Fruit of The Spirit

 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. 24 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” - Galatians 5:22-25

Notice that it is “fruit of the Spirit”. It’s not “works of the Spirit’, neither is it “fruit of the flesh”.
The word “works” implies “labor, strain and effort” Fruit doesn’t come from the flesh because our old sin nature can only produce “works” (Heb. 9:14 says, “dead works”), but the Spirit produces living fruit. This is in line with God’s plan from the beginning of the world.

Let’s turn to Genesis 1:11. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its own kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.”
“. . . and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its own kind, whose seed is in itself”

This means apples will produce apples with apple seed, oranges will reproduce with orange seed, grapes with grape seed, etc., so each fruit will continue to reproduce their own kind.
In the spiritual sense this would mean that as we walk in the Spirit and shed our love to others, our love begets love, our joy begets joy, peace begets peace, and so on. It’s a sowing and reaping principal.

It’s living fruit because it keeps on living through the lives of Believers as they plant seeds in the world.

To begin, there is LOVE and we’ve already talked about that. What I didn’t mention is that Agape Love, or God’s kind of love is unconditional. God doesn’t love us out of emotion; He loves us because that’s His nature. That’s Who He is. God doesn’t “have” love. He IS love.
1 John 4:8, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
He will never love us anymore than He does right now and the ultimate sign of His love for us is the Cross.
As we walk in the Spirit, God’s unconditional love flows out of us. We find ourselves loving others regardless of whom or what they are. This is a kind of love that the world doesn’t understand but needs so much.

The next fruit is Joy. Joy isn’t the same as happiness. Happiness is based on circumstances. This Joy is based in a God Who never changes. He is the source of our joy and strength.

Next is Peace. We need the peace of God when we go through the storms of life. We can draw on the peace of the Lord Who calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee by speaking to it. We can speak the Word to our circumstances and have peace about it.

Longsuffering is next. Longsuffering is patience. Does yours ever run out? This is one area which seems to be common with most people, especially with Believers. We want to serve the Lord but we don’t like waiting while He prepares us. We need supernatural patience which only comes from the Holy Spirit. We have to remember Psalm 1, it’s always in “His season”.

Gentleness, or kindness. This simply means being a nice person, not for gain, but out of love and compassion. It means to say, “hello” or to smile when we meet someone and not wait for the other to act first. It means to offer help to someone who is in need. To treat people the same way you would like to be treated.

Goodness. This goes hand in hand with gentleness. It’s to be a blessing to others by being kind, caring and loving. To look for the good in a person, knowing that the Holy Spirit can take care of the bad.



Watch Out For the continuation tomorrow... Be BLESSED!!!