The fruit of the spirit

THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
BY Glenn Pease
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE ON GAL.5:13-26
1. THE FRUIT OF LOVE.
2. THE FRUIT OF JOY.
3. THE FRUIT OF PEACE.
4. THE FRUIT OF PATIENCE.
5. THE FRUIT OF KINDNESS.
6. THE FRUIT OF GOODNESS.
7. THE FRUIT OF FAITHFULNESS.
8. THE FRUIT OF GENTLENESS.
9. THE FRUIT OF SELF-CONTROL.
INTRODUCTION TO THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
A doctor, an engineer, and an attorney were debating whose profession was the oldest. The
doctor said, " it's obvious the medical profession was the first. The Bible refers to God creating Eve
from Adam's rib, and that is surgical procedure." But the engineer said, "No! before that, God
created the world out of chaos, and one must be an engineer to create a world." "But wait," said the
lawyer, "where do you think that chaos came from?"
Lawyer's do create a lot of chaos, because the very nature of their profession involves the chaos of
broken laws, and the resulting broken lives. Chaos is their bread and butter. One lawyer had a
bumper sticker that read, "PLEASE HIT ME-I'M A LAWYER." The complexity of the law is so
vast because, as judge Harry Shafer writes, "we have fifty million laws trying to enforce ten
commandments." There has to be a law against so many human actions because they are offensive
and harmful to other persons and their property. Paul lists fifteen acts of the sinful nature of man in
verses 19-21 of Galatians 5. But then in verses 22-23 he lists nine things which he calls the fruit of
the Spirit, and he ends verse 23 with this statement, "against such things there is no law." Laws are
to restrain people from certain behavior, but there is no need to restrain from these nine things.
In all the huge volumes of laws around the world you will search in vain to find a law against
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So it is not
true that everything good is either illegal or fatening. None of these nine fruits will add a pound to
your body or any guilt to your conscience, for there is nothing illegal or fatening. There is no need

for laws to control the growth of this fruit, for in contrast to the acts of the flesh, these acts and
attitudes do not hurt people in any way. They help and heal, and they add beauty and pleasure to all
relationships. These fruits are a foretaste of heaven, and the goal in this life is to become a garden
where they grow in abundance.
The Greek word for fruit is KARPOS, and it is a very popular word in the New Testament. It is
used 66 times, and Jesus uses it more than all the rest combined. It was one of His favorite words. I
looked up a number of the texts where Jesus used the word fruit and discovered that sometimes he
said fruits, in the plural. At other times he used the singular to convey the plural. The singular and
the plural are used interchangeably. My conclusion is that there is no basis for the debate over which
is most correct to say, the fruit of the Spirit, or the fruits of the Spirit. It makes no difference if you
call them the fruit of the fruits of the Spirit. Either way you are dealing with nine distinct values.
Fruit is a very positive word, for it brings to mind the images of delicious and tasty food we
enjoy. God started the world with a very healthy environment, for the basic food was fruit in the
garden of Eden. Fruit is basic to the good health of the body. The Bible ends with fruit as the key
food also, for in the book of Rev. we see the Tree of Life, and it bears twelve kinds of fruit-one for
each month of the year. If the Bible begins and ends with fruit, that ought to be a good clue as to
what a healthy diet is in the eyes of God. There is no image of paradise anywhere that does not
include fruit as a major factor in its beauty and pleasure
The word fruit comes from the Latin word FRUCTUS, which means enjoyment. Fruit got this
name because it is the source of such quick and easy pleasure. You just grab an apple off the tree
and sink your teeth into it and enjoy it right now without any preparation or cooking. So it is also
with many other fruits. In contrast, grains, vegetables, and meats call for delayed pleasure until they
are prepared for eating. It is the instant nature of their enjoyment that is a distinguishing
characteristic of fruit.
This is the case with the nine fruits of the Spirit also. They give instant pleasure to the soul. Like
physical fruit, they may take time to develop, but when they are ripe they give immediate enjoyment
to both producer and consumer. People who eat only fruit are called fruitarians. In this series on the
Fruits of the Spirit we are going to be Biblical fruitarians, and strive to consume all God has
revealed about spiritual fruit.
The Fruits of the Spirit are actually superior to the Gifts of the Spirit. The Gifts can be abused
and need laws to regulate them, lest they do more harm than good. And if you have gifts but not the
fruits, they are worthless, as Paul says in ICor. 13. You can have the gift of tongues, and speak like
an angel, but without love you are just a noisy gong and clanging cymbal. You can have the gift of
prophecy and knowledge and understand all mysteries, but without the fruit of love, you are nothing.
Even if you have the gift of faith and can do miracles like moving mountains, but lack love, you are
no asset to the kingdom of God. The point Paul is making is that the Gifts of the Spirit need to be
under the direction of the Fruits of the Spirit, or they lose their value Gifts have to do with what you
do, but Fruits have to do with who you are. Being comes before doing. Doing the right thing can be
done even by the most evil of people, but being the right kind of person is what God is after. Being
Christ like has to do with character and not just conduct. The Fruits focus on character and the inner
being and not just on conduct.
The really good news about the Fruits of the Spirit is that they are available to all Christians. So

many of God's people feel they have no gifts, or certainly none that are spectacular. But Paul makes
it clear that nobody is second class when it comes to the Fruits. The gifts are like body parts. The eye
has the gift of seeing, the ear the gift of hearing, the feet the gift of walking, and so on. Each has a
specialized function that the other members of the body may not have. But the Fruits of the Spirit are
for all members of the body, equally.
No Christian can say that they do not have the capacity to love, feel joy, have peace, etc., like
other Christians. They may not have the gifts of others in the body, but all have equal access to these
fruits. These are not exclusive to any part of the body. They are for all parts of the body, and every
member of the body is expected to grow these fruits. You and I can be just as loving, and just as
joyful, and just as peaceful as Billy Graham, or Mother Teresa, or any other well-known Christian
you can think of. There are people in every church who have just as many Fruits of the Spirit as the
best known leaders around the world. Many people can walk into their back yard and pick an apple
off a tree that is just as good as any of the name brand apples you can get in your supermarket. So
there are masses of marvelous fruits in obscure places that almost nobody knows about, but they
bring pleasure and beauty to those who do know of them. Every Christian is a potential fruit
producer.
You know an apple tree by its fruit. If there are no apples on a tree, but pears instead, you know
it is a pear tree. All fruit trees are identified by their fruit. So the Christian is to be identified by the
fruit they bear. How do you know if a Christian is growing in Christlikeness? You cannot tell by the
position they hold in the church, or by the gifts they display, or by the awards they may win. You
can only tell by the fruit that they bear. If they are not adding to the pleasure and beauty of the
kingdom, but are adding strife, and negatives of all kinds, they may be gifted leaders even, but they
are not fruit bearing believers. This is to be our primary goal. Nothing else matters if we do not
produce the Fruits of the Spirit. These are the nine marks of the growing Christian. These are the
nine signs of spiritual maturity. These are the nine evidences of Christlikeness.
The importance and significance of these fruits is all the more magnified when we read the words
of Donald Gee, the Pentecostal theologian who writes from a charismatic perspective. He makes it
clear that Pentecostals make a major mistake in thinking that the gifts are all that matter. He writes,
When the great Forth Bridge in Scotland was
nearing completion we are told that one dull, cold
day the builders tried unsuccessfully all day long
to bring certain important girders together. Every
available device of mechanical power was used,
without success, and at the end of the day they re-tired
completely baffled. But next morning the sun
shone in summer warmth upon the great masses
of steel, and the expansion thus produced soon
enabled them to make the connection. So it is with
much of the work of the Spirit: His power some-times
works more irresistibly in the silent
influences of love, joy, and peace, than in the mightier
manifestations of miracles or prophesying.

That is a powerful testimony coming from a Pentecostal charismatic, for he recognizes that the
power of the fruit available to all Christians may be greater than the power of the gifts available to
the few. There is no doubt about it, the study of the Fruits of the Spirit can be the most important
study of our lives if we allow the knowledge we gain to be transformed into actual fruit. The study
of love is only of value if we become more loving, and so it is with each of the fruits. Our prayer
need to be like that of the poet who wrote,
Love through me, Love of God,
There is no love in me,
Oh Fire of Love, light thou the love,
That burns perpetually.
Flow through me, Peace of God,
Calm river, flow until
No wind can blow, no current stir
A ripple of self-will.
Shine through me. Joy of God,
Make me like Thy clear air
Which Thou dost pour Thy colors thro'
As though it were not there.
Oh blessed Love of God,
That all may taste and see
How good Thou art, once more I pray:
Love through me, even me.
All of these fruits hang together like a cluster of grapes on the vine. You can't pick and chose
which ones you will have and leave the rest alone. They come together, and you have them all, or
you don't have them at all. You cannot say I'll be loving and joyful, but I'm not going to be kind and
good. This is a package deal, and although your personality may favor some of these over others,
they all have to be a part of your personality for you to be Christ like. The lack of any one of them
can spoil all the rest. They are one, and that is why some prefer the singular of fruit rather than
fruits of the Spirit. They are like nine segments of an orange. They are parts, but together they
make one orange. There is one fruit of the Spirit in nine segments.
Even the man of the world might have some of these fruits, but they will be offset by the works of
his flesh, and so he will not be Christ like. The Christian is to be in glaring contrast to the man of
the world by having the whole package. If one or more is missing we know we are quenching the
Spirit. We are keeping some part of our soil in our own soil bank to raise what we want to raise
rather than the fruits of the Spirit. To have the full crop we need to surrender our whole being to the
Holy Spirit and allow Him freedom to produce in us all that He desires.
This means all of life can be seen as an opportunity to grow one or more of these fruits. If life is
going great and all is smooth sailing, let your life grow abundantly in love, joy, and peace. But if
life gets hard and there are trials and battles galore, let the Holy Spirit produce in you patience,
faithfulness, and self-control. The point is, rain or shine, the Christian needs to learn to use all

