What should a Christian be like? If there is one thing that stands out on the pages of the Bible, it is that in his motives and conduct, affections and aspirations, the believer is to live a Christ-centred and God-glorifying life. Too often we find ourselves blown along by the changing fashions and styles of the world, so that at the end of the day we are no different to those whom we wish to convert. Yet the New Testament is clear on the fact that if the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our heart, our life will show it, and must show it.

While three decades ago there was perhaps a lack of work on the Holy Spirit more than any other theological topic, that is not our problem now. We are now in danger of having a plethora of works on the Holy Spirit that we are so busy writing, thinking and talking about Him, and whether He always gives the gift of tongues, and whether the Charismatics are right about Him, and whether He always guides the believer consciously, that we fail to develop the Spirit-centred life of which Paul speaks in Galatians 5. We will assume here the completeness of the believer in Jesus Christ, and also the fact that baptism in the Holy Spirit occurs at the point of regeneration. On that basis, we must then build Paul's description of Christian character, and ask – what kind of people are we to be in this world?

Paul's answer to that in Galatians 5:22ff is in terms of the 'fruit of the Spirit', a phrase used only twice in the New Testament, in Galatians 5 and in Ephesians 5:9 ("the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth"). Both epistles are very different, and were originally written for very different reasons, but the context in which the term 'fruit of the Spirit' is used is the same in both, that of practical Christian living. Ephesians 5:8 is urging the believer to walk as a child of light. Galatians 5:16 is urging him to walk in the Spirit and not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. The metaphor here is a marching one, made famous in Packer's book of the title Keep in Step with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our pace­setter, and our Christian life is concerned with walking at the same pace as Him. If we walk to our own rule, or by a rule other than that of the Holy Spirit, our marching will be out of step, and the whole army will suffer as a result.

To talk of the fruit of the Spirit, therefore, is not to talk of some mystical experience which is the preserve of only a few of God's people. It is to speak of a matter of common concern to all the people of God, dealing with the basic, practical concerns of Christian character and Christian living which affect our everyday lives and our day to day concerns.

Chalmers called Galatians 5 "A rich chapter, wherein the evangelical doctrine effloresces (bursts into bloom) into evangelical practice". It is the fruit of the Spirit that defines for us what that evangelical practice is, and what are the outstanding evidences of a life changed from the inside and lived outwardly to the glory of God in this world.

The Believer as Fruit-Bearer⤒🔗

Although the phrase 'fruit of the Spirit' is only found twice in the New Testament, the image of the Christian as bearing fruit pervades the Scriptures. The blessed man, according to Psalm 1:3, is like a tree which 'brings forth fruit in his season', and even in old age the righteous will bear fruit (Psalm 92:14). The God of Israel says to His people in Hosea 14:8 "From me is thy fruit found".

Perhaps the richest Old Testament comment on this theme is in a phrase common to both Isaiah (in 58:11) and Jeremiah (in 31:12), where the soul of the believer is compared to a watered garden. This, to coin a phrase, is fertile imagery indeed. The ground that was once dried up and hard, barren and deserted, destitute of any good, and of any spiritual life, has been ploughed up, turned, prepared, planted and watered so that fruit will grow. As a beautiful garden extols the industry and the labour which the gardener has bestowed, so a Christian life extols the work of the divine gardener within. A holy life, said John Bunyan, is the beauty of Christianity, and the reason is that when our character and conduct show that we are no longer our own, but that it is our great desire to live for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, the work is evidently His, and not ours.

The same image is carried over into the New Testament. The tree, says Matthew 12:33, is known by its fruit; and the Father is glorified when we bear much fruit (John 15:8). In order to bear fruit we need to remain in the vine, united to Christ and drinking the life that is in Him. Paul says in Romans that we have been made free from sin, and are the servants of God, with fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life (6:22). Or, as James puts it in James 3:18, "the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace".

A divinely implanted, incorruptible seed has been planted in the souls of God's people. The devil may try to uproot it, the thorns may try to choke it, the storm may try to blast it, but if God put it there he will water it every moment, and, lest any hurt it, he will tend it night and day (Isaiah 27:2-3). That seed has taken root in prepared soil, in spite of all the most unpromising aspects of the lives whom God has touched, and it has taken root and bears fruit.

There is a sense in which the most important part of the tree is that part which cannot be seen, which is hidden beneath the surface, clinging to the rock. The only reason it bears such ripe fruit and affords such strong shelter is that it stands unmovable, rooted and grounded on the rock. The same is true of the Christian. Our fruit is found from Christ, and we can only know it in our lives as we cling to the rock, and as our roots go deep. Rooted and grounded in the love of God, we will bear fruit and live lives that reflect His glory.

