The Fruit of the Spirit

Loyalty is such a rare commodity, but the Holy Spirit gives it as a fruit. And one of the reasons is that the Spirit gives to us what mirrors God's own virtues. Our God is a loyal God. God has never been disloyal to any of His children.

He's never betrayed one of us at any time. As Christians pursue righteousness and strive by the Spirit of God to put to death the deeds of the flesh, there is also fruit, fruit of the Spirit that is evident in our lives. Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, gentleness, self-control.

And that's what we'll be considering on this Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Each Sunday we feature the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul, and today we will conclude a brief sermon series in Galatians. So for the final time, if you'd like to study the entire book, you can request the hardcover edition of Dr. Sproul's commentary on Galatians for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

And remember, this offer ends at midnight. There are worldly ways to think about love, joy, and peace, so here's Dr. Sproul to consider the Bible's definition of the fruit of the Spirit. We're going to continue this week with our study of Paul's letter to the Galatians. I'll be reading from chapter 5, verses 22 through 26, and I would ask the congregation please to stand for the reading of the Word of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, what?

What's next? You were re-saying it I think, so, faithfulness, yes, gentleness, self-control against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, or envying one another. Again, this is a message from God Himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and speaking about a very essential part of the Spirit's work in our lives. Please receive it with the full authority it deserves, and be seated.

Let's pray. Again, our Father, as we consider this powerful passage that distinguishes so clearly, considering the fruit of the Spirit of holiness, we ask that that same Spirit would open our eyes to be able to behold these things, and our hearts that we may be gripped by concern for these things, for we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. The last time we were together, I talked briefly about the cosmic war that rages in the soul of every Christian. It's a war not with flesh and blood, but a battle with powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. We were talking about this war that goes on unceasingly between the flesh and the Spirit. And at that time, we looked carefully at what the Apostle Paul delineated as the works of the flesh, which works are so destructive that if we in our lives are characterized by them, we can in no wise inherit the kingdom of God. But you notice that when Paul delineated the works of the flesh, he used the plural. There's not just one work of the flesh, there are a multitude of wicked activities in which we in our fallen nature can be and are often involved, and he spelled them out – adultery, fornication, uncleanness, violence, hatred, envy, idolatry, sorcery, and so on. But it's not like that every pagan has his lifestyle described by every one of the works of the flesh.

A person may be a serial adulterer, but is free from drunkenness, or may live the life of a drunkard, but is free from fornication. So the person could be involved in one or more of these particular vicious works that the Apostle described. And we've also seen a revival of interest in the 20th century of the gifts of the Spirit, again mentioned in the plural. And many people deeply desire the anointing power of the Holy Spirit in the gifts that God bestows upon His people. And again, not everybody, as Paul describes the diversity of the body of Christ, not everybody is endowed with every gift of the Spirit, and the gifts are plural, just like the works of the flesh. But when we come to Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit, he uses the singular. And that's significant for us to understand because what he's describing here is not a Christian life wherein one believer has the fruit of love, and another believer has the fruit of gentleness, or the other believer has the fruit of joy.

No, no, no, no, no. The idea here is that the marks of a Christian include all of the fruit of the Spirit, that we are to display and manifest every one of these fruits that the Apostle describes here in the text. In fact, when Jesus was teaching His followers and asking the question, how are you going to be able to discern who is a believer and who isn't?

And how did our Lord answer that question? By their fruit ye shall know them. Now that's a little bit problematic because if we look at this list of the fruits of the Spirit, we all know people who are unconverted, unregenerate, unbelievers, who to some degree manifest these fruits. We see people who display love.

We see people who display joy. We see people who are patient and in many respects manifest the fruits of the Spirit. So why would Jesus say, you shall know them by their fruits, when it's possible that pagan people can display the same kind of fruit? Well, it's not really the same kind of fruit because what the Apostle Paul is talking here is about fruit that is not ordinary, but extraordinary.

