The Fruit of the Spirit - Christlikeness

I’ve been thinking about the two lists in Galatians 5 this week and how they should be lived out in the Believer’s life. The sins listed in verses 19-21 are clearly contrary to the character of God, while the fruits of the Spirit in verses 22-23 fit perfectly with His character. I find it interesting that whenever we are commanded to do something it always fits with Christ’s character. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, Christians are supposed to look like Christ! Anyway, I’d like to spend some time today looking at a few of the fruits listed in this passage.

Love — John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Christ died for his enemies! Wow, that is just mind-boggling! If Christ died for His enemies, than surely it’s not too much to ask that we treat those who are unkind to us with love and kindness.

Joy — In order to have joy we must have the right perspective - God’s perspective. We are commanded to count it joy to when we experience trials (James 1:2), and we can do this when we have the perspective that glorifying God is the most important thing because we know that trials make us more like Christ. It doesn’t matter what’s happening to us, we are not important; God and others are. When we are focused on God’s glory and others best good, as Jesus was, we can have joy, just as He did.

Peace — Vine’s defines this use of the word “peace” as “The harmonized relationship between God and man, accomplished through the gospel.” This peace is only found when we are living to glorify God and in obedience to His will. We must have the attitude of Christ, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” When we are willing to do whatever it take to glorify God, repenting and forsaking sin whenever God brings it to our attention, putting off whatever would prevent us from having fellowship with God, and putting on it’s righteous opposite, then God is glorified and we can have peace with God.

Longsuffering — My pastor likes to tell us that longsuffering comes from a big Greek word that means to suffer long. This one is really quite simple to understand, but it’s a hard one to actually practice. We don’t like suffering, it is not enjoyable, and we would rather have it end as soon as possible. But that is not the way God acts. He is very patient and longsuffering with us. Exodus 34:6 is just one of many passages that tells us about God’s longsuffering nature. He put up with us for a long time, waiting for us to come to repentance, and now He commands us to be like Him and put up with others. We need to remember that no one is perfect and we shouldn’t treat others unkindly when they do something that is sinful. By all means go to them and plead with them to repent. But we must remember to bear with one another in love, just as God lovingly put up with us.

Kindness — As I arrived at kindness I realized that I didn’t really have a good definition of kindness, so I began to look through various dictionaries, but I haven’t had much success. As Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary puts it. “The main problem in understanding kindness is the fact that it is one of a series of terms that are overlapping and not clearly or consistently distinguishable in meaning.” So I am going to move on and come back to this one next time.

Goodness — “Moral and spiritual excellence.”1 We are commanded to be like Christ, and He is the standard of morality. He defines what is good. Mark 10 tells us that only God is good. But we are still commanded to be like Him as much as possible. And we know that He will help us, because whenever he commands us to do something he also enables us to do it.

I think I will stop here for now and when I come back we’ll look at kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, a few more ways we can reflect the character of God and glorify Him more—that’s what we’re here for!

---

1 MacArthur Study Bible notes on Galatians 5