The Sword and the Fruit of the Spirit

An extract from Identifying Your Gifts and Service – Small Group Edition

Fruit and Gifts

Many people confuse the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts. More importantly they confuse the relationship between the two. It’s very easy to get dazzled by the gifts and assume that the presence of powerful, visible, supernatural activity is the test of God’s presence. But as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, a better test is that we all work together under the one Spirit. Another way to describe that ministry is by saying that it is carried out by people displaying the fruit of the Spirit.

As Paul describes it:

22 God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, 23 gentle, and self-controlled. There is no law against behaving in any of these ways. 24 And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. 25 God’s Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit. 26 But don’t be conceited or make others jealous by claiming to be better than they are. – Galatians 5:22-26 (CEV)

This describes the way people who are part of the body of Christ— those controlled by the one Spirit—are to behave. In effect, it is simply a restatement of the same thing. Note also the similarity to 1 Corinthians 13, in which Paul places love above all of the gifts of the Spirit. It’s not merely that love is more important. Love is what gives our ministry its form, guidance, and meaning. The fruit of the Spirit are an identifying characteristic of God’s Spirit at work. This can be an aid in our discernment.

Fruit of the Spirit and Love

Fruit and gifts are similar in many ways:

• Both come from the same Spirit
  They will not be in conflict. If there is conflict you know that a wrong spirit is operating somewhere.
• Both are necessary for your ministry
  You can’t just have one or the other. The tendency is to think that because the fruit are a visible, identifying trait that we’re all right as long as we have the fruit. But a person can be truly loving, kind, nice, patient, and so forth and still be ineffective.
• Both must be exercised
  Neither the fruit nor the gifts are things that you kind of sit around and “have.” They have to be used.
• Both are important
  We like to prioritize things, and that is often good. But in order to accomplish God’s mission we are going to need both fruit and gifts. We can’t work effectively if we’re missing either one.