Love As Fruit

Galatians 5:22 - 23 

Galatians 5:22 – 23 is one of the classic biblical texts on the ‘essence of love’.   In most translations, (as in the Revised NIV which we read from for this service), the text goes like this:  “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  This is very familiar territory to most of us. You might even have this passage committed to memory, and in your quiet times with God, we may recall these important words as a reminder to ourselves of what sort of person God is trying to make of us.  (And that’s a good thing, for sure!) 

When we read this, it seems pretty clear: Paul gives us nine different terms to describe the fruit of the Spirit.  One of these is ‘love’, another is ‘joy’, another ‘peace’, and so on.  This is by far the most common understanding of the text.

Christian Swartz, in his book ‘The Colors of Love’ points out, however, that this interpretation doesn’t seem to be consistent with what we read throughout the rest of the Bible concerning the nature of love.  He says, “It certainly makes sense to understand virtues like gentleness and faithfulness as distinct from each other, but to understand love as just one more of these virtues, on the same order as gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, and peace, doesn’t seem to do it justice.  Doesn’t love, as it is described in the Bible, already contain all of these aspects?”[1]

He then offers a different way to approach this passage.  You may already know that the original Greek text of the New Testament (like the Hebrew text of the Old Testament) contains no punctuation marks of any kind.  There are no commas, or periods, or exclamation points, or whatever. And so all of the punctuation that we find in our translations has been added by the translators, and so they are themselves interpretations.  That’s why sometimes you might notice that in one translation, a sentence may start at the end of a previous verse, and in another translation, that sentence begins at the beginning of a verse. 

Well, the verse numbers, too, are later additions to the text. 

So, grammatically speaking, it is perfectly legitimate to change punctuations, when it makes sense to do that in the context. 

Along that line, Swartz offers a suggestion for this passage concerning the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.  Instead of putting a comma after the word ‘love’ – which would then simply list ‘love’ as one of the fruits of the Spirit among nine; he suggest that we could just as easily place a colon.  In that case, the passage reads like this -  “The fruit of the Spirit is love,” followed by a colon and then eight distinguishing characteristics of love.  This would be something like in English, writing, “i.e.”.  Following the colon we find eight different expressions of love. 

Now, this is not an earth shattering observation, but it does makes sense, and it does change a little bit the interpretation of this important passage.  In short, it would be saying that there aren’t nine different fruits, one of which is love.  But rather, there is one fruit of the Spirit, love, and the richness of this concept can be described with a collection of eight different terms.  This fits well into the ‘all-encompassing’ nature of God’s love as described in the Scripture as we’ve been seeing over the past weeks.

Let’s be sure we understand, too, the difference between the “Fruit of the Spirit” and the “Gifts of the Spirit”.  Spiritual gifts are special abilities that the Holy Spirit gives to each believer to enable us to do some specific task within the Body of Christ –i.e., the Church.  The Bible is very clear that while every believer has at least one gift, no one has all of them!  (This is why every member of a local church has such value – we are all needed, as pieces in a puzzle, or a wonderful spiritual mosaic – to make up the complete picture that God wants for us.)

Love is not a spiritual gift. It is the fruit of the Spirit.  And again, the Bible is clear that while gifts are distributed among the church and no one has them all, when it comes to fruit – every Christian is expected to express all aspects of this fruit in our lives.  We’ve been talking about the three ‘colors’ of love – that generally speaking, love is expressed in the Bible in three basic categories – Justice, Truth, and Grace.  And we’ve been seeing again and again, that we can’t choose which of these we like, love is colored by all three, all the time.

Similarly, as far as the fruit of the Spirit is concerned, we can’t pick out some elements and put others aside.  We are called by Christ Jesus to love each other.  And here in Galatians 5 is another description of what that love looks like.

