Passover to Pentecost – Fruit of the Spirit        Week 7 Day 5

For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Ephesians 5: 9

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. Isaiah 32: 17

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. Proverb 11:20 (NIV)

Gifts are given; fruit has to grow and mature.  Galatians 5: 22 list the nine fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Again we have a list that we get to prioritize or should we?  Personally, I had developed a teaching that for any given situation if you wanted to be effective in that situation you had to start with love and develop all nine gifts, in order, for that situation.  Then you get to start all over again, but at a higher level.  Then I realized that there were other list like the one 1 Timothy 6: 11.  Well, that took a lot of the edge off of my great teaching.  I am not sure that one of the fruits is more important than the next, we need all of them.

I suggest that you do a word study on the one you thinking you may be weak in and expect to be tested in it as you grow that fruit to maturity.

Observations:

1. Hope is not in this list. Personally, I think the effects of all nine of the Fruits have a part in hope.
2. The list that is in 1 Timothy 6: 11, that list six fruits, are for a church as a whole, while the list in Galatians is for an individual. (My interpretation.)

There are other lists that are worth including.  In 1 Corinthians 12: 28 Paul gives a numbered list of the parts of the body of Christ.  This starts with apostles and goes to those who speak in tongues. (This could be the prophetic gift of tongues or it is everyone else in the church that has asked for the power of the Holy Spirit.  I will go with the second one, because we all have a “numbered” place in Jesus.)  The second list is found in Ephesians 6: 14 and is known as the “Armor of God.”  If you try to rank or prioritize the armor as to most or least important I think you would soon find that life is out of balance.