While the gifts of the Spirit are discriminate, the fruit is not. Christ sends His Spirit to His church, and there are differences in the distribution and measure of the gifts with which His people are equipped to serve Him. "To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ... to another the working of miracles ... to another prophecy" and so on (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). The one and the same Spirit is given by Christ, who distributes the gifts of the Spirit to each man according to His own mind and will.

But the fruit of the Spirit is indiscriminate in the church. All Christians are fruit-bearers, while not all Christians have the same gifts. It is impossible to have a Christian who is not exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit to a greater or lesser degree. It is the Spirit that makes the believer, and it is from that Spirit that the fruit of the Christian will be found.

There are important practical consequences of this. If a man claims to have a spiritual gift, but is not exhibiting the Spirit's fruit, how can his claim be taken seriously? In terms of ministry, for example, how can the church recognise the gift of ministry in a man who is not governed by love, who knows no joy, who is not self-controlled, who is not longsuffering? If the basis traits of Christian character, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, are absent, how can a man claim to have a gift from that same Spirit?

Conversely, the fact that a man shows evidence of the Spirit's fruit is no guarantee that he has any of the Spirit's gifts. It is not enough for a man to be a preacher that he be gentle, meek and good. Does he have, in addition to these common traits of Christian character, a special portion of the Spirit that has gifted him for ministry?

In other words, the fruit is the starting-point for the discussion of the gift. But it must only be the starting-point. It is enough neither that a man's doctrine nor that a man's practice be evangelical for admission to the ministry. People tend to dance a reel to hear of an 'evangelical' entering the ministry, or of an 'evangelical' being appointed archbishop. And ministers and archbishops ought to be evangelical. But a man is not a good minister just because he is an evangelical man. If God has called us to new life in Christ, then our life will exhibit these traits of character which, indiscriminately throughout the church, give evidence of His saving grace; if God has gifted us for a particular avenue of service, then our gift is in addition, and not instead of, our fruit.

Growth in Christlikeness←⤒🔗

Where is the fruit of the Spirit seen in perfection? In the life and example of Jesus. "He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him" (John 3:34). The Holy Spirit is Christ's in rich measure, indeed, beyond measure. In Christ's bodily form there dwells the fulness of the godhead. He is discriminated and particularised as the gifted One above all others, to whom the tongue of the learned has been given, and who is equipped for service in the work of Jehovah.

And it is in His life that we see the fruit of the Spirit ripened to perfection, growing naturally out of the garden of His soul. There was no need to implant a foreign seed there, to cultivate this ground or to bring some external matter in. The fruit that we bear by virtue of the gardener's industrious labour is borne in Him naturally, spontaneously and habitually. God made us from what we were into what we are now. But Jesus was always as He is now, in the sense that all the graces and all the perfections of character were evident in Him at every point of His life and existence.

The reality of Paul's doctrine of the fruit of the Spirit, therefore, is that it is this fruit that makes us Christlike, in our conduct and motives, in our thoughts, words and actions. So Jonathan Edwards could write in his The Religious Affections that "Christians that shine by reflecting the light of the Sun of Righteousness do shine with the same sort of brightness, the same mild, sweet and pleasant beams. These lamps of the spiritual temple, that are enkindled by fire from Heaven, burn with the same sort of flame..."

This is explicitly stated in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18. "The Lord", says Paul, "is the Spirit... But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord". There is an identity between the Spirit and the Lord Jesus that means that the more we have of the Spirit the more we will be like the Lord, who has the fulness. This is the realisation of the purpose of God's salvation, that we should be 'conformed to the image of His Son'. Stage by stage, maturity in the Christian life will lead to being like Jesus, living like Him, thinking like Him and following His example more and more.

And if that is so, it means that the fruit of the Spirit is really a foresight of what our glorified condition in Heaven will be like. There will be perfect comformity to the image of Christ. Our path is as the shining light that shines more and more to the perfect day, like the growing fruit that looks to the day when all, in the end, will be harvest.

Paul can speak of the Spirit as our inheritance. We have the first fruit. Grace is but glory in the bud, and glory is grace in the bloom. The fruit of the Spirit belongs to those here who one day will be perfectly like their Lord in a fulness of love, joy, peace, goodness and self-control. We are to live here as those who are most at home in the heavenlies, whose heart is where their treasure is, and who long to be like Jesus.

There are nine graces identified in Galatians 5:22-2­4 and which make up the cluster of the spiritual life. These are to be seen and cultivated in the life of every Christian.

Love←⤒🔗

Paul gives primacy of place to love, which he calls elsewhere the greatest of the graces. Without it, the other graces have no meaning. Faith, for example, works through love. Obedience is also a hallmark of love. If a man can say with David 'I love the Lord', he is expressing the greatest miracle of grace possible in a human life. To the man in the grip of sin, Jesus remains like a root out of a dry ground, with no attraction, no beauty. But to the man in the grip of grace, He has become 'altogether lovely', and his attractiveness is powerful and life-absorbing.