“Fruit” is what happens when the Holy Spirit takes control of a person and we are filled with God’s love.  We love – because he first loved us.  And as we’ve been looking at this for six weeks, (this is the last of this series) I hope you have been getting this point:  these aren’t just ideals.   We are called, commanded (and equipped) to do this, to actually put love into action.  And whenever Christians get serious about doing the things that Jesus told us to do, well, stand back! 

As we looked at last week, God’s love is not like the popular notion of ‘feeling based love.’  God’s love is a radical, earth shaking, counter-cultural, eye-popping kind of love. God’s love in action through God’s children can’t be explained away by the world.  It makes a point.  It is the one thing that will set us apart from every one else on this earth, and give glory to God.  When we love with God’s love – i.e., just as he taught us to.

Let me say it again:  we have been called and equipped to show the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.  All of us, all of the time. All the fruit: “Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

One of the tenants of Natural Church Development (as many of you know, who were at one of the seminars that we held a couple of weeks ago) is that the way to best expedite growth in a church is to discover what your weakest area is, and then, very intentionally, work on that area.  To improve it. We live in a culture that tells us to do the opposite – to ‘accentuate the positive’, to maximize our strengths’, forget your ‘weaknesses’ – you can’t change them!  And there is certainly a place for being positive, but we will never come into maturity as individual believers or as a whole church if we’re not willing to address our weaknesses.

And as far as spiritual fruit is concerned, if we want to grow, we need to focus especially on our weakest areas.  If we excel in ‘joy’ but are weak in ‘self-control’ we might be tempted to think, “I’m pretty happy, and satisfied. So I’m going to continue to just concentrate on joy, and let other people worry about self-control.  But, that would be, as Swartz writes, “Biblically, spiritually, and psychologically disastrous – both for myself and for the people [we] relate to.”

We have to take responsibility for our own growth.

In March 10, 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure known as the "cheeseburger bill." The bill is designed to protect the fast food industry from potential lawsuits filed by overweight customers.

Caesar Barber, 56, pointed the finger at McDonald's, Wendy's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Burger King for his two heart attacks, diabetes, and weight problem.  Gregory Rhymes, a 15-year-old high school student, joined his mother in blaming fast food restaurants for his obesity. Rhymes's mother stood before a judge and stated she "always believed McDonald's was healthy for my son", who weighs nearly 400 pounds.

The purpose of the "cheeseburger bill" is to stop these kinds of lawsuits. As Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. says, "Don't run off and file a lawsuit if you are fat. Look in the mirror…”

Now, I’m not trying to be offensive, or judgmental, by any means an apologist for American fast food.  In fact, we pretty much avoid it in our family completely.  But, I have to say that I support the spirit of this law.  At some point we need to stop blaming others for all our problems, or giving excuses for what we simply have chosen – or have not chosen – to do.   And that certainly is true spiritually!

If we constantly struggle with issues of self-control, and we claim to be children of God through a relationship with Jesus Christ, then we need to look in the mirror.  The fruit of the spirit is Love, and love is expressed through self –control.  No matter what you struggle with to control – you can do better than you are now.  Whether it is your temper, or your anger, or internet porn, or your spending habits, or drinking, or a biting/ sharp tongue – whatever –  self-control is a fruit of the Spirit.

How many people have little or no patience, with themselves or others – and simply accept that as if it is a divinely ordained ‘given’ in their lives?  “Well, I’m an impatient person”.  What have we missed because we stopped working on something because we grew tired of waiting or working?  How have we frustrated others, or limited their growth because we stopped believing in them; simply because we didn’t have the patience to continue, to persevere with them or with ourselves?

To be filled with the Holy Spirit means that we allow him to occupy and control every area of our lives…How much of you does the Holy Spirit have?

Let me show you something.  [I will place two glasses of water and two packets of Alka-Seltzer on a tray table in front of the church. I’ll drop a packet of Alka-Seltzer, with the wrapper on, into one glass. Then I plop an unsealed packet into the second glass, and watch it fizz.]

