The Spirit in the Writings of St Paul: The Fruit of the Spirit
A GENERAL view of the revelation through
St Paul of the Holy Spirit and His work lies now before us. We proceed in the chapters which remain to a more detailed study of some leading Pauline passages, in which the Spirit’s blessed operation and its results stand out manifested with peculiar glory.
May our “meditation of Him,” by His great Ps.civ.3. grace, “be sweet.” May thought and word be in some true sense His, and — may the whole result be for Him.
I take up in the present chapter the great passage about the Fruit of the Spirit, generated and produced in ‘‘the spiritual man.” The
Gal. v. 22,23. words thus specially before us are part of a context, and indeed of an Epistle, full to overflow of the truth of the Holy Ghost. What we observed in the last chapter
regarding the doctrine of St Paul in general is seen in the Galatian Epistle, and in this section of it, eminently.
The Epistle is an urgent protest against a false doctrine of Justification. It states with strong and jealous firmness and precision the truth of the finished work of the atoning Cross, and the absolute necessity and simplicity of the function of faith, faith only, in order to the sinner’s entrance into the merits of the Crucified, into acceptance in Him who ‘bought us out from the curse, being made a curse Gal. iii. 13. for us.’ It protests that a Gospel which leaves this out, which has not this for its message, is not a Gospel but a fatal perversion of the Gospel. But does the Epistle stand still there? Is Justification its whole message? No; it conveys quite as much a warning, a testimony, an affirmation, about the work and power of the Holy Ghost. The all-importance, for St Paul, of the truth of Justification resides after all in this, that for the justified, and for them only, lies open the life, and walk, and victory, and fruit-bearing, which is by the Holy Ghost alone. )
As guilty sinners they take refuge by faith in
Jesus Christ “made a curse for them;” and then, and so, they become possessed of all that is laid up in that same Saviour risen and glorified, and who now by the same Spirit who led them to Him, dwells in them.
So in this Epistle of Justification, as it draws to its wonderful close, we have more and more of the Holy Ghost. ‘“Walk by the Spirit, and
Gal.v.x6 ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh;” let us observe the definiteness and decision of that promise, my Christian brother and reader, and humbly claim it. Again, “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and” (we dwelt on this divine side of the matter in the last chapter) “the Spirit against the flesh.” Again, “If ye be led by the Spirit, Gal. v.17,18. ye are not under the law;” not in collision with it, as it is the royal proclamation of your Father’s will. Do you challenge His inspection as solely and only Jupce? Ah, that would to the last involve a sternly judicial condemnation.” But do you lovingly, and with
1 Observe the well-weighed words of Article XII.: “Good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot ... endure the severity of God’s JUDGMENT.”
the heart of the child born again of the Spirit, look up to Him as FaTuer, and, giving yourself to be led along the way of His will by His Spirit, say, “Oh how I” (not Ps.cxix. 7 challenge, but) “love Thy law,” Thy will revealed? Then indeed, as regards your personal relation to that law, you are not “under it;” it is not ‘over you” as the judicial sword. Not only has your blessed Redeemer met it for you as you have violated it, and as you fall short of it; you also now, in a sense most humble, led by the Spirit, meet it with the sincerity of a loyal will, loving the Lawgiver “from the soul.” .. yi 6; so Again, a few verses later, comes hires
the significant precept, “If we live by the Spirit,” if indeed we have by His power thes, new birth and life, “let us also ¢ake step by step (ororyapev) by the Spirit.” Let us consciously, with recollection, and zz detail, apply our life-power, yield to our Life-Giver, in the daily path. Not only as to the large scope of existence but in the minutest things of this hour, in the small but strong temptations of ordinary intercourse, in the facile commonplace occasions for loss of temper, loss of humility, loss of purity, failure to love, to serve, to remember that we are not our own, let us “take step by step” by the Holy Ghost. Can I too earnestly press that precept, with all its speciality of phrase in the Greek, upon my reader, upon myself? Again, a little further Gal. viz. on we have “the Spirit of meekness,” the blessed Paraclete ready to guide us “step by step” through one of the specially
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rough and crooked places of common Christian life. And a little lower again, in a passage Gal. vis. which we touched upon in the last chapter, we find the Christian entreated to “sow to the Spirit,” to cast, by faith, upon the presence and power of the Holy Ghost within him, as upon a divine soil, the seed given by each trying incident of life. The issue of such sowing shall be “life everlasting;” developments of the life of God within him now, and eternal developments from each such sowing hereafter, to His glory.