Not natural virtues that we can display, but supernatural virtues that we can discern. Look for example at the beginning of this list where Paul spells it out, but the fruit of the Spirit is love. We all know that there's a natural kind of human love that people display one for another, a mother for her baby, a husband for his wife, even Ava Braun found something to love in Adolf Hitler, and maybe Hitler's mother loved him as well. But that's not the kind of love that we're talking about, the natural manifestation of love among people. Paul speaking here about a spiritual level of love, a whole different dimension, a transcendent manifestation of love. You know, one of the most important works that Jonathan Edwards ever wrote was religious affections.

We hear of him for writing Freedom of the Will or his famous sermons, but that volume on religious affection is the Puritan divine probed deeply into what happens when the soul has been changed supernaturally by God. We saw the last time that Jesus in this discussion with Nicodemus said, unless you're born of the Spirit, you're not even going to be able to see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Then he made a distinction between the flesh and the Spirit right there when Jesus said, that which is born of the flesh is flesh.

That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. And as long as you are still in the flesh, you don't have one scintilla of affection for Almighty God. In your natural state and in my natural state, God is our enemy. That's what the Scriptures say, that we are by nature at enmity with God.

We don't want God in our thinking. Like Luther said at one point, love God. Sometimes I hate Him, but when the Holy Spirit changes the constituent nature of a fallen human being by regeneration, by conversion, what is kindled in the soul is now a profound affection and love for God. You know, when we think of Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan, we think of somebody who preached on the sinners in the hands of an angry God and all of that, and we have a tendency to think of hell, fire, and brimstone as characterizing Edwards' preaching and teaching.

But somebody once described the adjectives and nouns in all of the corpus of his writings. And he said the two words that Edwards used more frequently than any other two words were sweetness and excellence. When Edwards would speak about Christ, he would speak tenderly about the excellence, the sweetness, the majestic glory of God and His only begotten Son, because His soul had been set on fire by religious affection, by a love and delight in God. You know, I asked you this morning if you love God, and if you do, why do you love God? Some people love God purely because of the wonderful gifts that He bestows upon His children. But you haven't graduated into the fruit of love until you begin to have an affection for God because of who God is, not for what He has done for us, but to just see the beauty of His holiness and to love it with your heart. Again, Calvin described pagan virtues in terms of what he called civil or civic virtue that even the flesh can participate in, but nobody apart from the Spirit has the religious affection for God that is given by the Spirit of holiness Himself. Well, at the beginning of this list of fruit, he mentions love, then joy, then peace.

Some commentators have looked at this list and they say those first three are standing at the beginning of the list for a reason. It's reminiscent of Paul's writing about love in 1 Corinthians 13 when he gives what many Christians believe is the nicest and favorite chapter in all the Bible, the love chapter. I hear it read at weddings all the time.

You know, if we speak in the tongue of men and of angels and have not love, you know, we're clanging cymbals and sounding breaths and all that sort of thing. And then Paul goes on to a vivid and graphic description about what love is. And frankly, there's one sense in which I really don't like to read that chapter because when I read that chapter, I am filled with conviction of sin because I see how short I fall from the love that is being described in that chapter. Love seeketh not its own. Again, Jonathan Edwards, I think one of his most little-known books and yet one of his most powerful books is a little book he wrote called Charity and Its Fruits.

It's one of the favorite books I've ever read in my life where Edwards goes on to an exposition of the whole of the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. But when I read it, it's like looking in a mirror and I say, whew, that's a high quality of virtue that I've just but tasted in my life. There's nothing romantic or sentimental about it. We have so cheapened our concept of love in our culture, you know, love is never having to say that you're sorry, no.

Love is saying you're sorry even when it's not required. Just the opposite of what the pagan concept is. And so this love that is supernatural then is linked to joy and peace. By the way, when William Tyndale translated the Bible in the New Testament, he finished the New Testament into English and was condemned by Sir Thomas More and ultimately burned at the stake as a martyr, one of the reasons by which More so radically opposed Tyndale was that he changed the translation of charity to love. And when Tyndale says, the Bible doesn't say charity your neighbor. You shall charity the Lord your God with all of your heart and so on.