weather for growing these fruits.
Ian Barclay tells of the girl who read an article in a gardening magazine about a fruitless apple
tree. She showed it to her father who was frustrated about his tree, which was just like that. The
article said to drive a few nails into the trunk of the tree. He decided to try it, and the next year the
tree bore fruit like never before. Sometimes pain and suffering can be productive. It is like pruning
a tree. Do not waste hard times. Ask the Holy Spirit to use them as fertilizer to encourage the
growth of some fruit. The fertilizer may be awful, but the effects can be wonderful, if the end result
is growth of the fruits of the Spirit.
Remember, these are not our fruits, as if we could produce them by our own efforts. They come
to us by the working of the Holy Spirit in us. Our task is to open up our lives and let Him work. It
is a matter of submission and surrender so that He can change us from within. Can we resist the
Spirit, and quench the Spirit, and hold our life down to the level of scrawny crab apples rather than
big red delicious apples? Of course we can! That is why we need to study these fruits. Billy
Graham preached on these fruits many years ago, and he said in that message, "now these things,
these nine things, nine clusters of fruit, are to characterize the life of every Christ-born child of
God....But what do we find? We find in the average so-called Christian today, the very opposite."
The very opposite being the works of the flesh. Graham is saying Christians can be so worldly there
is no way to distinguish between them and the world.
In order to make a difference in this world, Christians have to be different, and the key to that is
the production of the fruits of the Spirit. Christians are to be in the fruit business. Why was Israel
replaced by the Church to fulfill God's plan? It was a fruit issue. In Matt.21:43 Jesus said to the
leaders of Israel, "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and
given to a people who will produce its fruit." One of the key reasons Christianity has been superior
to Judaism is because it has been more fruitful. The Jews chose to be exclusive, and keep God for
themselves. The Christians said, God loves the whole world, and we must heed the command of
Christ to go to all people with the good news of His love.
God chose the Gentile world because they would prove to be more fruitful. God is a wise
investor, and He wants to get a good return on His investment. He wants fruit, and when He gets it
He gives more resources. As we let the Holy Spirit work in our lives to produce fruit, we will be
blest by more and more of the grace of God. Fruit produces more fruit until there is a bountiful
harvest.
The motive for developing the fruit of the Spirit is both for pleasing God and for
self-advancement. The most selfish thing you can do is yield yourself to the Spirit of Christ, for He
will do with your life what you could never do. He will produce in you that which could never
come from doing your own thing. The Christian wants life to be full of the joy, pleasure, and
happiness just like the non-Christian. The non-Christian seeks it primarily by means of the works of
the flesh. The Christian is to find it primarily by the Fruits of the Spirit. That is the goal of the
following nine chapters.

I. THE FRUIT OF LOVE
Howard Thurman in Disciplines Of The Spirit, tells of one of the most unusual jobs. A large
General Hospital hired a high school girl to be there mice petter. Her sole occupation was to take
white mice out of their cages several times a day and pet them. They had learned that when mice are
made to feel loved and secure they give much more authentic results in experiments. When they are
relaxed and given a sense of well-being, they better cope without panic.
Science is confirming all the time that God is love. It is finding that all God made needs love to
be at it's best. People who love their garden and their plants produce better crops and more beauty.
Love is the universal need of all life. Dogs and cats can admit their need for love. They thrust their
heads into your hands and face, and demand to be loved. But man likes to be independent and not
admit to needing others, even though it is the number one need of man for happiness. There are
endless numbers of movies and novels where people delay love and even lose it because they will not
admit their need. This is the ultimate in pride, for God Himself is willing to admit He needs love.
The first commandment is that we love God with our whole being. Paul in Romans 8:28 says that
God works in all things for good for those who love Him. In I Cor.2:9 he writes that no mind can
conceive of what God has prepared for those who love Him. In time and in eternity the best is
reserved for those who love God.
Jesus did not hesitate to declare His need for love.. He needed the love of His heavenly Father,
but He also needed the love of man. In John14 He repeated His need often. In verse 15 He said, "If
you love me you will obey what I command." In verse 21 He said, "Whoever has my commands
and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too
will love and show myself to him." In verses 23-24 Jesus sums it all up with these words, "If anyone
loves me he will obey me, if anyone does not love me he will not obey me."
If God the Father and God the Son long to be loved, it is the height of folly for any man to deny
his need for love. Ashley Montague writes from the point of view of a scientist-
"The study of love is something from which scientists long shied away.
But with the increased interest in the origins of mental illness, more and more attention is being paid
to the infancy and childhood of human beings. What investigation has revealed is that love is,
beyond all cavil or question, the most important experience in the life of a human being.
Show me a hardened criminal, a juvenile delinquent, a psychopath or
a "cold fish," and in almost every case I will show you a person resorting to desperate means in order
to attract the emotional warmth and attention he failed to get but which he so much desires and
needs. "Aggressive" behavior when fully understood is, in fact, nothing but love frustrated, a
technique for compelling love-as well as a means of taking revenge on the society which has let that
person down, disillusioned, deserted and dehumanized him. Hence, the best way to approach
aggressive behavior in children is not by aggressive behavior toward them, but with love. And this
is true not only for children but for human beings at all ages."

The Scripture and science agree, the greatest of these is love. Love is the highest virtue man is
capable of giving or receiving. You cannot give God or man any higher gift than the gift of love.
The highest goal of life is to be like Christ. The only way to approach this goal is to be a person
filled with love. This is the same as saying one needs to be filled with the Spirit for He is the source
of love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. The more we are filled with the Spirit of Christ the more we
will have the fruit of love.
Many say that the sign you are filled with the Holy Spirit is that you will speak in tongues, but
that is an experience that occurred only in Corinth and was not an issue in any other church of the
New Testament. The real sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, and the
first fruit and main fruit is love. The most loving Christian is the most Spirit-filled Christian. Paul
links the Holy Spirit and love in Romans15:30 where he writes, "I urge you brothers by our Lord
Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit...." In Col.1:8 he writes to them and refers to "Your love in
the Spirit." The Holy Spirit is the channel by which the love of God fills the heart of man. Paul
makes this clear in Rom.5:5 where he writes, "God has poured out His love into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit whom He has given us."
The love of God that enables us to love our neighbor as our self, and to love one another, and to
love our enemies all comes into our heart by means of the Holy Spirit. He produces the fruit. We
cannot make it grow by works. All we can do is to let the Spirit have control, and He makes this
Christ like fruit grow. We can plant and we can water, but God gives the increase. We cannot
make fruit grow, but we can provide the cooperation that makes it possible for the Holy Spirit to use
our hearts as fertile soil that will be fruit producing. We can't make anything grow, but we can
provide the environment for things to grow.
We are responsible for preparing the soil of our hearts. We do this by clearing it of the rocks,
trash, and brush that makes growing anything unlikely. Our soil gets hard and the seed cannot
penetrate and take root. We get stubborn and set in our ways, and do not yield to the Holy Spirit.
Christians need to be flexible and ever open to the winds of the Spirit, and to the new fires He may
wish to kindle in our hearts. Lawrance Kusher gives us an illustration on the human level.
"When my wife and I were first married, for example, we believed
that our "true love" enabled us to read one another's minds. Based on
this youthful fantasy, we spent great amounts of time and energy
choosing the wrong birthday presents for one another, each pretending
we loved gifts we didn't.
As we grew older and our love matured, we gradually realized
that even great love only rarely penetrates another's soul. Indeed,
I suspect, real loving stands reverent precisely in the mystery of
another's unknowable, unfathomable self. And so, as an act of
love, we reached a mutual, unspoken decision: We began to drop
not-so-subtle hints about what we really wanted. This not only
made shopping easier ("This is exactly what she wants!") But
receiving presents became much more fun ("Why this is exactly
what I wanted!") If you really love someone, don't make them
guess what to give you."