But I must not pursue too far, though it is all
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to the purpose, the context of our special passage, nor the general teaching of this Epistle on the relations between acceptance in Christ and life by the Holy Ghost. We come now at once to a view of the FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT.
Here first observe the light thrown by contrast on the word “fruit.” Just be- Gal. v. t-2:. fore we have had recounted to us “the works of the flesh.” The difference of the phrases is significant.’ In the one the noun in question is plural, in the other singular. A weary course of discords and internal collisions, a life in pieces and out of joint, is thus contrasted with a life whose growth is one harmonious development from one rich central principle, germinating and fructifying into a result of purity and peace Here is already a lesson for the spiritual man. As far as the Holy Spirit is in possession of him, as far as he is being led by the Spirit, and is yielding himself to the will
1 See some excellent remarks on this point in the Rev. Hugh Macmillan’s 7rue Vine, p. 142.
2 I do not mean that the word “works” can of ztse/f suggest the meaning above given. This would be obviously untenable. But its position here, close to “fruit,” and in antithesis to it, suggests that meaning. )
and mind (dpdvyyza) of the Spirit, so far is his Rom. viii.6. life set free from the internal wear and restlessness of ‘the works of the flesh,” and drawn together into a peace and unity which is possible only where what is made for God rests in Him and lives for Him. But this singular number, this “Fruit,” not “fruits,” of the passage before us, has more to say, besides this lesson of contrast. It reminds the Christian, as he reads over the blessed list of elements in the heavenly Fruit, that they are essentially parts of one thing, and not isolated things, in the Lord’s idea of the servant’s life. They are not separable characters, but a character. They are not put before the man who “lives by the Spirit” in order that he may pick and choose, and prefer to develop some one or two of them, perhaps those which he feels instinctively have most affinity with his natural dispositions. They are in the divine intention always inter-related, indivisible; the whole character of the Christian. We may Matt. v.32. Compare the Beatitudes, which assuredly describe not various persons but one person, the true disciple of Jesus Christ seen
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from many points of view. And we may compare also that remarkable passage, 2 Peter i, 5-7, where, under widely different phraseology, the believer, the man who has “obtained precious faith,” is entreated to “give all diligence” to seek for a holy completeness and harmony in the manifestation through him of the life of God which is in him.
That passage, by the way, may caution us against a disproportionate inference from the precious imagery of “the fruit” in this. The ideas suggested by fruit and fruitbearing are not those of effort and care in the fruitbearing v branch; effort and care are the cultivator’s part. But St Peter reminds us that the analogy between the impersonal fruit-tree and the personal believer cannot be in all respects complete. In the conscious and responsible man, as such, there must always be place for “all diligence.” Such “diligence” does not create life, or generate it, nor does it in a direct way develop the issues of life. But diligence is the believer’s duty in connexion with that development; it means, if done in spirit and in truth, the believer’s “laying 1 Pet. iis, aside,’ in the Lord’s name, every known thing that Azuders the outgrowth and fulness of the fruit.
But when this is said, by way of balance and clearness, then without reserve we can throw our thankful attention upon the blessed suggestions and significance of the word “fruit.” What does it tell us? It tells us, the branches of the true Vine, that in us, yet not of us, there is a mighty fructifying PrincipLe. It tells us that the holy characteristics, the holy character, here painted before us must not be worked up by weary efforts out of the materials of self, somewhat re-adjusted and assisting one another’s weakness, if they could do so. The happy, pure phenomenon has a nobly adequate vital Cause behind it. It grows; it is not manufactured. It is not acquired from our surroundings, but produced amidst them. It is the result of a secret of Lire; Life, that most wonderful of forces, while most silent; the force which in the natural world can, in the tender shoots of the young tree, lift the massive stone, and rend the joints of rock-like masonry; and which in the spiritual
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WHERE DOES OUR” GREAT STRENGTH” LIE? 105
world can make the weak strong, and do silent miracles with what once seemed impossibilities in character within and circumstances without.
