How to grow the fruit of the Spirit

God wants the Holy Spirit to make your Christian life powerful and effective. How does he make that happen? What can you expect? That's what the New Testament describes as "the fruit of the Spirit" - qualities which will naturally grow within us if we let him do his work... The classic passage about it is Galatians 5. We should know what it says, and we should pray for God to produce a bumper crop in us, week after week!

The key verse: John 15:5: I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

A tree never thinks, "Oh wow, it's April already. I need to start producing some fruit. I'll have to concentrate really hard. Think fruit! Think fruit!" No, it just carries on being a tree, and the fruit comes naturally. In the same way, Galatians 5 isn't a list of burdensome commands we have to follow; it's a description of things God will do in us, almost unnoticed, if only we "remain in Jesus" day by day.

Three vital facts

FACT ONE "Fruit" is not "acts"

If you read the Galatians 5 passage, you'll see that Paul makes a clear distinction between "the acts of the sinful nature" (v 19) and "the fruit of the Spirit" (v 22). When you follow the desires of your old sinful nature, life becomes hard work! That's because you weren't designed for selfishness, greed, spite, malice, lust or treachery - and when you spend your time performing these "acts", you just burn yourself out, feel guilty and end up unsatisfied.

But when you follow the promptings of the Spirit, life is quite different! The good stuff starts appearing in you without any conscious effort on your part. The "fruit" produced by the Spirit is what fits naturally with the new identity God has given you. You'll be satisfied, others will be blessed and enriched, and God will see his dreams for you coming true!

So there will always be a choice to be made - every day of your life. Christians can ignore the promptings of the Spirit and just live the old selfish life, if that's what they want to do. But they won't be happy or fulfilled. Or they can simply hand themselves over to God, morning by morning, "remaining in him", letting Jesus call the shots. This is how Paul explained it to the Christians in Rome:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. Romans 6:12-14.

FACT TWO Fruit starts to grow in our relationship with God

When you start out as a baby Christian, you might not be too sure at first that anything has changed in you at all! But as you live daily with Jesus, you start to experience a growing closeness to him - and the first three words in the Galatians 5 list start to kick in!

Love is the first one. A Christian lives in love (1 John 4:16) - knowing the love of God by experiencing his presence and care day by day, sharing that love with others, living in a family of unconditional love with other Christians, feeling a new love for God's world and the people who don't know him.

And this love will grow in us more and more if we let that happen. It's the kind of love which the New Testament calls agape - a Greek word which means "self-giving love", the sort of love that puts itself last and delights in serving others. It doesn't come naturally (which is why you don't find that word very often in classical Greek literature). But it's something the Spirit naturally produces (which is why you find the word 116 times in the New Testament!)

God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:5

Then there's joy. This is not a superficial, wishy-washy emotion that we feel only when things are going well. There's a deep spring of joy at the centre of our lives, even in the hard times. (It's possible to feel joy even when you're being persecuted - Jesus said so in Luke 6:23.)

So it's a joy that doesn't depend on our feelings. Instead it depends on the biggest thing that's happened to us: Jesus taking our sins and smashing their power over us to smithereens, so that we're children of God on our way to an amazing future. Nothing will ever take that away from us... and so nothing can take away our joy either!

As a result, our joy is a source of strength and power. We don't take our confidence from our own achievements, but from what God has done for us. Once the Israelites were feeling pretty good about themselves because they'd re-built the walls of Jerusalem. Then they heard readings from God's law, and realized just how far they still were from being the people they should have been! They started crying; but Nehemiah said to them, "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10.)

Finally there's peace. Again, this doesn't mean "peace and quiet" - often the Christian life isn't very restful at all! We're servants of God in a rebellious world, and so we can't expect an easy time! But Jesus promised his disciples, just before he was crucified, that he would leave "his peace" with them - "not as the world gives" (John 14:27).
You can see this peace in action throughout Jesus' years of ministry. He rarely had an easy time, but he had a calm strength that really enraged his opponents and meant he could never be overcome. And now he's left that for us! That's why Paul says in Philippians 4 that if we let God take our anxiety away, the peace of God will "place a guard around" your heart and mind. (The word he uses means "to build a garrison", "to guard (keep watch) like a military sentinel".)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

FACT THREE Fruit starts to grow in our relationship with others.

The next three words describe the different ways in which we start reacting to other people. If we're "remaining-in-Christ" Christians, they will see the fruit too! So patience is something the Spirit grows in us. You may have been a placid, quiet person before, or a fiery argumentative one; it doesn't matter; God will build in you a new ability to keep your cool and treat other people with respect even when they're being idiots.
James tells us that patience and perseverance help us grow into maturity. Without patience, you can't be a really wise Christian; "Anger resides in the lap of fools", says Ecclesiastes 7:9, as if your bad temper was a little kitten you keep in your lap, stroking and nursing it, so that it can leap out and savage anybody who tries your patience. James says that God sometimes sends trials along so that we can grow and be matured through them.

But nobody likes trials, so we tend to get weary of being patient, and start complaining to God or lashing out against others. James says that if we let the fruit of patience grow in us, it will carry on until we're fully equipped by God for all the challenges of life:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

Kindness comes from a Greek word which means "properly usable, well fit for service". So it means practical kindness - not just saying nice things to others, or sending them an encouraging text occasionally, but actually getting involved in meeting their needs. It's a kindness that goes out of its way to do things for others.

And this too is something the Spirit will develop in you. It's not that God is saying, "You must do several good deeds for others every day, otherwise I'll consider despatching you to hell." No, he's saying, "If you remain in Jesus, day by day, you'll find the Spirit prompting you to lay down your life for others, in small ways and big ways, again and again." You'll be tempted to think, "Where did that come from? I was never like that before..." - and the answer will be: it's the fruit of the Spirit, dummy.

Finally there's goodness. This means "inherent goodness" - in other words, a quality that's right at the centre of your life. Without it, you can pretend to be loving, or patient, or kind, and fool a lot of the people a lot of the time. But eventually the mask will drop, because you're not really like that at heart!

"Goodness" describes a person whose whole inner being is becoming more and more like Jesus; somebody who's concerned about honesty, truth, integrity, righteousness and justice, but also about love and compassion to others. Those are the motivations that drive everything that person does.

And this quality of "goodness" makes you a wonderful person to be with. You're reliable, faithful, trustworthy, honest about yourself, always loving and caring. But you won't stand for injustice or untruth, and you don't like it when evil is allowed to flourish without anybody saying anything.

WHERE NEXT?

Go to the review to check you understand and remember

Go to points 4 and 5 for additional teaching

Go to another three important Bible passages on this topic

Go back to the main resources page to do something completely different