Love grows by communication. God did not just let His people guess how to love Him. He gave
them clear instructions. The Tabernacle and Temple where they were to show their love in worship,
sacrifice, and praise were revealed in most minute detail-nothing was left to guess. God gave His
Word and Jesus gave His teaching so we could know exactly how to love Him by obedience. For
the Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of love in us, we need to be listening to the Word and applying
its truth to our daily lives. Listening, learning, worshiping, praising, living a life pleasing to God,
these are all part of the atmosphere we provide for the Holy Spirit to work in to produce love.
When love is produced in us, like other fruit it has seeds, and will reproduce itself in others.
Chuck Swindoll gives us an illustration in his book, Simple Faith. "Among the many plays and
musical performances I have attended, none has ever gripped me like Les Miserables. When these
playwrights and composers decided to put Victor Hugo's classic novel on the stage in the form of a
dramatic musical, a masterpiece was created for the public to enjoy. When my family and I saw the
performance, we were moved to tears...literally. To this day, its scenes and songs often return to
mind, bringing fresh delight." He goes on to tell the gist of the play. Jean Valjean is released after
19 years in the chain gang, and is treated kindly by a saintly Bishop. But his prison experience has
scarred him and hardened him, and he repays the Bishop by stealing some of his silver. Caught and
brought back by the police, Valjean is shocked when the Bishop tells them he gave him the silver.
This act of love that kept him a free man had an impact on him like nothing before, and he vowed to
never be the man he was.
The policeman, Javert, however, hated him and was determined to put him back in prison. Javert
treats him with contempt, but Valjean will not retaliate. He turns the other cheek, and he loves his
neighbor, and he lives a life of love. In the end he overpowers his enemy, and overcomes evil with
good. The last line in the theatre production captures the essences of it all-"To love another person
is to see the face of God."
I think it says even more clearly-"To love another person is to let them see the face of God." The
love of the Bishop helped Valjean see the face of God, and he was changed forever, and his love then
helped others see the face of God. God is love, and so wherever love is seen you are getting some
glimpse of God. That is the beauty of this first fruit of the Spirit. It makes us attract others to see
God and desire to taste of the fruits He can produce in lives. Love is the best witness there is, for
nothing is more attractive and enticing than love.
All the works of the flesh that Paul lists in Gal.5:19-21 are the efforts of man to get love without
God. All sexual immorality is a hunger for love. All the hate, jealousy, and envy of others is a
hunger for love. We get angry and create problems because we want love. Studies show that almost
all, if not all, anti-social behavior is a cry for love. Man in his flesh seeks the food of life-love, but
what he gets is garbage instead. Only love can meet his deepest needs. The Christian is to reveal to
the world an example of true love in contrast to the devil's fakes.
What is true love? It is feeling and doing what Jesus would feel and do in the same situation.
Jesus was Spirit filled and thus always loving. If you can honestly say I am feeling and doing what
Jesus would feel and do, you are being as loving as you can be. When you love you are as near to
God as you can get, for God is love. It is the number one characteristic of God's nature, and to be a
channel of that nature in the world is to fulfill the ultimate purpose of being a person made in the
image of God. This is also the ultimate pleasure. Remember, fruit means enjoyment. It is from the

Latin fructus, which means enjoyment. Where love is joy is right behind. The greatest pleasure in
life is love. You cannot find a greater pleasure, for it is a taste of God's greatest pleasure.
We are forced, however, to look at the paradox of love. If it is the ultimate in enjoyment and
pleasure, why did it become so costly to God to love man? It cost infinite pain and thus we are stuck
with the paradox of love being both pleasurable and painful. In a perfect world love is only
pleasure, but in a fallen world love hurts, for love desires the best for its objects no matter what the
cost, and this means pain. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and Jesus so loved
lost men that He gave His life on the cross for them to be restored to the favor of God. It was
painful, but also the highest pleasure. Jesus endured the cross with joy, for He looked to the eternal
result for Himself and the redeemed. Love's goal is always the highest peak of pleasure, but to get
there it often has to go through painful valleys of suffering. This is true, not only for God's love, but
for the love of parents and mates.
Love often hurts in a fallen world, but love is willing to hurt, for that is the price for ultimate
pleasure. One who will not suffer for another does not love the other in any meaningful way. All
God-like love is willing to bear pain for the sake of another's well being. The Good Samaritan was
good, and was used by Jesus to illustrate love, because he was willing to pay the price of
interrupting his own plans for the sake of another who needed help. The Priest and the Levite may
have had better theology than the Samaritan, but they were not willing to suffer any pain for the sake
of the injured man. They may have had gifts, but they were of no value to the kingdom of God
without the fruit of love.
The Good Samaritan was despised and rejected by the leaders of God's people, but Jesus made
him a hero. Why? Because he had what really matters to God. He had the first fruit of the Spirit,
which is love. He had the kind of love that is willing to suffer for the pleasure of God and the
pleasure of man, and this is the fulfillment of the whole law. Loving God with your whole being and
your neighbor as yourself means to be willing to suffer pain for their pleasure. The goal is always
pleasure, but the means to it may be painful. Love will pay the price of pain to gain this pleasure.
What this means is, love is a chosen self-limitation for the sake of another. God and Jesus both
made choices that limited their sovereign freedom to do as they pleased by creating man, and then
redeeming him. If God was unloving and self-centered He would have ended the plan with Adam
and Eve, or at lease by the time of the flood. He would have taken Noah and his family also, and
called it quits. To pursue the plan of salvation all the way to the cross was love beyond our
comprehension. We cannot match the love of God, but we can grow this same fruit, and be willing
to limit self for the sake of others.
This is what parenthood is, and what marriage is, and what ministry is. All forms of love are
choices to limit yourself for the sake of others. It sounds like sacrifice, and it is, but it is also the
way to the greatest pleasure for the self. Those who want only self-pleasure, and will not limit their
pleasure for the sake of others, will end up with very little pleasure. Those who limit their pleasure
for the sake of others will end up with the greatest pleasure. This is the way of love and love always
ends up with the greatest pleasure.
Ibsen in his poetic drama Peer Gynt, has a hero who is a reckless and irresponsible dreamer
whose motto is, "To thyself be enough." He visits a lunatic asylum where he believes people are not

themselves, but the director says it is here that people are most themselves, themselves and nothing
but themselves. They are all totally self-centered with no tears for others woes, or cares for any
others needs. He realizes he has been a failure by being self-centered. He finds healing in the love
of the heroine, solveig. It is a message, on the human level, that without love life is barren of all
fruit that will last.
Even the secular world knows the truth about love that is why most secular songs, plays, and
movies are about love. The problem is, the highest love man knows without God is sexual love, and
when this becomes ones highest value, it becomes an idol, and leads to all sorts of perversions. It is
not that human love is bad, for it is God-given and one of life's greatest gifts, but when it is seen as
the ultimate it becomes an idol, and leads to depravity.
Some wise men have seen that all human love is to be a means to a greater love. Plato said, "All
loves should be simply stepping stones to the love of God." If men would just realize this, and keep
on stepping up the stairs of love to the love of God they would find that love that never fails. We
sing that Jesus never fails, and Paul in I Cor.13:8 says that love never fails. Love that reaches the
God-like, and Christ like level, because it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit is the love that never fails,
and is always the right thing to do.
It does not succeed in the sense that it always wins its object. Jesus failed to win many that He
loved, and He wept because they would not accept Him. The point is, Jesus never made the wrong
choice. His love never failed to keep Him in the center of God's will. He could love His enemies,
and though He could not always win His enemies, He never failed by being unloving to them.
Because Jesus never failed to love, He never failed to be a true representative of God the Father.
This is to be the goal of everyone who wants to live a life pleasing to God, for this is a life filled with
pleasure for the self as well.
Love never fails, does not mean the loving Christian succeeds in all he or she attempts to
accomplish. It means they always please God without fail. God never says, "I am not pleased with
your loving spirit toward your brother or your enemy." God is always pleased with love, and,
therefore, love never fails to achieve life's highest goal, which is to please God. That is why Oswald
Chambers said, "Love is the beginning, love is the middle, love is the end." God made us in His
image, and thus, we are made to love, and when we do we fulfill our very purpose for being. It is
life's highest success.
What is the purpose of life? It is to become what God made us to be-images of Him. This is
achieved by bearing the fruit of the Spirit, for these nine fruits are love displayed in all of its aspects.
Someone has described them like this-
Joy is love's cheerfulness.
Peace is love's confidence
Patience is love's composure
Kindness is love's consideration
Goodness is love's character
Faithfulness is love's constancy
Gentleness is love's comliness
Self-control is love's conquest.

The point is, the more these nine fruits characterize your life, the more you fulfill your purpose
for being, for you are a reflection of His love, which is to say, you are Christ like. Some years ago
New York city had a murder mystery that was finally solved by the arrest of several notorious
criminals. One was Jack Rose, who after he was convicted and imprisoned said, "I always believed
that there must be a God somewhere. But when I gave Him thought, I felt He was so far away, and
so occupied with great things, that He knew nothing about me. I am sure I never would have
become a criminal if the thought had ever entered my mind that God cared anything about me." The
world is filled with people who do not know that God loves them because there is no Christian who
is communicating that love to them. The poet says-
Do you know the world is dying
For a little bit of love?
Everywhere we hear them sighing,
For a little bit of love.
When we make choices to communicate the love of God to the lost, then we know we have gone
beyond natural love to bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Every Christian needs to be praying the prayer
of Dr. Will Houghton, former president of Moody Bible Institute.
Love this world through me, Lord
This world of broken men,
Thou didst love through death, Lord
Oh, love in me again!
Souls are in despair, Lord.
Oh, make me know and care;
When my life they see,
May they behold Thee,
Oh, love the world through me.
Even the desire to pray this prayer is a sign that you are growing in the garden of your life the
fruit of love.
II. THE FRUIT OF JOY
Martin Clark said every church should have a humor committee because there are more funny
things that happen in church than in a zoo, for people are funnier than the animals. God made man
to be the only creature on earth who can laugh because of his sense of humor. Christians need a
sense of humor to deal with the reality that they are so fallible. If all the mistakes pastors make were
compiled in a book, it would make the unabridged dictionary look like a postage stamp in
comparison.
One of the funniest mistakes I have ever read about was of the young pastor who just moved into
the parsonage next to the church. On his first Sunday they were having communion. So he and his
wife poured the grape juice into the little cups, and they thought they were ready. But when it came