Just love your neighbor, love your God. He was talking about an affection for the things of God. In any case, the joy that is mentioned here, I know people who are pagans who seem at least on the surface as outwardly satisfied, content, happiness, although natural man has been described as living lives of quiet desperation, that those who are without Christ ultimately are without hope. And there is a gnawing, deep despair within their souls that won't be quiet, although they may laugh and joke and be merry. But that merriment is not what Paul is talking about when he speaks of the fruit of joy. Think of Jesus, whom the Bible describes as a man of sorrows and equated with grief. And yet deep within the soul of our Lord, there was something finally and ultimately and transcendentally settled. He had a joy that could not be destroyed. Just as Paul said, a person can fall, but never in despair. We may suffer, we may grieve, but nothing could take away that settled joy that a body abides in the soul of the believer, Job, when he was exposed to the unfetun, the unbridled assault of hell. And his wife said, give it up, Job. Curse God and die.

Job said, hey, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. That's the non-negotiable joy that is rooted in the soul of every Christian, peace. Again we have to take some trouble to define it because there are all kinds of goofy understandings and definitions of peace in this world. Jeremiah had to deal with it in the Old Testament days when he was surrounded by false prophets at every turn, when God put on his lips the message of judgment that was coming upon Jerusalem. And every time Jeremiah would stand up and prophesy about the coming judgment of God, the false prophets would drown him out, say, don't listen to that, Sarpus, that crying weeping prophet.

God loves us unconditionally. There's peace. Jeremiah said, you cry peace, peace, when there is no peace. It's like Neville Chamberlain leaning over the balcony in Munich with his umbrella saying, we have achieved peace for our times, while Hitler at that very moment was mobilizing the blitzkrieg. There is what's called a carnal peace, a fleshy peace, but this is not what Paul is talking about here with respect to the fruit of the Spirit.

When Paul in Romans talks about our justification by faith alone, what's the first fruit of our justification? He writes, being justified, therefore we have peace with God. You talk to the pagan, they shake their head, what do you mean peace with God?

I didn't know we were at war. Yes, you're so jaded in your hostility towards God as He is, you're not even aware you're at war, but to be justified and to be having peace with God means the estrangement is over. We have experienced the joy of reconciliation, and the peace that we have in our justification is not a guarded truce. It's not something that's going to explode into a new war by the next rattling of the sword. It's an endless peace, a permanent peace, a peace that is won for us by the Prince of Peace, so that even with we sin, God does not pick up the sword again to slay us because He has adopted us into His family.

What was the last will and testament of Jesus, His final legacy to His disciples when He met with them in the upper room, and He said, let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in Me, and then He went on to say what? Peace I leave with you, my peace, not a carnal peace, not a fraudulent peace, not a cheap peace, but the peace that only the Prince of Peace could leave behind when He said, my peace I leave with you. It's the peace that passes understanding. It's the peace that maintains its reality in the presence of chaos and pain. It's an abiding peace that is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and no pagan has ever experienced that peace. I don't know what we're talking about when we talk about this kind of peace, patience.

I'm not crazy about this one. I pray for patience. I say, Lord, give me patience right now.

Please let me have it soon. But there is a patience, or what is really described here in Scripture as long-suffering. And what is presupposed in this text is being attacked, being attacked by unbelievers, being attacked by the Prince of Darkness, that even in the midst of that attack that does inflict pain and suffering that sometimes endures and lasts. I remember visiting in the home of a famous football player whose name you would recognize if I mentioned that his wife had been suffering with terminal cancer for like nine years, and she was a Christian. And I spoke with her, and she was lying there in the bed, and a tear came down on one part of her cheek, and she looked at me and says, she said, R.C., I really don't know how long I can take this.

It's been nine years without any relief, and it just doesn't seem to be any end to my suffering. Just this week we got a card from Joni Eareckson Tada celebrating her life, 50 years in a wheelchair. I prayed with this dear lady that had been suffering from cancer all that time, and she said, I just want to go home.