Love for Jesus Christ is rational. It has a reason for its existence. David could say 'I love the Lord because...' This was no unreasonable devotion, but one which had valid reasons for its existence. John tells us that the ultimate reason for love to Christ is that it is reciprocal – it responds to a prior love. 'We love him because he first loved us'. The Gospel guards the primacy of Christ's love to the church, and highlights the love of the church to the Saviour as one which is a reasonable – the only reasonable – response to his love for sinners.

This love is obedient. It finds expression in willing service. It longs to please. It knows why it exists, and it knows what it exists for. 'If you love me,' Jesus says, 'keep my commandments'. It is impossible to separate the Spirit-filled life from the commandments of God. Many people make precisely that separation. But it is not a valid one. The love that finds Christ as the source of all pleasure, longs to please him. It does not find the law restrictive in any sense. Like a marriage vow, it regards the law of God as the hedge around the legitimate enjoyment of the relationship. When a believer strays outwith the parameters of that law, there is no blessing for him, only frustration and dispeace. But within the terms of God's law, love finds room to grow, to deepen and to express itself.

This love also flows to the whole body of Christ. If we love him, we love the brethren. Indeed, in the sphere of Christian experience it is possible to argue back from our love to the fellowship of Christian believers to our love for Christ himself. There is no dubiety. How can we love God whom we have not seen if we do not love the brother whom we have seen?

Joy←⤒🔗

Joy is an indispensable element of kingdom life. 'The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost' (Romans 14:17). Joy is spoken of in different ways and in different aspects in the Bible.

There is the joy of salvation, the joy which enveloped Samaria as a consequence of the preaching of Philip (Acts 8:8), the joy that Israel experienced in consequence of being God's favoured folk: 'Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord'. The joy that the world seeks is always dependent upon people, or places, or experiences, and it comes and goes like the morning dew. But the people of God have a source of joy in what is beyond the things of earth, in the very things of Heaven itself.

There is the joy of assurance; the joy of realising anew the wonder of God's grace and love in the Gospel. After the resurrection, for example, the company of worshippers returned from Jerusalem to Bethany 'with great joy'. Faith had been confirmed, love had been kindled anew. There was a joy here no man could take from them, because of the unmistakable fact of resurrection victory.

The believer also knows joy in sorrow. 'Count it all joy,' James says in 1:2, 'when you fall into various temptations'. When the believers in Thessalonica were first brought into the kingdom, they received the gospel 'in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost'. There were hard and difficult trials to be endured; lonely and long roads to be walked. But the Holy Spirit came into their hearts with a joy that was full of glory. Only the believer knows what it is to rise above difficult and fiery trials and to face the world with all its pain in the confidence of Heaven's joy.

Peace←⤒🔗

The Bible speaks of a three-fold peace which is the portion of the Christian. There is, first, peace with God. This is the opposite of enmity, of being at war with God through sin. It is possible only because the work Jesus performed on the cross was a work of reconciliation, with the purpose of removing the hostility and the cause of the estrangement. That is impossible for us to do, for sin compromises our lives at every point. But what we could not do for ourselves, Jesus did for us by dying on the cross. Those who know him know that the barrier is removed and the cross has taken away all that we put in between ourselves and the Saviour.

The Bible also speaks of the peace of God, which will guard the hearts and minds of those who commit their way to God. It is what Isaiah describes as God keeping in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on Christ. We can so easily become depressed under a burden of care and worry. There are legitimate burdens for the Christian; but there are illegitimate ones too. We must be careful to check that our burdens are lawful! Every anxiety and concern we are to cast on Christ, because he cares for us and is able to keep and sustain us along life's way.

The Bible speaks also of having peace with others. If it is possible, we are to live at peace with all men (Romans 12:18). If that is not possible, we are to use every possible means to effect reconciliation, avoiding estrangement or the erection of barriers. Jesus said 'Blessed are the peacemakers' (Matthew 5:9); it is a blessed thing not only to know reconciliation in a vertical dimension between ourselves and God, but to know it on a horizontal plane also, and to work towards it increasingly between ourselves and our fellow men.

Longsuffering←⤒🔗

It is so striking to see this grace next to peace! The man of peace does not invite suffering, nor does he wish to suffer. Yet the same Spirit that works in the heart of the believer a desire for peace also works the grace of a patient attitude towards those who do not wish peace. The psalmist could say in Psalm 120:7 'I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war'. The Christian can find himself in such a situation both in the world and, sadly, in the church also. What is the attitude of the spiritual man towards the warmongers of life? If peace cannot be made, then the grace of longsuffering comes into play.