time to serve, the pastor saw that they had not poured enough cups for the size of the congregation.
He leaned over the front pew and whispered to his wife, "Run next door and get that bottle of grape
juice out of the refrigerator. If you run fast enough you can be back before the deacons serve the
cups." She batted out the side door and flew to the parsonage. She did not bother to even switch on
the lights. She just grabbed what she thought was the bottle of grape juice, and tore back to the
church. What she had was a bottle of green persimmon juice.
The young pastor, with complete faith in his wife, did not bother to read the label. He just
uncapped it and poured its contents into the cups for himself and the deacons. It was perfect timing,
for just as he finished, the deacons were marching down the isle with their empty trays. The pastor
then served the deacons and led the congregation in drinking the juice. Suddenly his lips began to
pucker and he knew he had a problem. He leaned over and wheezed, "deacon Jones will you please
lead in closing prayer." Deacon Jones was having his own problems, and was barely able to smack
his lips and get out, "Please excuse me!" The pastor surveyed the situation and could see none of the
deacons were able to pray. The congregation had no idea what was going on, for they had perfectly
normal grape juice. Finally the pastor motioned all to stand and said, "Well, friends, let's whistle the
doxology and go home."
Murphey's law has not been repealed for the church. Even in the most solemn and sacred
moments Christians leaders provoke laughter by their slips of the tongue. Billy Graham in a
message in Atlanta roared out, "David slew Goliath and then he turned around and killed him."
Another pastor prayed, "Oh Lord, make us more offensive--I mean Lord, put on the offensive."
Another introduced the new music director with these words, "We are delighted he is coming to lead
us in our sinning." At a testimony meeting on the campus of a Christian college a tearful freshman
concluded his personal testimony with what he thought was a sincere request. He said, "Please pray
I'll not be found sleeping with the five foolish virgins when Jesus comes." At every homecoming
since, this is remembered as a choice moment of laughter.
There is no end to the laughter producing goofs of Christians, but my point in sharing these is to
make it clear that this sort of laughter is not what we are dealing with, as we consider the fruit of the
Spirit, which is joy. You do not need the Holy Spirit to see the humor in life. This is a gift God has
made available to all men. The non Christian can have as good a sense of humor as the Christian.
Jews have always been the major contributors to the world of comedy. So Christians do not have a
monopoly on laughter. Laughter is a universal gift.
But joy is something else. Joy is much deeper, for joy is based on love and not laughter. Joy is
the feeling that even if I blew it, and made a blunder that everyone laughed at, I am loved and not
rejected for my mistake. That is a good feeling that lasts after the laughter quickly passes away.
Laughter is momentary, but joy is a state of mind that is permanent. Joy makes you happy even
when there is nothing funny to laugh at. We see this all through the New Testament. This was the
joy of Jesus. He is about to go to the cross and suffer on a level we can never comprehend, yet He
says to His disciples in John 15:11, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that you
joy may be full." Again in His great prayer in John 17:13 He says, "I am coming to you now, but I
say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy
within them."
Jesus was loaded with the fruit of the Spirit, and He had all the joy one is capable of possessing.

But you will notice, it was not because life was funny, and He was having a ball. He was facing the
worst life could throw at Him with evil, suffering, pain, hate, injustice, cruelty, and betrayal. Yet,
Jesus had fullness of joy. We see it also in Paul and Silas in Acts 16. They were attacked and
beaten, and we read in verse 23, "After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into
prison; and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully." So he put their feet in stocks so
they could not move. It was not what you would call a fun day at the park. It was a terrible day,
and these men had to be in pain. Nevertheless, we read in verse 25, "About midnight Paul and Silas
were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them." This is
when God sent an earthquake, and the jailer was converted with his whole family.
Joy is not a positive feeling that life is going great. Joy is a feeling that no matter how hard life
is, I have the best that life can offer in Christ. Anyone can feel good and be happy when all is going
well and life is free of negatives. But with the fruit of joy you can rejoice in the Lord always, even
when life is full of negatives. This is not man generated joy, but the joy of the Lord which is our
strength.
Madam Guyon was thrown into prison in France, and she wrote-
"I passed my time there in great peace, content to pass the
rest of my life there, if such were the will of God. I sang
songs of joy, while the maid who served me learned by
heart as fast as I made them, and we together sang Thy
praises, o my God. The stones of my prison looked in
my eyes like rubies. I esteemed them more than all the
gaudy brilliance of the world. My heart was full of that
joy Thou givest to them that love Thee in the midst of
their greatest crosses."
Her poetry, which she sang in prison, is still read and sung today, thou she died in 1717. She
wrote forty volumes. Here are just a few lines-
Tho my foes have combined
and my body confined
yet my soul is with liberty blest.
I am humbly content
With whatever is sent
For I know that Thy pleasure is best.
Thy wondrous defense
Makes a cell seem immence.
It sheds so peculiar a grace.
Such a pleasure abounds,
Such a glory surrounds,
And the joys of Thy kingdom embrace.
This is not natural joy but the fruit of the Spirit joy. The joy that can only grow in the life of one
who knows, that no matter what, they are loved by God. Joy grows out of love, the first fruit of the

Spirit. Joy is not the laughter of the sense of humor, but the laughter of love which says, nothing can
separate me from the love of God. This joy does lead to laughter, and what we call happiness, for it
fills one with a sense of optimism. It is a denial of Christ's joy to make Christianity a solemn and
somber faith.
John Wesley said, "Sour godliness is the devil's religion." Jesus said in the Sermon On The
Mount, that even when Christians are persecuted and slandered, they are to rejoice and be glad for
their reward is great in heaven. Joy in hard times is a Christian obligation. That is why we need the
filling of the Spirit, for we cannot produce this fruit on our own. Paul says in I Thess. 5:16, "Be
joyful always." He does not say ninety per cent of the time, or ninety eight per cent of the time, but
always. That is not natural, but is of the Holy Spirit. Augustine said over 1500 years ago, "There is
a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy
Thou Thyself art."
Jesus was the most joy-filled person ever to live on this planet. We are told this in Hebrews 1:9,
where it says of Christ, "...your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the
oil of joy." In other words, there has never been another above Jesus in joy. He had the highest
level of joy possible, and none has never matched it. An apple is an apple, and a pear is a pear, but
not all apples and pears are equal. Some are better than others. They are bigger, juicier, and
sweeter than others. So it is with joy, and all the fruits of the Spirit. They grow like fruit, and so
there are all different stages of growth. Jesus had the perfect fruit of joy. This is what all believers
will have in heaven. This was the hope of even the Old Testament saints. David says in Psalm
16:11, "You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasure at your right hand." Until
then, the goal of the Christian is to be filled with the Spirit, and get as near to having the joy of Jesus
as possible.
The New Testament has 11 words for different aspects of joy, and they are used 326 times. It is a
major theme of God's Word, and a major obligation of the Christian life. There is a wealth of
English synonyms for joy-bliss, buoyancy, cheerfulness, delight, ecstasy, elation, exuberance,
felicity, gaiety, gladness, glee, hilarity, jubilation, rapture, and rejoicing. All of these can be
summed up in the word happy, which the New Testament calls blessed. Vernon Grounds, the well
known evangelical theologian, commenting on Paul's declaration in I Tim.6:15, that God "is the
blessed and only Potentate or Ruler", says, "Since blessed means happy, Paul is here affirming that
God is happy. The Happy God! God in Himself is a shoreless sea of vibrant glory, a fathomless
ocean of sheerest ecstasy...God Himself is the Rejoicer who before the hosts of heaven reacts with a
thrilling happiness that baffles the language and logic of earth. Infinitely joyful, He is the Source of
all genuine joy."
Does this mean the Christian has to be a pollyanna, and be blind to the reality of a fallen world?
Not at all, God knows the evil of man like no other, but He is by nature happy and joyful, in spite of
His knowledge. Joy is not a denial of evil and a pretense that all is well. It is a conviction that life is
a comedy and not a tragedy, and that in Christ good will triumph over evil. History is His-story, and
it will have a happy ending.
Listen to Cyprian, the Christian leader of the church at Carthage in A.D. 200. He wrote,
"This is a cheerful world as I see it from my fair garden...But if

I could ascend some high mountain and look out over the wide
lands, you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the
highways. Pirates on the seas. Armies fighting. Cities burning.
In the amphitheatres men murdered to please applauding crowds.
Selfishness and cruelty, and misery and despair, under all roofs.
It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have
discovered in the midst of it, a quiet and holy people who have
learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand
times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are
despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters
of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people,
Donatus, are Christians, and I am one of them."
There is no blindness here to evil, but eyes wide open to the good news in Christ which produces
the joy that overcomes the world. The Christian deals with his fallen nature in a different way than
the world does. Leslie Flynn and his book, Gift of Joy, says the way the world deals with sin is to-
1. Minimize it. It is no big deal, everybody does it.
2. Rationalize it. They blame their genes, parents, or their mates, or the world situation.
3. Anesthetize it. By a constant round of activity, or by drugs.
4. Neutralize it. By doing good to counteract their bad.
Christians are not immune to any of these. David, after his great sin, tried all of these routes, but
they were dead ends, and he lost the joy of his salvation. He learned the hard way, that the only way
to deal with sin is to recognize it for what it is, and seek the grace of God. We need to confess our
guilt and receive the forgiveness made possible by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. This is the only
way to deal with sin that leads to joy. David did get there, and he sang songs of joy again, but he
took the long hard route of the world before he took the short cut of grace, and he suffered a great
lost of joy because of it. His folly is recorded that believers might learn to avoid his mistakes, and
come to Christ for cleansing and renewal right away David prayed in Psalm 51:7-8, "Cleanse me
with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and
gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice." Then in verse 12 we read, "Restore to me the joy
of your salvation..."
When a Christian falls and fails the Lord, he or she is to immediately get right with the Lord and
be restored, so the fruit of joy does not wither on the vine, as it was doing with David. The Christian
who delays confession and forgiveness will see the fruit of joy wither and they will be a poor witness
to the grace of God. Lack of joy is a sin that is seldom recognized. R.W. Dale, the great English
preacher, said, "We ask God to forgive us for our evil thoughts and evil tempers, but rarely, if ever,
ask Him to forgive us for our sadness." Sadness is not just the expression on our faces, but the
negative views of life that rob us of joy in the midst of so much fallenness. The face is not the key
factor. Jesus often had a sad face as he wept over the lostness of the world, and the weakness of His
disciples. Sadness of face and sorrow over sin and death did not rob Him of His joy.
Joy is deeper than sadness, and can be real even when the face is not expressing it. It is superficial
to suggest that Christians should always have a smile to show their joy. Optimism of the mind and
soul goes far deeper than the face. This does not mean it is okay to go about looking like a sad sack.

