe that I needed many lessons on the Fruits of the Spirit. I have already taken the secular Meyers-Briggs personality tests. I knew where I shined and where I didn’t. What I was hearing was a lesson on how to be more (insert virtue of choice here) and how to create that in myself. I am pleased to say that I have grown out of that ditch and by maturity, issued by God himself, have come to a place of understanding. However, after all my learning, I still couldn’t understand (immature or not) why it was, that what I had heard, was that I could create any of these attributes in myself. Until I came across the mighty question of free-will. I can now see that I was being taught from a perspective of theology that supports a road map to salvation based on a persons ability to freely choose God. I no longer question the importance of the Fruits of the Spirit. But I also now fully understand the dynamic of the parties involved. When I was able to do that, I was able to see the power of the Spirit in these attributes, but only after I came to a full understanding of the natures of the wills involved and only after I understood the relationship between these wills. SO, with that said, I am compelled to write about my journey from free-will to pre-destination, a journey I did not know I was on. I share this only to plant the seed for anyone who might be on the same journey and do not know it as I did not.

The passage above is used a lot. So much so that it seems to me that a lot of us are probably desensitized to its meaning. My problem is that I do not believe it is taught properly. Actually, I have a hard time with the way the gospel is taught by many teachers. It seems to me that the first focus is on the good things of the gospel, and there should be a ton of that taught. But how can something be good for me if I do not know that I need it. The only way that I can understand that I need something is to be shown that I don’t have it in the first place. So, instead of focusing on the good stuff in this particular passage, lets just take some time to read it in its entirety and see what happens. This passage starts back at verse 16 and this is where we will pick it up.

Galatians 5:16-21

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.”

“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

“For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

I broke it up into four sections. I did this to help us with our ability to organize the dissection of the scripture. We start with the first section that explains to us the relational dynamic of the two wills.

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. “

It is obvious that there are two separate entities here. They are identified as “sinful nature” and “the will of the Spirit”. They are assigned as human flesh (heart, mind and soul) or the will of man and the Holy Spirit (a power of the Trinity of the Godhead) or the will of God. They are polar opposites of each other, “for the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature”. They cannot get along, “They are in conflict with each other”. Here is the sentence that so many will glaze over “so that you do not do what you want”. This sentence is key. It is key because it explains the limitations of each will and defines the boundaries of each will. Here is why we “do not do what we want” and why the philosophy of mans free-will to choose God and subsequently good cannot be. If God is all things good and His spirit is on one end of the spectrum, than human will, being the opposite and in conflict with the Spirit is on the opposite end at a position of all things bad or as the bible tells us, evil. Think of two polarized magnets, no matter how hard you try to connect them, they resist each other. When something is in conflict with something else it is because it is immovable from its position. Here we have something good that cannot shift to bad and something bad that cannot shift to good. Here is the light at the end of the tunnel, “but if you are led by the spirit”. This defines the power of the spirit to be able to lead or control the human vessel. It does not compromise and meet the sinful nature in the middle but controls and leads the man by overpowering the sinful nature. It is the stronger of the two wills. And the last part, “you are not under the law”. What does that mean? And what law is Paul talking about? First the law Paul is referring to is the Mosaic Law, or the law of the Ten Commandments. Second, we have defined that the Spirit is the Holy Spirit or God himself. Therefore someone who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit or “led by the Spirit”, cannot be under the law because God himself cannot be under the law. God is the law. That does not mean any choice we make within the boundaries of our sinful nature are above the law once we claim to be saved but rather the actions and choices made by moving of the Holy Spirit will be of God himself.

“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

So we have previously established that there are two wills at battle in the flesh of man, sinful nature and the Holy Spirit. Here we are defining what the sinful nature looks like. The true attributes of the man without God. I do not know about you but I can just glance at these and instantly see a handful of the ones I like to use most starring at me. And to make it worse, this is an incomplete list. There are many other references that point out what a person in their sinful nature looks like. Not to mention that when this list is compared to the Ten Commandments many of them are violations in varying degrees. We are not measuring ourselves against the modern standard of the “golden rule” to define ourselves as “good people”. We are using Gods standards which are not the worlds. So when evaluating these characteristics in comparison to the law we see that we aren’t even very “good people”. God says that anyone who hates his brother has committed murder in his heart (1 John 3:15) and that any man who lusts after a women with his eyes has committed adultery. Jealousy and envy are forms of coveting your neighbor’s house, ox, spouse, etc. The last part of this section gives us a warning and it is not to be taken like a mother who threatens to spank and never does. It is a warning from God through Paul to let us, and the church in Galatia, know that it will be evident who is submitted to the Holy Spirit and who is not. If the Holy Spirit is the stronger of the two wills then it will be the most visual nature. With that, the warning itself states that anyone who exhibits the acts of the flesh (consistently) will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is pretty loud and clear and doesn’t need any elaboration. Live in the flesh and burn in hell.

“For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

This also is not a complete list of Spirit virtues and it also does not need much commentary. They are what they are. What we do need to recognize is that the fruits of the Spirit belong to the Spirit alone. The sinful nature is not capable of owning these attributes so when you see them in yourself and when you see them in others you are getting to see the Holy Spirit in the flesh. The second part of understanding the fruits is to come to a realization that you cannot create or nurture these characteristics in the human nature. If you have any of these that come naturally, they are a gift of the Holy Spirit. Nothing else, nothing less, pure and simple. There is no law against these things because, to reiterate, God is the law.

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” tells us that we are no longer enslaved to our sinful nature. It is still there but it cannot control us anymore. The ability to do that has been gifted to us by God. “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit” and since it has been given to us by God, let us submit to its presence and nurture the Spirit. Let us nurture it in all of the ways that God has given us to nurture it. “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” Paul is warning us of other fleshly attributes that are a result of misunderstanding the presence of the Holy Spirit in our being. These additional characteristics happen when we allow our natural sinful pride to place a higher importance on some virtues over other virtues. Since the fruits are a gift of God, there can be nothing to become conceited about, provoking of others and envying of what we do not have because we have nothing to do with not only which ones God gives us but their presence at all.

So here it is wrapped up in summary:

1.There are two wills present, the sinful nature and the Holy Spirit.

2.They are constantly at battle.

3.We cannot improve our sinful nature, nor can we choose or make choices that are outside the boundaries of our sinful nature i.e. go from bad to good.

4.The description of the acts of the sinful nature shows that it is motivated out of self-preservation.

5.The Holy Spirit cannot make choices against its good nature i.e. go from good to bad.

6.The description of the virtues of the Holy Spirit shows that it is calming and peaceful.

7.The presence of any good virtue is a gift from the Holy Spirit himself.

8.When indwelt with the Spirit, it is our job to care for it, feed it and nurture it or institute our “free-will” to be a proper host to the Spirit.

9.We need to remember to keep perspective that any gift we might have from God is assigned by his mercy alone.

Now I know. Now I can see. I cannot create the virtues of the Spirit in myself. I do not have the capability to create, only God does. I do not have the free-will to choose good (by Gods definition of good, not mans). I do not have the free-will to choose God. I cannot have free-will to choose between different options because my only option is my sinful nature. It is by the presence of the Holy Spirit in me that I am granted “free-will” because it is by the power of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing me to show me that I have options. So, in essence, free-will itself, is a gift from God as well. I never owned it to begin with.