This is supremely the characteristic of God, who is merciful and gracious, and longsuffering (Exodus 34:6). It means that he condemns reluctantly, for he is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9). God's longsuffering is our salvation (2 Peter 3:16) – he is for peace, but we want war. Nonetheless, he holds back the wave of judgement in order that we might find the peace he offers in the gospel.

Longsuffering is about our reaction to rejection, to hurt, to being bruised by those to whom we offer the olive-branch of peace. Paul is here counselling the Galatians not to bite and devour one another, but rather to live peacefully, working to sort out their differences and to bear well, and not badly, the injuries sustained along life's road. He is counselling them, as Peter does, to follow the example of Jesus Christ, who did not answer in kind when he was reviled, but who committed himself to the judge of all the earth.

Gentleness←⤒🔗

The New Testament ethic of Christian behaviour reflects the characteristics of our Lord himself. He applies the words of Isaiah to himself - "a bruised reed shall he not break and a smoking flax shall he not quench". The reed may be damaged to the point that it hangs by a thread; in any other hands it would be destroyed, but not in his. The flax, which may once have burned brightly, is now reduced to a wisp of smoke, and in other hands would be completely extinguished. But not in his; Jesus pays deference to the actual condition of his people, to strengthen what remains and is ready to die.

Far too often we speak without thinking what our words can do to our hearers. There is power in a single word to build up, as there is to destroy. Lives that have all the apparent signs of wholesomeness and success, may be hanging on by a thread. A harsh word can do so much damage. It takes years to build a skyscraper, but a carefully placed explosion can reduce it in an instant. We are to encourage believers to scrape the sky – to build one another up. But instead our words can be like explosives, reducing people to rubble in a moment.

How different the Lord was. To be sure, he spoke forthrightly and even harshly, but his words were carefully measured to do the greatest good and not to inflict the greatest damage. May we follow his example!

Goodness←⤒🔗

For many people, their native goodness is the basis for their salvation. Yet God makes it clear that by nature 'There is none who does good, no, not one'. Any goodness, any action which does not glorify self, must be worked in us by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, God has created us for goodness, and for good works (Ephesians 2:8-10). In this epistle itself, Paul counsels the believers in 6:10 – 'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith'. We are encouraged to be charitable and to be benevolent.

Faith←⤒🔗

Does Paul mean the exercise of saving faith, or does he mean the grace of faithfulness at this point? The more natural meaning of the Greek word may be the former, but in Titus 2:10, the word is translated 'fidelity' or 'faithfulness'. Both are true. The Spirit works faith, that I might be faithful to Jesus Christ in a faithless generation.

What are the elements of saving faith, by which the believer lives his life? Faith is made up of knowledge: it feeds on the facts of biblical revelation, not on the ideas of men. It also contains belief: there is an assurance that is of the essence of faith, the knowledge that God can do what he says. And it must also have trust, the commitment that Christ will honour all his promises for the good of his own.

When we know that he is there, when we know what he can do, and when we commit ourselves to what he will do for his people, then we are in possession of the faith that saves. This gives the Christian all his hope and confidence for the present and the future.

Meekness←⤒🔗

Meekness means humility in practice. It means having a true, biblical assessment of ourselves, in order that we might trust the more and lean the more on Jesus Christ as the source of all our strength. Lloyd-Jones wrote that 'to be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves because we see there is nothing worth defending'. It means that we run to God to cover us and we live looking upwards.

This is not how men generally think. For our generation, meekness is a vice, a hindrance. Evolutionists taught us the concept of the survival of the fittest. Christ taught us the concept of the survival – indeed, the victory – of the weakest, for it is when we are weak that we are strong, in the grace that is enough for us, and in the power that is perfected in our weakness.

Temperance←⤒🔗

This is the last of the fruit mentioned on the cluster, but how important it is. The Holy Spirit enables us to retain control, to have the mastery over sin. Temptation means that sin wants to have lordship; temperance means that we are enabled to overcome, that Christ might have the lordship and the pre-eminence.

Proverbs 25:28 describes the man who has no self-control as being 'like a city that is broken down and without walls'. Such a city is in danger indeed – its outward defences are missing, and it lies exposed to the onslaught and attack of the enemy. In the areas of everyday life, food, drink, dress, sexual behaviour, conversation, choices, we are to have control over our spirits in order that we will not be conformed to the world, but transformed through our minds being renewed.

Paul himself knew the power of sin as an enemy which could so easily beset and ensnare him at every turn. It was not enough for him to be successful in the work give him to do; he kept his body in subjection, with self-control like the runner in a race, in order that he might please his Master (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). May we be like him, and seek to honour Christ by living a life that displays the Heavenly fruit each day.