Spurgeon said to his students training for ministry, "When you talk about heaven let your face light
up with a heavenly glory. When you talk about hell, your everyday face will do." This was a rebuke
of their everyday face, for it usually reflected pessimism and not the optimism of Christian joy, and
was thus, a quenching of the Spirit.
If you have people who know you who think you are a pessimist, you are probably quenching the
Spirit, and have ceased to produce the fruit of joy. Joy is deeper than mere laughter and smiling, but
these are still ways by which we can express that joy to the world. The external ways of letting
people know of the inner joy is important in our witness. You may not always feel like giving an
external witness, but it should be a common part of your witness. Joy that is never seen is not the
kind of fruit that makes others hungry to taste it.
One of the major purposes of worship is to help us develop our expression of joy. Praise is the
twin of joy, says John Drescher. Praise is the joy we express to God, but in so doing we water the joy
in our own lives and help it to grow. The goal of all worship is to grow the fruits of the Spirit. This
pleases God and man, and the self. Pulsford said, "There is no heaven, either in this world, or in the
world to come, for people who do not praise God." Praise is the fruit of joy turning toward the Son
of heaven to receive that light that makes it even more luscious and appealing to the world. The goal
in going to church is that you might become more optimistic about life and how God can use you to
make a difference in this fallen world.
Just as natural love is not enough, so it is not enough to have just natural joy. The fruit of the
Spirit love enables you to love those who are not loving, but who are even enemies. Fruit of the
Spirit joy enables you to be optimistic even in the trials of life, and, thus, be a witness to the world of
a joy that is beyond what man can produce. Henry VanDyke said it profoundly, "There is something
finer than to do right against inclination; and that is to have an inclination to do right. There is
something nobler than reluctant obedience; that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is not
measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart that loves it. The real test of
character is joy. For what you rejoice in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like."
If worship is a bore and service is a chore, it is because you have lost your first love, like the
Christians in Ephesus that Jesus rebuked in Rev. 2. Worship and service are pure joy to those who
do not quench the Spirit. Frank Lauback, who has helped millions learn to read so they could read
the Bible, said, "I have had more fun than any other man in the world." It was such joy to serve
Jesus because he loved Jesus and he loved the world. He carried a globe of the world in his arms as
he spoke, for he loved the whole world. His love was the source of his joy. You cannot skip over the
first fruit of the Spirit and expect to get to the others. They all grow out of the main vine, which is
love. When you are loving, which is to say, when you are Christ like, then you will also be growing
the fruit of joy. The most loving Christians are the most joyful Christians.
III. THE FRUIT OF PEACE
I have a good number of books by Norman Vincent Peale, and almost every one of them has a

chapter on peace. The reason is, Peale appeals to the masses and peace is a topic that has universal
interest. Dante, centuries ago said, "I am seeking for that which every man seeks-Peace." Peace of
mind drugs are the most popular, for that is one way man can generate his own peace. For many,
their only hope to cope is dope.
Much, if not most, of the social turmoil of our culture is due to a hunger for peace, which is
sought for in all the wrong places. According to Ronald Hutchcraft, the Director of Youth for Christ
in New York and New Jersey, in the next thirty minutes-
57 kids will run away from home.
29 children will attempt suicide.
22 girls under 19 years of age will receive an abortion.
14 teenage girls will give birth to an illegitimate baby.
685 teens will use some form of narcotic.
These tragic statistics reveal that we are a nation in perpetual war. The spiritual battle between
light and darkness is everywhere and one of Satan's greatest weapons is to get people to think they
can find peace in tranquilizers. The problem is he has a point. False and fake peace does have an
element of reality. Tranquilizers work because they reduce or eliminate the inner reaction to
stressful stimuli. They do not change the environment in which you have to live. They change your
response to it and this makes a world of difference. If you do not respond to what is negative and
disturbing with panic, fear, or anxiety you can have some measure of peace in spite of these
negatives. This is an imitation of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives when we let him produce the
fruit of peace in us. He does not change the environment and rid it of stress and conflict. The
Christian has to live in the same fallen world with everyone else.
Ronald Hutchraft in his book on peace, Peaceful Living in a Stressfull World, tells of the testing
of his peace as he wrote that book. He wrote,
"No sooner had I made a commitment to insist on peace than stress
brought out the heavy artillery.
My wife has had three dangerous illnesses in the last nine months
The staff for whom I am responsible went through a major upheaval.
Our daughter started high school.
Our son started junior high school with a badly broken arm.
We faced a decisive deadline in the legal tangle due to an accident.
Paychecks for our staff were delayed.
The kitchen floor and the back stairs fell apart.
"All these surprises came in right on top of my already relentless
schedule full of speaking, counseling, managing, radio, nonstop
meetings, and daddying. The peace has stood the test. To be sure,
my old high-pressure, high-pitched responses still surface, but I
retreat quickly to the new peace I have chased and found. This
tranquility is anything but theoretical or passive. It is the product
of a daily insistence that we choose the peace alternative."

His testimony is typical of many. The Christian does not escape the external turmoil of life in a
fallen world. But he can escape the internal reaction that robs him of peace. The world's imitations
do work for awhile, and they are a temptation. That is why we are told, "Be not drunk with wine but
be filled with the Spirit." Wine can help you relax and not feel as full of anxiety, but you have to
deal with the after effects which can be worse than the problem you sought to escape. Peace
purchased in this way is not worth the cost for in the end peace will be lost. The peace of God does
not come with the risks of negative after effects.
What the Bible makes clear is that we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit is the growing of this
fruit. David says in Psalm 34:14 "seek peace and pursue it." You do not sit on your couch and hope
it will fall into your lap. Peace is a matter of activity. You go in search of it. It is like game. You
have to go hunt to find it and possess it for your own. When David wrote this he was being pursued
by Saul, and was the no.1 most wanted man in the nation. He was a fugitive running for his life
under great stress. Yet he says seek peace and pursue it. The Apostle Peter writing to Christians
going through tough times remembers these words of David. He quotes them for Christians under
stress in IPet.3:10-11, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good, he must seek peace and
pursue it."
Seeking peace and actively pursuing it is one of the major obligations of the Christian life. It is a
sin to let the world be in control of your emotional system. The Christian is to make the pursuit of
inner peace one of the major goals of life. Without this fruit of peace the Christian cannot be truly
Christlike and obey the laws of love. In IPet.3:8-9 we read, "Finally, all of you, live in harmony with
one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with
evil or insult with insult, but with blessing...." This passage comes just before his urging them to
seek peace and pursue it. Without inner peace the Christian cannot do these things so essential to the
true Christian life. The Christian will respond just like the natural man without the fruit of the Spirit.
His peace will keep them in control so they do not react to evil and insult with the same. Internal
peace is the key to external peace. Where men are filled with war within there will be war without.
Only the fruit of peace can produce peace in a world of war.
Blessed are the peacemakers said Jesus, for they will be called the sons of God. Why? Because
they are obviously of a different blood line than mere men who are ever war-like. Only God's kids
can achieve peace in a war zone like this fallen world. If you want people to know you are a child of
God, one of the most conspicuous ways of doing so is to be a peacemaker.
It is not natural not to want to live in peace with all men. It is unnatural to want to forgive
offenses and not seek revenge. You seem like some sort of a freak if you don't hate your enemies,
but pray for them instead. A peacemaker is not a conformist to what is natural and normal. They
are as conspicuous as a pro basketball player at a midget festival. They stand out as unique, for they
are like the man found beaten by the Good Samaritan, going to the priest and Levite who left him to
die, and contributing to their ministry. That is the kind of thing the peacemaker can do, because he
has the fruit of the Spirit-peace. Peace is the ability to respond to evil with good. This is the peace
of God which passes understanding.
Let's face reality, there is not a lot of this going around, and the reason is very few Christians are
surrendered to the Holy Spirit. Most all Christians are quenching the Spirit to some degree. That is

