The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-26)
Don't think of an elephant. Whatever you do, DO NOT think of an elephant with big floppy ears, a long trunk, and hair like mine. Are you thinking about an elephant? I told you not to think about an elephant, but here you are thinking all about an elephant. It's hard not to think of something when we repeatedly put it in our minds. Last Sunday night, we were studying through the book of Galatians when we came upon this text.
Galatians 5:16 (ESV) --- 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
This text stands out to me because I would often read over it and misread it. I would think that it says, "Walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh." Is that what that is saying? No. Paul is not telling the Galatians not to gratify the desires of the flesh. We tell ourselves that a lot, don't we? We think negatively whenever we read or hear a lesson on a particular sin we are guilty of. We think, "Stop doing that!" or "If I don't stop doing that, God's not going to love me anymore." So we might tell ourselves periodically throughout the day, "Don't think lustful thoughts," "Don't think about what those people said about you," "Don't think about that new car you are idolizing," etc. Does anyone get a hyper-critical voice ringing in your head like that? That wears us down and fills our brains with nonsense.
But this text says, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." Do you see how Paul has shifted the focus to the positive? Instead of repeatedly saying, "Don't think of an elephant." Paul says, "Think about God's will, and you will not think about sin."
Today, I want us to focus on God's will as we study the fruit of the Spirit together. I don't think there is a lesson that has helped me more in the last year than this one. Let's read the text together and consider what it says.
The Fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 5:22--25 (ESV) --- 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
It would be easy for us to jump right into the list Paul gives and think, "I have to do all of these things." But notice the words leading up to the list first. Paul says, "The fruit of the Spirit is." What does that mean? Fruit represents something produced on a tree or plant. Some people call these the fruits of the Spirit, but there aren't multiple fruits. There is only one fruit that the Spirit produces, and this list describes that fruit.
Notice that this is like any fruit we would try to produce ourselves. We cannot put a seed in the ground and cause it to grow. That will never happen. We can cultivate it and water it, but we cannot make it produce the fruit we desire. It doesn't matter how hard we try to make it grow in a short time. It will not grow until it is ready to grow. When it does grow, it won't produce fruit until it's the season for fruit bearing.
So, as we look at this list, we need to understand that these things will not develop in our lives because we make them grow and develop. They are the result of us doing something else. If you have spent your life trying to make these things happen, it's about as productive as yelling at a seed in the ground. The Spirit must produce these things.
Does that mean that we kick back and let the Spirit work? No. A lack of cultivation and watering will lead to the seed's death. Satan will get his deceptions in there and cause the seed to be choked out by thorns or burned up by the heat. That means we must devote ourselves to spiritual things. We must endure in spiritual things. The transformation doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. We don't plant the seed and forget it. We have to cultivate our hearts and water them often. We need devotion to Bible study, assemblies, singings, evangelism, meditation on God's word, and prayer. If we really want to put on these things and be more like Christ. That's how we do it.
List
Now, let's look at these different attributes that the Spirit produces when we devote ourselves to spiritual things.
Love
The first is love. Of course, love would be a natural outcome of understanding God. The more we understand what he has done for us, the more we want to love him and those he loves. Don't we enjoy love and desire love? Since we come out of the womb, we want to experience love. Love draws us to people, and it provides a sense of satisfaction in our souls when someone we love loves us in return. In one sense, love is an internal feeling of adoration or affection. In another sense, love is something external we show someone by doing things for them.
God's Spirit brings us to the point where we can provide selfless love for others, even those we don't know or those we know don't deserve it. The love that God exemplifies for us becomes our love. Our hearts grow warm toward our brethren and toward those who are rejected. We want to serve them and care for them.
As a gospel-centered community, we feel a love from others that we can't get from the world. This spiritual family wants to treat us better than our physical families do. I know multiple people who have taken in brethren whose families sought to destroy them. Sometimes, they give them a car, a job, and three meals daily. The sacrificial love of brethren is astounding. Is this kind of love inside of us? How do we get that kind of love? We have to devote ourselves to spiritual things.
Joy
Joy is something that we love. What brings you the most joy in life? What gives you a profound sense of excitement and satisfaction? That's what I think of when I think of joy. It's not just temporary happiness based on our circumstances. We have a deeply rooted sense because something extraordinary is true for us. If we have a loving wife or loving and faithful children, I'm sure that gives us joy.
But these are ultimately very temporary things. The Spirit teaches us about the promises of God and fills us with joy that goes beyond this world. Do you have a joy that goes beyond the temporary things in this world? Devotion to spiritual things will produce this joy in your heart.