Let the anxious, the discouraged, Christian ponder this word “fruit,” recollecting this its special significance. Let it remind him where his “great strength” lies. It lies in nothing that is properly and personally his. All that is his, all such that is not sin, is capable indeed of wonderful use by his ‘great strength.” Gifts, talents, faculties of mind, or body, or’ estate, be they very large or very, very small, all are precious, all are usable. But none, absolutely none, is his true strength. That lies wholly in a divinely given secret, principle, force, which. is in him but not of him, and whose power is not for a moment to be measured by his weakness. “From it is his fruit found.” see tos. xiv. s, Let him be at rest about the adequacy of that Cause to produce the effect of holiness. Let him in humble faith “lay aside” all known hindrance; and then in the same humble faith, watching and praying, but not struggling to force out the mighty Life, let
Rom viz him “yield himself unto God” for
a divinely natural fruitfulness.
For this fruit is “the fruit of THe SprRit.” Here is the all-important and all-welcome fact for us, in our present enquiry. This vital secret, force, principle, of which we have spoken — what is it? No abstract truth, no ideal of duty, no awe-inspiring but never life-giving “I ought.’ tis the Holy Ghost, the Personal and Loving Paraclete. It is the Lord, the Life-Giver, whose tender and mighty working has drawn me to Christ, and knit me into Him, and imparted Him to me; blessed be His Name. Because of Him, by virtue of Him, thanks to Him, through Him in-dwelling, inworking, filling, welcomed in to have His way
:Cor.vixy. in His temple, the fruit of holiness begins to be, to grow, to come forth, to take its gracious shape, to ripen into its sweetness for the service of God and Man. And so our way, our indirect way, to contribute to the blessed result is clear. It is to remove in His name the obstacles, but then to remember with thankful and peaceful joy that the work of life-giving and fruit-producing is
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His alone. From this point of view, my part is a blessed and wakeful Quietism’; a rest, that He may work.
Need I at any length remind my reader that this view of the operation of the Spzrzt as the secret of the fruit of holiness leaves wholly
inviolate the primary truth that “Chrdst is -
our Life’? We saw early in our Col. iii. 4. enquiry? how clear and full is the certainty of that truth; that while the Spirit of God
is the Life-Giver the Son of God is the.
Life. But then, the Spirit zs the Life-GIver. By Him, in His infinitely gracious personal operation, you and I “have the = :Jobnv.:x. Son.” And His own divine vital connexion with the Son is such that where He is, savingly, there Christ is, and where Christ is there He is. If I may quote words of my own written elsewhere: ‘‘ The Spirit is the eternal and divine personal Vehicle; Jesus Christ, ‘who is Oureite,asethe Ching /conveyed.4. 5 ..Lo
1 IT use the word Quietism to express one side of truth, and only so. In the history of theological language it has some associations with dangerous error.
aE ps30; etc, borrow an imperfect analogy from physical science, Christ is as the Sun of the soul, the Spirit is as the luminiferous Ether by whose vibration we have the Sun’s light and heat.” y
And now we come to St Paul’s delineation of this pure and sweet Fruit of the Spirit. Let us take it up for a few very practical enquiries and remarks.
The first point for observation, an ‘obvious one, but none the less to be definitely considered, is that the Fruit of the Spirit consists in its essence not of doing but of being. There is nothing in this description which directly speaks of energetic enterprise, multiplied labours, severe sufferings, great material sacrifices. The activities of life are in fact almost absent from the immediate view, and the passive, the patient, aspect of the spiritual man’s contact with life and men is alone very visibly present.
What do we read in this? That the spiritual man is called, as his highest calling, to cut himself off from active, willing, practical service of others? That the celestial fruit will grow,
1 Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 136. I may refer also to Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, pp. 60, 61.