why we need to back up the fruit of the Spirit with natural techniques. It is a matter of damage
control. When we fell to be Spirit filled we need to have a net of safety to fall into. Christian leaders
who fall and bring disgrace to the Christian faith do so because they depend to much on their
Spiritual life alone. They do not develop natural methods for backup. Then when they quench the
Spirit and have to depend on their own resources they fall.
The whole idea of pursuing peace is to get Christians to realize they have to play an active role in
their own success. They have to learn to balance themselves like a child on a bike, so when dad let's
go they can continue to move forward and not fall. God sometimes lets go because we grieve the
Holy Spirit, and if we have not learned to go on our own we will fall. This means it is possible to be
too spiritual. That is, we can so depend on spirituality that we do not develop any natural gifts, and
then when we fell spiritually we are in deep trouble.
Paul is the one who tells us of the fruit of the Spirit, but he is also the one who urges us to labor
like mad and put forth all the natural effort possible. In Rom.14:19 he writes, "Let us therefore
make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification." Won't the Holy Spirit just
do this for us? No more so than He will grow fruit in your garden if you never plow it, cultivate it,
or water it. Fruit is a joint adventure of God and man. If man does not cooperate the fruit is not
grown at all, or is very inferior. In Eph.4:3 Paul writes, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the
Spirit through the bond of peace." Does Paul mean that if Christians do not make every effort the
unity of the body can fall apart, and peace be lost? That is what precisely what Paul is saying, for he
has seen it often, and it has been recorded all through history. Christians who do not put forth efforts
to be peacemakers do not contribute to the peace of the world, or the body of Christ.
Paul writes in Col.3:15, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one
body you were called to peace." Every Christian has a calling from God. It is a call to be channels
of His peace. We need this fruit of the Spirit to fulfill our calling. But peace is not very high on the
list of priorities most Christians aim for. The Church has conformed to the culture which is T. V.
driven, and one of perpetual stimulus and response. Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his book
Psycho-Cybernetics, says we are so conditioned to respond that we feel we have no choice to not
respond. He recommends that people de-condition themselves by letting their telephone ring and not
answering it. This is hard, but when you can learn to do it, you have regained some control of your
life. You realize you have a choice, and do not have to respond to all the stimuli that life hurls at
you. You can just sit still and not respond. In order to have peace, the Christian needs to learn how
to not respond to all the stimuli that comes at him for our culture.
Escapism is usually thought of as a bad thing, because it is a running away from reality. But we
need to see there is much reality that we need to escape from. The stress and tension all around us is
real, but we have no obligation to be in a state of constant reaction to it. If we can escape and be at
peace in the midst of it, let us praise God for this kind of escapism. Sleep is escapism God has built
into our life, and it saves our life everyday. Building a house to retreat from the weather is
escapism. Taking a vacation is escapism. Carrying an umbrella is escapism. Life is full of
perfectly valid escapism. And so is the escapism of the Christian who learns to retreat into the
presence of God and bathed in His peace. Music, reading, relaxation tapes, there are all kinds of
resources for the Christian to use to obey the Biblical command to seek peace and pursue it. The
Christian who uses these means is going to be prepared soil for the fruit of the Spirit-peace.

Pursuing peace has to be seen in the same sense as pursuing a deer. I had to learn the hard way
that the best way to get a deer is to be still. You have to go into the woods to pursue it, but then you
have to learn to be still. I once waited for an hour in the woods and did not see a deer, so I got up to
look around. Just then five deer were startled and ran. They were just about to come into the
opening, but I never got a shot, because I scared them. Had I stayed still they would have come
right to me. Passive pursuit is a hard lesson to learn.
We live in a culture where speed is king. I find myself in a hurry even if there is no reason.
People get uptight today if they miss a revolution in a revolving door. We are an uptight generation
of compulsive activists. There are ten times more things to do in a day than anyone can do, and so
we feel we are always behind and failing to do all that we could. All we do is respond, respond,
respond to stimuli. We want peace but it just does not fit into our agenda. Peace calls for doing
nothing sometimes, and we can't handle that. Pascal the great Christian philosopher and scientist
said, "Most of man's troubles come from his inability to be still."
God gave the Sabbath law to force His people to relax and be still one day a week. Modern man
has made it one of the most active days of the week. Man wants peace in a pill he can swallow, so
he does not have to stop his perpetual motion. "Be still and know I am God", goes against the gain
of our culture. The result is, Christians often have no more peace than do non-Christians. Yet, the
promise of God in Isaiah 26:3 is, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on
Thee." If we could have a mind focused on God, and not on all the stimuli about us, we could have
perfect peace. We should pray often as May Rowland does in her poem-
Come! Peace of God, and dwell again on earth,
Come, with the calm that hailed Thy Prince's birth,
Come, with the healing of Thy gentle touch,
Come, Peace of God, that this world needs so much.
Break every weapon forged in fires of hate,
Turn back the foes that would assail T hy gate;
Where fields of strife lie desolate and bare
Take Thy sweet flowers of peace and plant them there.
The Holy Spirit will not give us peace if we do not retreat and escape from the constant
bombardment of stimuli. Just as money in the bank draws interest and grows into more money, so
peace in a peaceful environment draws interest, and becomes a deeper peace. People with the
greatest evidence of peace are people who know how to escape. Former President Harry Truman is
often used as an illustration. He had no end of stress with a war on his hands, and one crisis after
another. When he was asked how he could stand it, he responded, "When I can't take it anymore, I
go into a fox hole in my mind." That is where a soldier escapes from the bullets of the enemy. He
would retreat into his mind and do what Paul tells us to do in Phil.4:8, "...Whatever is true, whatever
is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is
excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things." He would live in the memory of all the peaceful
scenes and beautiful experiences of his life, and be renewed in spirit. He could get away from it all
without going anywhere, because he could slip into a state of peace.
This is what devotional time and prayer time is to be for the Christian. It is an escape from the

perpetual stimuli of the flesh to the peaceful stimuli of the spirit. It is not an escape from reality, but
an escape to a higher reality so that one can better cope with the lower reality. Peace is aware of
conflict, just as love is aware of hate, and joy is aware of sorrow, but each fruit counteracts the
impact of its opposite.
Peace, like all of the fruits, has its source in Jesus Christ. Paul says in Eph.2:14, "For He
Himself is our Peace." There is no way the Holy Spirit can grow any of the fruits in us if Jesus is
not our Savior and Lord. Michel Quoist defines peace like this-
"We mean the calm, the interior serenity, and the profound peace
which permeate and emanate from a man who, notwithstanding
a torn heart and body, and despite the suffering of mankind and
the world, believes with all his strength in the victory of the
Savior. And he believes this without for an instant forgetting
or denying the existence of suffering and sin, and without
giving up the fight against them."
What we are seeing in our study of the first three fruits of the Spirit is that they all depend on an
optimistic conviction about Jesus and His ultimate victory over all evil. If you waver in this
conviction, all of the fruits wither and lose their power. On the other hand, each of them flourishes
to the degree that one is absolutely committed to the Lordship of Christ. When His Lordship is real
in your life, you have a hiding place where you can escape from the storms of the world.
In the heart of the cyclone, tearing the sky,
And flinging the clouds and the towers by,
Is a place of central calm.
So here in the rush of earthly things,
There is a place where the spirit sings,
In the hollow of God's palm.
Author unknown
You do not need to become a monk or a mystic escaping to a desert or monastery, for you can
escape right where you are by withdrawing to the inner life where Jesus is king. He is our peace,
and as we look to Him, He will grant us His peace. Our problem is, we usually worry and fret and
do all we can to control life's circumstances, and only after we fail and are full of anxiety do we
come to Christ for escape. We need to learn to escape to His presence first, and get peace before we
fight the battles of life. We need peace in the midst of the storm, and not just peace after the storm.
Both are good, but before is better. Corrie Ten Boom said, "Look around and be distressed. Look
inside and be depressed. Look at Jesus and be at rest." If we put Jesus first we do not have to work
our way through the lower levels, but can start at the top and experience peace from the beginning.
When Jesus appeared to His depressed disciples after His resurrection, we read in John 20:19-20,
"Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' After He said this, He showed
them His hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord." Why did He say
peace and then show them His scars? Because those scars represented the worst life could throw at
Jesus-crucifixion and violent death. Now He had conquered the worst and has a right to say peace
be with you. Evil has done all it can, and it has lost. In Him there is victory over every evil foe. The

worse can never rob them of His best, and so there is a solid foundation for peace in the midst of the
battle with evil.
The cross and what Jesus did there for us is a symbol of ultimate peace. Jesus, by His shed
blood, fixes all that sin had broken, and gives us a foundation for absolute optimism. Paul states it
clearly in Col.1:19-20, "For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through
Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace
through His blood, shed on the cross."
The goal of God is peace. He is the God of peace, and He sent the Prince of Peace to achieve that
goal on the cross. Jesus did achieve it, and now in Him we are to be a people of peace. Eighty eight
times peace is used in the New Testament. It is used in every book of the New Testament. It is a
major challenge of the Christian life to seek peace and pursue it. It is only by doing so that we can
be prepared soil for the Holy Spirit to produce in us the fruit of peace.
IV. THE FRUIT OF PATIENCE
A young boy, who had reached the age where having a watch made life worth living, was
bugging his parents to get him one. He was told he would have to wait until he was older. But he
continued to beg for one until his whole family was sick of it. His father finally laid down the law
and told him he would get one later, but for now he was not to even mention the subject again. The
next Sunday, as was the custom, each child in the family read a Bible verse at the dinner table.
When it came to Edward's turn, this was the verse he chose to read-"What I say unto you, I say unto
all: Watch!" For every rule there is someway to get around it, and here was a lad who found a way
to even use the Bible to disobey his parents.
Most of us can identify with him, for we have had an obsession with getting something, and we
could not rest until we got it. This puts our patience to the test, and we realize it is no easy virtue to
achieve-this ability to wait for what we want with a calm and undisturbed spirit in the face of
obstacles and delays. In our age of instant gratification, nobody enjoys waiting for satisfaction, but
God demands that His children learn to discipline their desires, and to persevere and not give up
because they do not reach their goals as soon as they hoped. Shakespeare said, "How poor are they
who have not patience. What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" Waiting and persevering are a
part of God's plan for His people, and those who can't endure this part of it miss out on God's best.
The Bible is constantly urging Christians to look at life long range. Job is the greatest example of
patience because he was able to endure and persevere. He did not give up even though all the
evidence seemed to support that he should. He had the fruit of patience, and held on to see a happy
ending to a very difficult story. All's well that ends well is the message, and all is guaranteed to end
well for those who wait on the Lord, and never give up, but let patience be their guide.
Dr. Wilhelm DeNejs heads the Services for the Blind in Santa Anna, California. He helps blind
people learn that by patient perseverance they can do what they never dreamed possible. He even

