Others-oriented fruit of the Spirit

Photo by kudumomo
Photo by kudumomo

This is the first post in the fruit of the Spirit series. Get future posts delivered to you for free by grabbing the RSS feed or email updates.

“Not another Fruit of the Spirit post.”

I know some of you are thinking this. You might have even considered not clicking through to read this (thank you for clicking through).

The Fruit of the Spirit (FofS) has been done. I think every pastor’s taught on it, every blog’s blogged on it, every children’s ministry created nine impressive fruit crafts.

So why talk about it again?

1. Because everything’s a reminder anyway. You already have all the information you need. You know this, I know this – but we don’t remember.

2. Because you haven’t heard it from an others-oriented perspective. You probably heard it with a hint of others-orientedness, just because of how well the Fruit of the Spirit fits into this category. But you probably still learned it mostly from the “How can I have more Fruit of the Spirit in my life?” perspective.

Here at bondChristian.com, I want to share the others-oriented version, the “How can I help others have more Fruit of the Spirit in their lives?” version. I’ve briefly run through some of the Fruit of the Spirit already, but again, even that was mostly from the self-oriented perspective.

Here’s the passage from Galatians:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” -Galatians 5:22-23

Before we go any further in the series (yes, this is a series), I’d like to point out a couple general things about these two verses.

1. It says “fruit,” not “fruits,” of the Spirit

My dad’s the one who has really driven this into me. The Fruit of the Spirit is one fruit. Someone can either have them all or have none at all. There’s no middle place where the Spirit is loving, but not longsuffering (or any other incomplete combination). I like to think of the list as attributes of the Spirit. At times, some might show more than others, but all are present all the time.

2. It says “is,” not “should be”

It’s not a matter of having the Spirit and then having the attributes as well. If you have the Spirit, you have the attributes as well. They go together – like God and goodness, Jesus and humility.

3. The Spirit always points to Jesus

We know this from other passages in the Bible (for example, the dove desended on Jesus like a dove, showing Him off for the world to see). So this means the fruit of the Spirit, each attribute, points to Jesus as well. If at any point, an attribute is not pointing to Jesus, it’s broken – not the real deal.

4. It’s about receiving the Spirit, not trying for the fruit

This is the most common problem with how this is taught. We’re usually taught to chip away at the attributes one at a time, neglecting the idea that we should focus on Jesus to receive the Spirit in the first place.

So that’s the intro. We’ll go over the attributes individually over the coming weeks.

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Read the whole passage in the Bible: Galatians 5 or at least verses 16 through 26.

(2) Memorize the list of attributes: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.