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and ripen, and be ready for the festival of God, most favourably in a “life of contemplation,” in a desert, or a cloister, or a jealously isolated study? The whole New Testament negatives such a thought. In it, the ideal Christian life is the life in which the Lord is glorified and manifested amidst the manifold relative duties and labours of the life of home, of citizenship, of public ministry, of active evangelization. It is a life in which the cross is daily carried, — the cross not of our wilful and ambitious choosing but of the Lord’s humbling and searching allotment in the daily path. If the life of a monastery were contemplated in the New Testament at all, as it is not, surely it would be presented there as a “counsel” not “of perfection” but of imperfection; a lower path of surrender and of service, while the higher path was that of the mother, the child, the servant, who in the midst of common life “did the will of God from the soul.” Eph. vi. 6. But then, the impartial Gospel does not say that work is therefore life. It points to the eternal necessity of right being in order to right doing. It bids the Christian live to serve,
PS See but live dehznd hzs service in and with his Lord
and Life. It asks, ultimately, not whether tCor. xiii. 3. yOu give your goods to the poor, or
your body to the fire, but whether you love.
So ‘the Fruit of the Spirit” is a divinely given and developed Cnaracter, drawn out of the fulness of Christ; a character which must express itself in service, but whose Col iii.3. - essence “is hid’ with Christ’ in God.” This is the “fruit” which, according to the Lord Jesus Christ’s own words, we shall surely bear if by the Spirit “we abide Johnzv.48 in Him.” Of this fruit, says the same Teacher, we are to bear “much? sare the glory of His Father. We may or may not, in His providence, have much to do for Him in enterprise, in effort, in public testimony, in memorable suffering. Perhaps His will for us, as we submit ourselves wholly to it, humbly ready to “toil and not faint” in His name, may be to do the most silent of domestic duties, or to bear the most exhausting weakness or pain in a neglected sick-room. But these questions touch the accidents of the matter, not the essence. The “fruit” is the
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character drawn for us by the Holy Spirit from Jesus Christ our Head. The “much fruit” is that character not stunted and dwarfed by the frosts of unbelief, but expanding in sweet and strong development in the sunny open air of the simplest faith.
And now we will look at the particulars of the description, at the elements which this inspired analysis shows us in the texture of this fruit of Paradise grown on earth.
Those elements are nine: ‘‘ Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.’”» And we may without over-refinement trace a threefold grouping igmtuemnine. «Love, “joy, peace,-.if lo read their reference aright, describe the character in its immediate relation to the Lord, who is
its spring of “love,” its cause of ‘‘joy,” its,
living law of internal ‘‘peace.’ ‘ Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,” describe it in its relations with men, as the Christian comes evermore from the “secret of the Ps. xxxi.2.
Presence” to live his ‘‘hidden” life, unharmed
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and bearing blessing with it, amidst “the plotting of men” and “the strife of tongues.” ‘‘ Faithfulness, meekness, self-control,” denote the Christian’s characteristics not so much under the trials of opposition or provocation as in the common ‘calls and duties of the day. And so the ‘‘fruit” appears in its fair roundness and ripeness. So the man, born of the Spirit, led of the Spirit, taking step by step by the Spirit, filled with this same blessed Spirit (a “filling” of which we shall say more in the next chapter), lives, moves, and has his being, with and for God and man. He 1s one personality, and so his regenerate and Spiritdeveloped character is one, from the “love” to the “self-control”; from his inmost intercourse with his Lord to his act of most watchful and practical self-discipline in open human life. ‘What he is as indeed a Christian, 22 Zofo, that is the Spirit’s Fruit.
As we close, let us observe some main truths about our Christian character, conveyed to us in this view of the Fruit of the Spirit.
First, it is a character essentially of love and light. There are other qualifying facts about it assuredly. There is in the true Christian a gravity, an earnestness, a recollectedness, the lack of which would put the man out of character. This we have set before us here in the word ‘‘temperance,” self-control. But the material, the essence, of the life and character thus governed and controlled is “love, joy, peace.” Let the disciple remember this, and see that nothing hinders the manifestation of it. He is a man in whom dwells that Spirit whose special function it is to “pour out the Jove of God in the Rom. ve 5: heart.’ That Spirit was shed upon the exalted Head as “the oil of gladness,” and Heb.i.s.
as such He flows down upon the member of fuauetieadto; give him “zoyin the, 4.38 Holy Ghost.” And He is the Dove **“”“”* of divine deace; His “mind” 1s Rom viii. 6. as well as “‘life;” He is “the Spirit of faith,’ and “peace” as well as 2Cor.iv. 13.
