Galatians 5:22-26: a reflection

Paul describes the character that the Spirit grows in the life of a believer, and he calls it fruit: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. He calls it fruit, not achievement, for a reason: fruit grows. It is not manufactured by our own effort, produced by gritted determination; it grows in us as we live by the Spirit, as the natural produce of a life rooted in him. The love, joy, peace, and the rest are the fruit the Spirit grows in us as we walk by him, not a product we generate on our own.

Notice that Paul calls this character fruit, grown by the Spirit. Fruit is not manufactured; it grows, as the natural produce of a healthy tree. So the love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest are not achievements we manufacture by our own effort, but fruit the Spirit grows in us as we live by him. Paul does not say, produce these things by your own determination; he says they are the fruit of the Spirit, grown in the life rooted in him. As we walk by the Spirit, this fruit grows; the character comes not from our own manufacturing but from the Spirit's work in a life yielded to him. It is grown, not gritted out.

That is worth taking to heart, for the character God desires in us is fruit the Spirit grows, not something we manufacture by our own effort. We can try to produce love, joy, peace, and the rest by our own determination, gritting them out, and find ourselves exhausted and falling short; but Paul calls these the fruit of the Spirit, grown in us as we walk by him. Our part is to live by the Spirit, to be rooted in him; the fruit grows from that. Do not try to manufacture the character God desires by your own effort alone, gritting it out; it is the fruit of the Spirit, grown as you walk by him. Walk by the Spirit and let him grow his fruit in you, love, joy, peace, and the rest, rather than trying to manufacture that character by your own effort, as Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit; for the character God desires is grown by the Spirit in a life yielded to him, not manufactured by our own gritted determination, and our part is to walk by the Spirit and let him bear his fruit.