And one week later, she went to glory, but for nine years, she had patiently suffered through the burden of her illness without cursing God, without renouncing God, but with the unbridled joy within her soul, kindness, goodness. Kindness is often translated as friendliness. People who are born of the Spirit should never have a mean spirit.

You can be firm and uncompromising, but never mean. I told Vesta a few years ago, I'd like to see chiseled on my tombstone, this was a kind man. I got a note this week from Maureen Bookman, who's my administrative assistant, and she wrote this little note, and she said, R.C., three years ago, she said, I heard you say that you'd like to have kindness written on your tombstone. She said, so I wrote that down, and I'm writing to you now after hearing the sermon last week.

She said, I'm going to try to see that that takes place. Well, I don't want it to be untrue, but we should all covet the fruit of kindness. That person was a kind person, given to friendship, not mean-spirited. Goodness, faithfulness, here Paul uses a word that is written in bold print in the Old Testament, the Hebrew term chasad, which has been translated in so many different ways, sometimes by faithfulness or covenant faithfulness or loyalty, and one author defines chasad in the Old Testament by the terms, loyal love. Again the other day, Vesta and I watched a movie we hadn't seen since it was in the theater, Braveheart.

My son's seen it ten times. I'd only seen it once, and if you remember Braveheart, you remember how he was betrayed by the man in the mask and almost destroyed his spirit when he suffered such betrayal. And betrayal, of course, is the polar opposite of loyalty. loyalty is such a rare commodity, but the Holy Spirit gives it as a fruit.

And one other reason is that the Spirit gives to us what mirrors God's own virtues. Our God is a loyal God, a self-control, Paul goes on to say, against these things there is no law. There's no law against self-control. There's no law against being gentle.

It's not a crime to be patient. It's not a sin to have joy. The law doesn't crush us with respect to the fruit of the Spirit. Paul goes on to say, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with His desires and pleasures.

What a metaphor. You can see our flesh nailed to the cross with Christ. Our sins are crucified with Christ spiritually, metaphysically, transcendently. We participate in the cross.

Our flesh is put to death with Him, even though we spend our whole lives as Christians in the process of sanctification by putting to death the works of the flesh. So Paul concludes this section by saying, if we live by the Spirit, then let us also keep step with the Spirit. Last week or two weeks ago, people said to me they noticed that the – or the last time we had communion that the elders and deacons had been meeting before the service started and they were practicing marching up and down the aisle.

And people said, what's this all about? I said – I talked to the session about this. They said, you know, it's a holy moment when we gather to celebrate the Lord's Supper and when you distribute the elements and you bring the elements back to the table. This is a high and holy moment, and I would ask you to be careful for the form that you take place here.

I'd like to be able to close my eyes and hear the footfall of the session as they come in front of the church with the elements. And I didn't make a big deal out of it, but they went and said, let's get together on our own with the deacons and practice it so we can be in step. Well, it's one thing to be in step when you're marching back and forth up and down the aisle. It's another thing to be in step with the Holy Ghost. That's what we're called to do because we're marching for the long haul. We're walking, and the Spirit is leading us. It's His parade, and we're not to be sloppy or cavalier, but to walk in step with the Spirit of God and let us not become conceited, provoking one another and envying one another. Somebody said the other day to me, you know, you could preach on this text for six weeks.

I said, well, I did more than that with the whole series I did on developing Christian character, but we don't have six weeks for this. But I hope that we've had a taste this morning of the Spirit's teaching of what it means to walk in the Spirit. May the Lord grow the fruit of the Spirit in each of us.

That was R.C. Sproul concluding a short sermon series in Galatians that he originally preached at St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and these sermons became the foundation for his expositional commentary on Galatians. If you'd like to add it to your library, we'll send you the hardcover edition when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Your support is helping keep Renewing Your Mind freely available and is fueling the spread of Ligonier's deep library of teaching into the world's top 20 languages. So please show your support today at renewingyourmind.org and know that this Galatians commentary offer ends at midnight and it won't be repeated next Sunday. Next week, we will start a new series in the book of Acts, so I hope you'll join us next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind. God bless. We'll see you next time.