helped an electrician who became blind continue his vocation of wiring new houses. He had to learn
how to tell the difference between black and white wires by touch. It was a slow process but he
finally gained enough confidence so he could do the job as fast as a sighted person.
Dr. DeNejs had good reason to believe in the possibility of achieving the seemingly impossible
by patient plodding. He lived in Indonesia when Sukarno came to power, and was determined to kill
all of the royal blood line, and he was in that line. He and his wife had to flee in a canoe at night to
Singapore. They had to get to the Netherlands where their five children were in school. He spoke at
a local Rotary Club, and told of his plan to drive his Tempo to Holland, and then get to the U. S.
where he could aid those who lost their rights. He was not blind but he had lost much of his vision.
An executive in the audience from Shell Oil Company was moved, and gave him the use of his
credit card for his journey.
Fifty miles out of Singapore the road ended, and they had to drive over open fields. They got
stuck and needed to get farmers to pull them out. They came to rivers with no bridges, and he would
have to take the engine out, put it on the roof of the car, and he and his wife would push the car
across the river. Sometimes friendly natives would build a raft for them to float the car across.
They often had to clean the road of debris and underbrush, but the made it to Pakistan, and then
across India. It got so cold in the Khyber Pass going into Afghanistan they had to drain the water
out of the radiator at night, and wait until the water thawed again the next morning to put it back in.
They got through Iran and Iraq, but at the Syrian border they were denied entrance. What a
blow! But as they sat there praying for an answer, a stranger came to the window of the car and
said, "just wait here, tomorrow or the next day, or soon, a sandstorm will come. No one will be able
to see you and you can drive across the border. No one will risk coming after you, for these
sandstorms can kill a camel.
So they waited, and waited, and waited, and finally it came. The sand began to blow and the
guards retreated into their guard house. DeNejs could not see, but he had the car pointed in the right
direction, and so he started the car and drove straight ahead. He drove quite a way across the
border, and then stopped to wait out the storm. When they could see again, the road was covered by
sand. They just followed signs, like dead camels caught in the storm, and kept going across the
desert. They had to drink water out of the car radiator to survive. In Yugoslavia they tipped over
into a ditch, and it took seven days to repair the car. The doors were tied on with wire, and the
motor was coughing and missing as they crossed the Austrian Alps, but they made it into the
beautiful green hills and valleys of Germany.
They made it to the factory where their Tempo had been made, and their story so impressed the
manager, he repaired their car without charge. From then it was smooth riding to the Netherlands,
and to the waiting arms of their happy children. Six months and 20,000 miles of hardships were
behind them. When asked what kept them going DeNejs said, "We believed deeply that if we had
the patience and faith, nothing was impossible. We had faith in our Lord." It is the fruit of patience
that keeps people from giving up when it seems hopeless.
Joseph had to endure the pit and the prison before he got to the palace. Without patience he
would have given up and stopped pursuing his dream. This can happen to God's people when they
go through tough times and that is why we read in Heb. 6:11-12, "We want each of you to show this

same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become
lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised." Only
those with the fruit of patience will be able to hang in there until the story has a happy ending.
Charles Jefferson in his book, The Character of Jesus; points out that Jesus had to the superlative
degree both aspects of patience. Patience is one word, but it is like many stars that look like one star,
but which are really two. Double stars are very common, and so are words that have double
meanings. Patience is an example. It means, says Jefferson, both-a calm waiting for something hoped
for, and the unruffled endurance of pain and trouble. The two are different. In the first case patience
is waiting for what is hoped for with nothing to endure but the time it takes for the goal to be
achieved. In the second case their is the need for endurance and perseverance for their are many
obstacles to be overcome.
Love is the key fruit out of which all the others grow. But love does not always get a positive
response. If love only lasts until people who are loved become unlovely, then love is a very flimsy
foundation. Love needs patience to last. When only one of ten lepers came back to thank Jesus for
the healing, He had every reason to be tempted to give up on healing the sick. Many of us may have
said I have had it with these ungrateful wretches. They deserve to be the outcasts of society. I am not
going to be giving out miracles so freely from now on. But Jesus did not give this response, but just
patiently went about doing good even if people were not responding with gratitude. He continued to
love because His love was linked with patience, which makes love last and not give up. Anybody
can be loving for awhile, but no virtue is of great value, even love, if it does not last, but is only
temporary. Virtues only become Christ like when they last, and become persistent in the face of
obstacles. This is only possible when they are linked with patience.
The fruit of patience is what makes every virtue a Christian virtue. Christian virtues are those
that last, and do not disappear when there are obstacles and opposition. You cannot eliminate any
one of the fruits, for they hang together like grapes on the vine and the removal of any one of them
spoils the whole cluster. None of the fruits can be truly Christian without this fruit of patience, for if
they do not last they are virtues that any pagan can have for a time. It is impossible for us to have
these fruits all the time, and that is why we need the Holy Spirit, for they are not produced by human
resources but by the resource that only God can provide. They are fruits of the Spirit.
Jesus could only respond as He did to life's trials because He was filled with the Spirit. Chuck
Swindoll in his book, Laugh Again, writes,
"How could any man be as patient as He was? How could He
keep His cool under constant fire? How could He demonstrate
so much grace, so much compassion, and at the same time so
much determination? And when faced with the Pharisees'
continued badgering and baiting, how could he restrain Himself
from punching their lights out? As a man, He had all the emotions
we have as human beings. What was it that gave Him the edge
we so often lack? It was His attitude. To return to Webster's
words, He acted and felt as He did because of His "disposition,"
His "mental set." You only get this mental set by having the long range perspective of the mind of
God.

The essence of Christian theology is this-if God is love, then in the final analysis all that is right
and good will win, and, therefore, we must not fight evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.
This means the Christian does not have to win every battle to confident he will win the war. If evil
is strong and they have to suffer at the hands of evil people, they do not sink to their level, but
respond with love-the kind of love that Paul says in his great love chapter of I Cor.13, has as it's first
characteristic that it is patient. That is, it looks at the long run, and recognizes that the only wise
response to evil is love, for it will always have the last word.
Three of the greatest personalities of the New Testament-Jesus, Stephen, and Paul illustrate the
patience of love in the most trying of circumstances. Jesus on the cross said, "Father forgive them
for they know not what they do." Stephen is being stoned by an angry mob and he prays, "Lord, do
not hold this sin against them." Paul's patience was tried by believers who failed him. He writes in
II Tim.4:16, "At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not
be held against them." How could they all be so forgiving? Because they had the fruit of patience.
They had the ability to endure and put with the weakness and folly of human nature, because they
knew, in the long run, all such weakness will not prevent the victory of God's love.
You can put up with a lot when you are assured the negative stuff will not win in the end.
Patience is what makes you able to live in this fallen world, and still have love, joy, and peace, and
all the other fruits of the Spirit.
Able to suffer without complaining,
To be misunderstood without explaining;
Able to give without receiving,
To be ignored without any grieving;
Able to ask without commanding,
To love despite misunderstanding;
Able to turn to the Lord for guarding,
Able to wait for his own rewarding.
Author unknown
Dr. A. B. Simpson may sound too Pollyanna in his little poem, but this is what Christian patience is
all about.
Wait, and every wrong will righten;
Wait, and every cloud will brighten,
If you will only wait.
This does not mean the Christian never takes action to fight evil. It means he never uses evil means,
but waits for the power of God to overcome evil. It is an optimism that says, I will always chose the
way of love, for in the end love will always win.
Paul makes it clear in Rom.12 there are many commands impossible to obey without the fruit of
patience.
In verse12, "Be joyful in hope patient in affliction."
In verse 14, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."

In verse 17, "Do not repay anyone evil for evil."
In verse 19, "Do not take revenge."
In verse 20, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."
In verse 21, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
Paul takes the Sermon on the Mount very seriously, and he expects the average Christian to live
it. But how is it possible to not be overcome by evil? Evil men crucified Jesus and stoned Stephen
to death. The point of Paul is not that you will never be defeated by evil people. The point is you
must never let their philosophy and methods become yours. If you fight evil with the same spirit of
hate and injustice, you have been overcome by evil. You are now in their camp using the weapons
of hell rather than those of heaven.
The weapons of good often seem weak and inadequate compared to the violence of evil, but the
Christian with patience will wait, and not give in to violence, for he is convinced the way of love
will win in the end. It may seem impossible, and to the flesh it is, but to the Spirit who produces the
fruit of patience it is the key to victory.
O God of the impossible!
Since all things are to Thee
But soil in which Omnipotence
Can work almightily,
Each trial may to us become
The means that will display
How o'er what seems impossible
Our God hath perfect sway!
The very storms that beat upon
Our little barque so frail,
But manifest thy power to quell
All forces that assail.
The things that are to us too hard,
The foes that are too strong,
Are just the very ones that may
Awake a triumph song.
O God of the impossible,
When we no hope can see,
Grant us the faith that still believes
ALL possible to Thee!
Author unknown
In the simplest language I can come up with, I define patience as the deep conviction that it can
never be wrong to be Christ like, and it can never be right to be un-Christlike. If I chose to be Christ
like and I suffer for it, I will still be the winner, for I please God. It is a no lose choice to be like
Jesus, and never cease making that choice when all the natural emotions are screaming, get back, get