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peace
“Joy” comes by “believing.” His Rom. xv. 1s.
unhindered in-working must come out then in a life which the known love of God makes loving — loving towards the Lord, and, in the
Lord, towards men; joyful, with a calm but
contagious and beneficent happiness, in its blessed certainty of Christ possessed in His glorious fulness; and. peaceful, with a restfulness which cannot but diffuse itself around, as the Spirit shows our spirit that “we have Rom.v.x.’, peace™) with «God,. and=thatestue “peace of God” can indeed “keep our hearts Phil. iv. and thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Let us remember, let us yield ourselves up, that we may manifest this essential threefold brightness of the life and character of the spiritual man. The Holy Ghost, giving us possession of Christ, is the heavenly Antidote to coldness, to “unpleasantness,” to reserve of sympathies and service, to melancholy, to beclouding “worry.” Self-control may have to carve deep lines in heart and life; but the chisel need never deface the brightness of the material, Again, the character of the Spiritual man is, in the relations of man with man, a character which is essentially ready to give way, to forbear, to bear. No elaborate qualification is needed here of this statement. I remember well what energy for service the Holy Spirit
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can and does impart to the weakest, and what ‘mmovable firmness for truth, for principle, He can and does develope in the most sensitive and timid. But deep below such manifestations, where they are indeed His work, there lies in the order of grace the presence, by His indwelling, of a tender and willing surrender to others, because first to the Lord, of every mere claim and jealousy of self. In proportion to the fulness of the Spirit’s in-working Jesus Christ really occupies the throne usurped before by self. And in proportion to that occupation of the throne by its true King the man will be, more than anything else — whatever else he has to be in the direction of activity and firmness — ‘ long-suffering, gentle, good.”
Lastly, the truly spiritual character will, in its God-given development, issue always in a practical and wakeful life. Bright with a secret happiness, long-suffering with a deep and genuine surrender, the spiritual man will be
“faithful” 1 in every particular Of Guiyang tale
1 That the word alors in this passage means “faithfulness” not “faith” is clear by its collocation with words in which relative duties are plainly in view. See, ¢.g., Titus ii. 10.
will be loyal to every promise made or trust undertaken. He will be to be depended on in the business of the day. His correspondents will receive punctual answers; his friends, faithful and careful counsel. His employers will get a service out of him in which their just interests will beashisown. His servants and dependants will find him watchfully equitable, considerate, and courteous. He will take great care to Rom. xii 8. ““OWe no man anything.” His church and parish will be truly served, be they ever so large, or small, or unresponsive. He will be known to be one who will take trouble for others, and who is glad to be their servant indeed for Jesus’ sake. He will be meck,” in the sense of a jealous avoidance of a manner and habit of self-assertion among his brethren - in matters of opinion or of work. And with and over it all he will be “sedfcontrolled.” He will, for the glory of his Master, and that he may be truly serviceable among his fellows for Him, watch and pray over his own acts and habits; over bed, and board, and literature, and companionship, and recreation, and imagination, and tongue. Not that he will try to exercise
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the Stoic’s fancied empire of self over self; but he will humbly, recollectedly, with decision, bring the whole of his life, hour by hour, to his glorious Master for orders and for discipline. He will ‘keep under his body, and: Cor. ix. 2. bring it into subjection,” by a steadily maintained surrender of it as “a living Rom. xii.s. sacrifice,” in all its faculties, to Him of whom it is written, “the body is for the «Cor. vi.:s. Lord, and the Lord for the body.” For the spiritual man, a true self-surrender is the deep secret of a true self-control.
So we shut the Epistle, and close our enquiry into the Fruit of the Spirit. But we will do so only to turn again to life with a fuller recollection of what is the character we are intended to bear as spiritual men, and what is the divine provision, present and perfect, for the being of that character in us and its manifestation by us.
We will take this Scripture to be to us, amongst other things, a touchstone of our spiritual health. Not long ago I heard of a pious and devoted woman who used it habitually for this purpose. If in any degree conscious of a decline or obscuration in her life and work for her Lord, she took Gal. v. 22, 23, and read the words over as in His presence, and asked herself before Him in what particular of the Fruit of the Spirit any recent failure was apparent. Such asking and finding led at once to a repentant renewal of surrender and of faith, and so back to the rest, and to the readiness, which are for us, by the Holy Ghost, in Jesus Christ our Life.