There can be no better example of God’s grace than His gift of the Spirit and the clear manifestations of His presence in our lives. Galatians 5:22-23: Love, Joy, Peaceful, Longsuffering, Kind, Good, Faithfulness, Meek, and Self-controlled
The Language of Christian Love
The Fruit of the Spirit are relational. They are expressed in a relationship with the Lord or each other. Let’s start with Agape love. Love is characterized by a joy in being with the person loved. Joy is peaceful [there is no joy in tension and war]. But for peace to exist we must learn to tolerate and accept others [which is what this word means]. Longsuffering exhibits a kindness [by its very nature] and kindness is kind because it is good [conduct in harmony with Scripture. Bad people by nature are not kind]. But to be in harmony with God’s Word, one must be faithful to it and faithfulness is a natural expression of meekness, a desire to be faithful [never by accident]. This kind of love requires that we walk in the Spirit and not the flesh [carnality wars against this kind of love].
It is a formidable task God assigns language, out of necessity of His love, to alert us to our need of a Savior. Formidable because we are living in another realm where the meanings of words are upside down. For this reason, the classical definition of a word designated as a Fruit of the Spirit [Galatians 5:24-25] may lack the appropriate nuance that would represent the mind of the Spirit who authored it. Richard Trench calls them graces:1 love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance.
- Love is a Biblical word not found in any earlier writings.2
- Joy which Peter says is so glorious words are inadequate to define it3 [1 Peter 1:8].
- Peace which Bishop Lightfoot wrote “surpassing every counsel of man … which is far better, which produces a higher satisfaction, then … all anxious forethought.”4 [Philippians 4:7; 2 Thessalonians 3:16].
- Longsuffering “… occurs in the Septuagint, though neither there nor elsewhere exactly in the sense which in the N.T. it bears.”5
- Gentleness which Richard Trench called “a beautiful grace“ of which “Calvin has quite too superficial a view of when commenting on Col. 3:12.”6
- Goodness* was a word unknown before the writing of the Bible.7
- Faith Lightfoot demurs, “seems not to be used here in its theological sense ‘belief in God.’ Rather… the passive meaning ..trustworthiness.”8
- Meekness Trench wrote that this word has “a depth, a richness, a fulness of significance which they were very far from possessing before.”9
- Temperance is defined everywhere in a secular sense, “self-control, to force one’s self to do something, to exercise control over, be master of, with a strong hand.”10
Do we credit Paul with forethought in the choice of these 9. He left out an entire catalog of saintly qualities that, to our way of thinking, might easily deserve a place in this list (godliness, humility, mercy, even righteousness, patience, and purity, to name a few)? Or do we credit the Spirit with this list in which these words have particular significance and meaning to God? Has He pressed these terms into service having elevated them to a higher spiritual plane to speak of a spirituality they were not, until now, capable of describing.
One thing is obvious that Paul is contrasting the Fruit of the Spirit with at least (Paul added “and such like”)11 17 “works fo the flesh” in Galatians 5:19-21. Of These 9 graces Lightfoot says “the difficulty in classification in this list is still greater.”12
Some terms like virtue and religious, and even to bow down in worship, have such a limited use, especially with Paul, that we are led to think that God’s grace served a much loftier purpose than could be explained using these terms. As the prophet foretold,
“For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.” [Zephaniah 3:9].
Perhaps, it is reasonable to ask: Are the Fruit of the Spirit as part of a Christian testimony evidence of the infilling of the Spirit? This is not to disparage any doctrine but to encourage a deeper enquiry into the meaning and significance of these 9 Christian characteristics as descriptive of our spirituality and salvation.
Part 2: Temperance
2 Joseph Thayers. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon. (Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), page 693.
3 Ibid. page 44.
4 J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Philippians. (Zondervan Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, MI: 15th printing. 1976) page 161.
5 Richard C. Trench Synonyms of the New Testament (Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company,,Grand Rapids, MI: 1975) page 196.
6 Ibid. 232f.
7 Joseph Thayers. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon. (Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), page 693.
8 J. B. Lightfoot, The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians. (Zondervan Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI:1974), page 213.
9 Richard C. Trench Synonyms of the New Testament (Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company,,Grand Rapids, MI: 1975) page 151.
10 Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott. compl. A Greek-English Lexicon. (Oxford University Press. London: 1976), page 473.
11 ejusdem generis -as the same kind
12 John Peter Lange..Genesis (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 7th printing, 1980) Vol XI, Page 139.