even, and get violent.
George Horne says, "Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger,
extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the tongue, restrains the hand, and tramples on
temptation." In other words, it is the key to being like Jesus. Christians almost always fall and fail
because of a lack of patience. Adam and Eve could not wait to learn why it was in their best interest
not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Their impatience was the beginning of sin. Sarah could not wait for
God to keep His promise, and so she gave Hagar to her husband to produce a child. The result of
this impatience has been a history of violence between the Arabs and Jews. Moses could have
obeyed God and spoken to the rock to get water, but he impatiently struck it, and lost his chance to
go into the promised land. David was filled with sexual lust, which by its very nature is impatient
for satisfaction, and made the biggest mistake of his life for himself and his family.
The record goes on and on, for Satan knows he can win a lot of battles if he can get God people
to be impatient. When you want something very strongly right now, you can count on it, Satan has a
foot in the door of your life, and you are open to suggestion to make foolish choices. There is a right
time for everything under the sun, but if Satan can get you to jump the gun he knows he has the
battle won. Once the power of patience is turned off, every other virtue becomes weakened.
In the movie Jurassic Park, the elaborate control system to keep the dangerous creatures safely
confined was turned off. The result was the Tyrannosaurus Rex was able to break loose and turn the
paradise into a devils island. The point of the movie was, without absolute assurance of control man
cannot live in the same environment with dangerous creatures of violence, and, therefore, the whole
idea had to be abandoned.
God did not abandon the project of saving the world, however, and making it into a part of the
eternal paradise. Instead, He provided a Savior to atone for the sin of man. Then He gave the Holy
Spirit to provide a control system whereby the beast in man could be restrained. That is what the
fruits of the Spirit are all about. By their power every evil tendency in man's nature can be
restrained. The last one of the nine is self-control, and that final link in this chain of Christlikeness
is reached by means of the fourth fruit we are looking at, which is patience.
You do not build a control system overnight. Rome was not built in a day, nor were the Roman
Christians. It took a lot of teaching, training, commitment, and trial and error, just as it does for any
of us to become Christ like. It the Christian gives up and ceases to grow because they lack the
patience to persevere, they will stay as babes in Christ, and be underdeveloped Christians the rest of
their lives. The world is filled with Christians who stopped praying because their prayers were not
answered. The world is filled with Christians who stopped giving because they did not get rich, as
some preacher told them they would. The world is filled with Christians who do not go to church
because they were bored, or did not understand, or were not treated the way they felt they should
have been. What is the basic problem of all these discouraged Christians in the world? Impatience!
It takes time to develop any skill or relationship. The Christian life is a process, and those who
demand that it be a finished product handed to them like a Bible are setting themselves up for
failure.
We can learn a lesson from the American soldiers who were taken prisoners in the Viet-Nam war,
and kept in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. Most of them were flyers who had to endure this setting for

3 to 5 years, and some as long as 9 years. Those endless months of monotony and loneliness could
have driven them crazy, but someone started the idea that they were in the university of North
Viet-Nam, and they were there to improve their future. Some began to learn a foreign language.
Others played on imaginary instruments using their memory of strings and key boards. One group
put together a Bible from a composite of all the verses they could remember, and then memorized
that Bible together. One officer played golf in his imagination, and returned to the U.S. and became
a tournament-level competitor. The point is, they made a choice to either grieve about their mess
and give up in despair, or have hope there would a bright future, and patiently began to plan for it by
pursuing some goal that would prepare them for that future.
They could not control their circumstances or their environment, but they had the choice of being
impatient and thus depressed, or of being patient and building something positive for the future.
This is the spirit Christians need to keep growing when they find it easier just to give up and stay at
the level where they are. One of the most beautiful things in the world is an old Christian who still
loves to learn. That is patience on display. Robert Schuller, a fairly old Christian himself, speaks
these words of wisdom that represents that which is experienced by many pastors-
Don't try to rush God.
Mountains don't move overnight.
Give God time to work miracles,
I have seen God dissolve resentments,
resolve frustrations,
fill lonely hearts with new love,
and wash away hurts like a new wave
washes away scars on sand
scratched by children's sticks.
God can get you out of a rut,
onto a new road,
and over the mountain that seemed impassable,
if you will be patient.
I have seen God turn juvenile delinquents into great men,
criminals into good citizens,
alcoholics into church elders.
His point is, the present is never the end of the story. No matter how discouraging it seems now,
God will have the final word, and we can wait for that victorious word if we let the Holy Spirit
produce in us the fruit of patience.
V. THE FRUIT OF KINDNESS
Allen Emery, one of Billy Graham's associates tells of his experience as a boy back in 1937. He
was travelling on a train with his father. One of the porters had a limp and was obviously in pain.

When they inquired about it, they learned he had an infected ingrown toenail. After breakfast Allen
came back to his car and noticed the porter coming out of his parents room. He was crying, so Allen
followed him to the men's lounge and sat down beside him. "Are you crying because your toe
hurts?", he asked. "No," he said, " it is because of your daddy. Your daddy could see my toe was in
pain and suggested that I let him lance it and clean it out." The porter explained what his father did,
and he began to cry again. "Did it hurt that much?" Allen asked. "It didn't hurt at all and it feels
fine now," he responded. "Then why are you crying?" Allen asked. Let me finish the story in
Allen's own words. The porter made this reply-
Well, while he was dressing my toe, your daddy asked me if I
loved the Lord Jesus. I told him my mother did but that I did not
believe as she did. Then he told me that Jesus loved me and had
died for me. As I saw your daddy carefully bandaging my foot,
I saw a love that was Jesus' love and I knew I could believe it.
We got down on our knees and we prayed and, now, I know
I am important to Jesus and that He loves me.
With that he started crying again, happy and unashamed.
When his sobs subsided, he earnestly burst out, "you know,
boy, kindness can make you cry." I understood. I also
understood that a living illustration like this can never be
forgotten and the privilege of seeing such events is a
responsibility of life.
One father, by bearing the fruit of kindness, led a man into the kingdom of God, and gave his son
a lesson in love that changed his life forever as well.
Kindness is no wimp among the virtues. The reason we tend to think so is because it is a virtue
that even pagans can manifest in a strong way. Paul, who makes a great deal of the importance of
kindness in the Christian life, recognizes just how kind pagans can be. In Acts 28 when the storm
wrecked the ship, and all were forced to swim for their lives to the island of Malta, we read in verse
2, "The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was
raining and cold." In verse 7 we read, "there was an estate nearby that belonged to Publius, the chief
official of the island. He welcomed us to his home and for three days entertained us hospitably." In
verse 10 the story ends with these words, "they honored us in many ways and when we were ready to
sail, they furnished us with the supplies we needed."
These pagan people treated Paul and Dr. Luke as kindly as they were ever treated by their
Christian friends, and far more kindly than what they received from some Christians. This kind of
competition has, instead of challenging the Christian to a higher level of kindness, led them to
minimize its importance. It is embarrassing when a non-Christian is more kind than a Christian, and
so to save face the Christian says it is no big deal to be kind. Kindness is just a natural gift of some
personalities, they say, and so, even though it is nice, it is of no credit to anyone, anymore than it is
to have blue eyes. Kindness is just the luck of the draw, and a matter of genetics, and should not be
given much value as a Christian virtue. If my pagan neighbor is kinder than me, it is due to his or
her heritage, and does not make them better than me. With this kind of rationalizing, Christians have
been able to send kindness back to the minor leagues. The only problem is that the New Testament

stresses that kindness is a major league player. It has a contract with God to play on the highest
level, and we can't fire it or push it out of the big leagues.
Paul settled this once and for all when he said in his great love song of I Cor.13, in verse 4, "love
is kind." God-like love is kind. There is no escape from this fact, kindness is a primary virtue and
part of the image of God in man. The fact that this image can still be reflected in non-Christians is
no excuse to minimize it, but rather a reason to recognize that God's people should display it in its
purest form. The non-Christian may beat you on the level of natural kindness of personality, but
there is no kindness superior to that of the fruit of the Spirit kindness. This is not merely man
produced, but it is God produced fruit.
Like all the other fruits this one too grows out of love. Jesus went about doing good and showing
kindness to everyone in need because He loved people. It is hard to be kind if you do not love. It is
easy if you do love, for love is kind by its very nature. This is where the Christian can compete and
win, for the Christian filled with the Spirit can love his enemies and those who do not deserve love.
This is not natural, but is the fruit of the Spirit.
If a Christian is not unusually kind he or she will not make much of an impression on the world,
where people experience kindness from others whom they know are worldly. We need to make a
commitment to magnify rather than minimize this fruit of kindness. Henry Frederic Amiel said,
"Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling
the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!"
The opportunities to be kind are very numerous we can show kindness almost every day, and
often several times a day. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, whose brother Gallio set Paul free in
Acts18, said, "Wherever there is a human being, there is a chance for kindness." Paul was shown
great kindness by his brother, and Paul was fully aware just how kind pagans could be. That is why
he stresses that Christians be kind, for if they are not, they are less than the pagans they are trying to
reach. In Col.3:12 he urges Christians, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly
beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." When a
Christian gets up in the morning to dress for the day they are to put on kindness along with all else
they wear. Ask yourself before you head off to work or to school or to wherever, did I put on my
kindness? To walk out of your home unprepared to be kind to people who cross your path is to be
unprepared to be a Christian. We should be as embarrassed to leave our kindness at home as we
would be to leave our shoes or shirt.
You have seen the signs on the doors of many stores that say, no shirt, no shoes, no service. If
Paul ran a restaurant his sign would say, no love, no kindness, no service. He would be embarrassed
to see Christians running around with no kindness on. He sees kindness as one of the
undergarments, for in Col.3:14 he sees love as the outer garment that covers all. He writes, "And
over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Paul is saying if
you take off into your day not clothed with love and kindness you are practically naked, and will
probably be a spiritual embarrassment before the day is over. Paul is not worried about you leaving
home without your credit card, but he is saying of kindness, don't leave home without it.
How does a Christian dress? With the fruits of the Spirit. We are to cover the flesh with these
fruits, so that, just as the defects of the body are covered by clothing, so the defects of our fleshly

The fruit of the spirit

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