Peace
For those of us with young children, we love peace and quiet at our house. But like the temper tantrums of a small child, our conscience screams at us when we are guilty of sin. This is what Paul wants us to have peace from. His ministry is a ministry of reconciliation. He wants us to have peace in our relationship with God, saying, "No matter what I've done in the past, God is willing to forgive and love even me."
Do you have this peace in your life, or are you constantly anxious about your relationship with God? Maybe you are more anxious about losing the things in this world. God wants you to grow out of that. The Spirit helps us overcome those fears and anxieties.
Patience
Patience is a willingness to suffer with people and circumstances that are not ideal or are horrible. A lack of patience is something prevalent in us from a young age. We want it in people around us as we make mistakes, but we struggle to have it in ourselves. We get frustrated when things don't go as we want them to.
A corresponding word to patience is long-suffering. Think about that. To be patient, we must be willing to suffer with those around us who aren't meeting God's standards. We will never develop this kind of mindset alone. We might be able to develop some patience on our own, but our patience multiplies when we understand how patient God has been toward us. He sees all of our failures and sins. Yet, he does not destroy us or punish us. He is patient with us because he knows our frame. The more we understand his patience, the easier it is for us to be patient and long-suffering toward those who don't deserve it.
Kindness
This represents doing good things toward other people. We love to see this in people around us. We love to experience an act of kindness as we go through life. It can be small, like inviting someone out to lunch or helping someone who needs help while everyone else stares. We become more kind as we consider the tremendous act of kindness shown toward us in the coming and dying of Christ.
Goodness
Goodness is being pure and innocent in matters of wrongdoing. We all like to consider ourselves good. However, we often justify letting go of our goodness to seek vengeance. Maybe our enemies have done evil things to hurt us. But we need to understand that our consistent innocence shines brightly and shames the foolishness of ignorant people. The Spirit teaches us that. The more focused we are on spiritual things, the easier it is to let go of vengeful anger and stubborn pride.
Faithfulness
To be faithful is to have loyal love and steadfastness. We understand the idea of faithfulness when we look at the ideal marriage relationship. We desire faithfulness. We don't want people to disappear or betray us when things are hard. We want them to be faithful and act in our best interest. This applies outside of marriage. We want this to happen in our friendships.
But faithfulness is primarily important for our relationship with God. He wants us to be faithful to what is good and right. Ultimately he wants us to be faithful to God's will. How is that going to happen? Is it because we work hard at being faithful?
Our tendency may be to become unstable and double-minded. We may have adulterous hearts. God's faithful love has to have enough of an impact on our hearts to change us.
Gentleness
Isn't gentleness just a sign of weakness? Being gentle is to be tender and compassionate. This might be easy for us to do when something is delicate, and we don't want to break it, but it's hard to do with people. If someone attacks us or presses our buttons, the last thing we want to do is be gentle. But a harsh attitude is something we never want to face. We hope for mercy and grace if we make a mistake or know that we act wickedly. We hope they will be gentle towards us even though we are often harsh and unloving.
The Spirit reveals Jesus to us as the most tender and gentle. He would not break a bruised reed. It's hard for us to be gentle when we are flooded with emotions. We struggle to do this independently, but God is creating gentleness inside us.
Self-Control
All of these ideas point to self-control. Godliness is essentially self-control. It is overcoming the emotional and physical pull toward sin. Satan is constantly trying to tempt us. He keeps telling us just to let it go for a moment. It's too much of a burden for you to hold your natural self back. But the Spirit teaches us that it feels better to overcome these feelings and emotions that control you.
Jesus has shown us tremendous self-control. He has accomplished his mission of reconciling us to God by suffering on the cross without reviling or cursing those who did it. He was completely innocent, but he endured malice and spite, as we have never experienced in our lives. The Spirit reveals Jesus' being tempted so that we will endure temptations.
Do You Want To Be Like Christ?
When we look at a list like this, we know that our tendency has always been to gratify the desires of our flesh, and we might think, "I can't help it!" But those who "walk by the Spirit WILL NOT gratify the desires of the flesh." The Spirit has been poured out so that we can walk by the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, and live by the Spirit. To do this, we must devote ourselves to spiritual things. We must set our minds on things above and not on things of this world.
Galatians 5:24 (ESV) --- 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
To belong to Christ means that we have put the old way of life to death. We have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. That is not who we are anymore, and that is not who we ever want to be again.
Galatians 5:26 (ESV) --- 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
The last words here are fascinating. Why does he mention becoming conceited? To be conceited is to be full of yourself. It means that you love yourself instead of loving God. Isn't that ultimately the choice we have to make? Who are we going to love more, ourselves or God? If we choose to love ourselves, we will provoke and envy each other. We will bite and devour one another. The works of the flesh will be evident.