We find the nine forms of the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
The word fruit is in the singular not the plural. God is love so you could say the fruit of Love is joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control or temperance.
In talking about the fruit of the Spirit we need to realize this is divine love not human love.
Human love has to do with self. When we say we love someone what we are saying is that they make us feel good. It is self-centered and not God-centered. If the person we say we love is doing something that bothers us, then our love is limited and can turn to dislike, rejection or hate.
If we say we are joyful it has to do with our circumstances. If things are going good, we are happy. If things are going bad, we are dissatisfied, disturbed, sad and so on.
God’s love in self-less, it is unconditional. All the divine attributes of God are the opposite of human attributes. It would take too long to explain it. But if you follow on to know the Lord, you will experience it, because you are experiencing transformation.
How does fruit come? We need to keep in mind that both fruit and gifts are from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives the gifts; the Holy Spirit brings forth the fruit. Both are equally the will of God.
God wants His people to exercise the gifts of the Spirit, so that he can get people’s attention, right now the world wants nothing to do with Christians. The first-time people tried to witness to me, I wanted to get as far away from them as possible.
Norvel Hayes one of my first bible teachers, worked in the ministry of helps for seven years, he use to go to the worst part of the city and give people groceries, and he told me do not tell them about Jesus, just love them and then when they ask you why you keep doing this, then witness to them.
God wants His people to bring forth fruit, so that they know what God is like. What is the saying” don’t witness by what you say, witness by what you do,
Become friends with people, get to know them and how they think, this does not mean you are unequally yoked with them, but it gives you an idea how to relate to them so that you can share your faith. Once they see the kind of person you are and the kind of faith you have in God, then they will want what you got.
It is the will of God that all believers bring forth fruit and exercise gifts.
What’s the difference between fruit and gifts? Gifts are given and received in a single, brief transaction. They cannot be earned; they cannot be worked for.
On the other hand, fruit comes by a process of gradual growth, and it needs to be cultivated. It’s a significant fact that almost anywhere in the world today it would be impossible to market fruit that had not been deliberately cultivated.
Consider two trees, an apple tree and a Christmas tree. An apple tree bears fruit, and a Christmas tree bears gifts. The fruit that comes from the apple tree comes by a process of gradual growth and it depends on several different factors if it’s going to be good fruit.
On the other hand, the gifts on the Christmas tree or under it are placed there by a single brief act and then taken from the tree by a single brief act.
So, the apple tree is an example of fruit, the Christmas tree is an example of gifts.
Gifts represent ability or power. Fruit represents character. We need both to make a difference in people’ lives. It does not do much good to really love someone, unless we have power to help them.
Gifts or power without character are dangerous. They’re rather like a young man with a new sports car who has no control of himself and doesn’t know how to drive. Turn him loose in such a car and he’ll probably wreck it.
On the other hand, character without gifts is ineffective. Christian life is more than just offering people sympathy.
It’s one thing to be sympathetic with a sick person but it takes a gift of faith or a gift of healing or a working of miracles to meet the need of that sick person.
The perfect example is Jesus. He had the perfect fruit of the Spirit in his life and character, but he also exercised the gifts of the Spirit.
The gifts of the Spirit enabled him to express his character in action. So, we need both, gifts and fruit.
However, there is one important difference. Character is permanent, gifts are temporary.
1 Corinthians 13:8 But whether there are utterances given by a person consisting of divine revelations he has received, they shall cease; whether languages, they shall stop, whether knowledge, it shall be done away; for we know in a partial, fragmentary, incomplete way, and we utter divine revelations in the same way. But whenever that which is complete comes, that which is incomplete and fragmentary will be done away. When I was a child, I was accustomed to speak as a child. I used to understand as a child. I was accustomed to reason as a child. When I have become a man and have the status of an adult (spiritual), I have permanently put away the things of a child, for we are seeing now by means of a mirror obscurely, but then, face to face. Now I know only in a fragmentary fashion, but then I shall fully know even as also I was known. But now there remains faith, hope, love; these three. But the greatest of these is love.
So, we need gifts now, we need the word of knowledge, we need prophecy, we need the other gifts, because we have not yet come to that which is complete (in various applications of labor, growth, mental and moral character, etc). So, keep in mind, gifts are temporary, character is permanent.
How should fruit be cultivated?
first of all, in Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 6 where Paul says this, the hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops or the produce or the fruit.
Paul there brings out a very simple basic fact. Cultivating crops or fruit takes hard work. It is not done without effort. And that is equally true of the fruit of the Spirit. To cultivate it requires hard work.
There are four things you need to do to cultivate spiritual fruit in your life.
First, you need to study God’s Word. God’s Word is the basis of all God’s provision for us. If we’re not familiar with His word, we almost inevitably go without many of his provisions.
2 Timothy 2: 15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
So, to handle the word of truth, accurately, you have to be a workman. It takes time.
In a certain sense, you must roll up your sleeves and get with it.
The second thing is learn how to wait on God. Which is a focus listening in stillness.
Jesus provides us with the perfect pattern. The whole basis of Jesus’ earthly ministry was his relationship with his Father.
To cultivate and maintain that relationship, Jesus took plenty of time in prayer, very often, early in the morning. And there He heard the Father’s voice and received His direction for His ministry.
The third thing is to cultivate fellowship with the Lord
The word fellowship is koinonia in the Greek-it means to share in the same kind of divine life. Fellowship with, participation.
1 John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
We need to learn how to cultivate fellowship. Don’t try to live the Christian life on your own.
The Scripture says that we’re all members of one body and we all need one another.
I often think of David going out to meet Goliath. You remember that the weapons he took were just five smooth stones from the brook. Why did those stones have to be smooth?
Well, of course, they wouldn’t have been accurate if they hadn’t been smooth. Any lumps or unevenness in them would have made them unreliable and inaccurate in their flight. They might have cost David his life.
Why were the stones smooth?
Because they’d been lying in the brook. What happens to them in the brook?
First, water had been passing over them regularly.
Secondly, they’d been bumping against one another and rubbing off the sharp edges.
Now, I believe when the Lord Jesus Christ wants to find Christians he can use, he goes to the brook.
He goes to the place where the pure water of God’s word has been flowing over them and washing them and rounding them off.
And secondly, where they’ve been in fellowship with one another and rubbing off the rough we all tend to still have.
So, cultivate fellowship with the Lord and with those of like precious faith and it will make you into a smooth stone.
The fourth is to discipline yourself to have a meeting with the Lord, where you become aware of Him.
Fruit does not come in any person’s life without discipline. And I have in mind two main forms of discipline.
First, discipline yourself to have a walk with the Lord in the little things you do in your life, the way you organize your life. Even simple things like when you get up, what you eat, what you wear, how clean you keep yourself. All that’s essential to cultivating fruit.
If possible, find a church where the leaders are more mature in the Lord than you are, so you can come under their leadership.
If possible, you should be a member of a church and under the authority of the church leaders and subject to their correction. Even if their eschatology and their understanding of the after life is messed up, (which almost every church you find is, but you cannot tell them that) they have never ascended into heaven or descended into hell (like Jesus did, and he said we should do the same things he did) so they miss interpret scripture because they have been taught by man and not Jesus himself, they do not have a face-to-face relationship with him. But they still have experience in walking with the Lord and can give you sound advice.
But there are some churches you should avoid like the ones Christians call cults, but every church that moves on with God gets persecuted by the last move of God, I am not talking about that. And there are churches that are legalistic and also those who call themselves grace churches but have no understanding of what grace is. Being under grace is living a life that is humanly impossible, because the real Christian life is not doing better, it is allowing another person (Jesus and the Holy Spirit to live through you).