Look at this, "Both glasses have the Alka-Seltzer in them, just as all Christians have the Holy Spirit. But notice how you can have the Holy Spirit and not his filling." Our goal as disciples of Jesus is to live in such a way as to unwrap the packaging around the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us.[2]   To let loose the power of love.  To take responsibility to identify where our fruit is lacking, and to do whatever we can to grow, and to release the power of the Spirit in us.

In the 1990s, a group of Washington children participated in an eight- year anti-smoking-campaign program. The results were not impressive. Of the group that went through the program, 25.4 percent now smoke regularly. And of the control group—those who did not participate in the study—25.7 percent now smoke regularly. The education campaign hardly made any difference at all.

Now, our society believes education is the answer to all of our culture's problems. And for some of them, it is. (And you know that I’m all for education and learning, and using our minds!) But for many of our issues, education is not the ‘final answer’. People don't need new ideas or new techniques but a new power within to change bad behavior or to resist temptations. To say “No” when necessary, and to say “Yes” to the right things.  It is by the Spirit that we gain self-control (Gal. 5:22); it is when we live by the Spirit that we gain life and peace (Rom. 8:6).[3] 

It is ultimately through the power of the Holy Spirit that we have joy that lasts, and real peace, and patience, as well as kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness.

Let me show you something else.  What do I have here?  I have two apples, and they look good, don’t they?  But I’d be making a mistake if I were to bite into one of these apples.  Not because it is full of worms, or pesticides, but because it is …fake.

Swartz points out that not everything that looks like patience, goodness, peace, etc., is by necessity a “spiritual fruit.”  There is artificial fruit that may look as beautiful as real fruit at first sight.  But, he says, “take one bite, and the wax in your teeth will remind you not to try that again!”

See, we can train ourselves to smile and laugh in order to express joy, even if those expressions are not rooted in love.  We can apply excellent listening techniques and give the impression of patience even if it has nothing to do with spiritual fruit.  We can show acts of kindness without living in the realm of grace, reflecting God’s love.  The same is true for all of the other expressions of the fruit of the Spirit.

He also adds this:  “Some people are so fascinated by artificial fruit that they consider it superior to natural fruit.  You don’t have to plant it, water it, nurture it… It’s true: Artificial fruit is far easier to care for than natural fruit.  But once you have experienced the sweet taste of real fruit that you have grown, you realize that all of your efforts were well worth while.

It is through the Spirit’s power that we will demonstrate real fruit to a world desperate for authentic answers. But it takes perseverance to grow fruit.  Sometimes it means resetting our priorities…

John Ortberg wrote this:

Not long after moving to Chicago, I called a wise friend to ask for some spiritual direction. I described the pace of life in my current ministry. The church where I serve tends to move at a fast clip. I also told him about our rhythms of family life: we are in the van-driving, soccer-league, piano-lesson, school-orientation-night years. I told him about the present condition of my heart, as best I could discern it. What did I need to do, I asked him, to be spiritually healthy?

Long pause….

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life," he said at last.

Another long pause….

"Okay, I've written that one down," I told him, a little impatiently. "That's a good one. Now, what else is there?" I had many things to do, and this was a long-distance call, so I was anxious to cram as many units of spiritual wisdom into the least amount of time possible.

Another long pause….

"There is nothing else," he said. "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

I've concluded that my life and the well-being of the people I serve depends on following his prescription, for hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry destroys souls.[4]

The fruit of the spirit will not grow in a hurry!  This is not something that we will get done this morning, or this afternoon.  It is a lifetime of listening, of yielding to the Spirit.  A series of battles – some we win and some we lose, but all the while winning new ground and raising the level of our ‘yieldedness’ to Christ, conforming to his image – his love. It is steady march to maturity because we know that it is worth it, the fruit is sweet, and because we know that this is who we are called to be as children of God.

The fruit of the Spirit is love.

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