Fruits of the Spirit: Scriptures and Examples

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

The “fruits of the Spirit” are among the most beloved and frequently quoted concepts in Christian Scripture. Found in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, they are virtues that have inspired centuries of Christian reflection, song, preaching, and spiritual practice, often serving as a guide for personal growth and faithful living. But could they signify more than simple virtues?

In this article, I’ll look at the Pauline foundations of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and trace how influential Christian thinkers interpreted the concept throughout church history. By the end of this article, I hope to have demonstrated a deeper appreciation of what Paul meant by the fruits of the Spirit and why this notion continues to occupy a central place in Christian thought.

What Are the Fruits of the Spirit?

The phrase “fruits of the Spirit” is found in one of the authentic letters of Paul, specifically Galatians 5:22–23. But to understand what Paul meant by this phrase, we have to go back a few verses to Galatians 5:16–21, where Paul describes the “works of the flesh,” viewed as bad and in contrast to with the fruits of the Spirit:

To understand this passage correctly, we have to understand what Paul means by “flesh” (Greek: sarx). While the word, both in Paul’s time and ours, could simply refer to the physical body, Paul means something more significant. Richard Rohr, for instance, writes that for Paul, flesh “primarily signifies the weak, fallen human nature that is prone to sin, selfish, and independent of God.” We can see this in the above verses detailing what kind of actions a life according to the flesh—merely following the dictates of desire—might encourage.

However, to counteract this orientation of selfishness caused by the Fall, Paul then speaks about the opposite, fruits of the Spirit which, unlike the works of the flesh, are not selfish and will therefore not divide human beings from God:

Notice, though, that he uses different words to denote what these different orientations produce. Specifically, he uses the word “works” (Greek: erga) when referring to vices and “fruits” when referring to virtues. Why would Paul use different words here?

In his commentary on Galatians, Louis Martyn writes that, for Paul, both “works” and “fruits” are actually effects of living by the flesh and the Spirit respectively:

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In other words, if the Galatian church allows itself to be led by the flesh, they will act immorally while if they are led by the Spirit, they will not. Either way, Paul sees both the vices and the virtues he lists as inevitable results of the general orientation both individuals and groups have (towards self or towards God) rather than mere actions taken.

Additionally, earlier in Galatians 2:16, Paul uses “works” in a slightly different context. After describing his fight with the apostle Peter over how best to include Gentiles into the originally Jewish sect of Christianity, Paul writes

What are the “works of the law?” As Bart Ehrman puts it, “’Works’ for [Paul] are the works of the Jewish Law, that is, aspects of the Law that make Jews distinctive as the people of Israel (e.g., circumcision, the Sabbath, kosher food laws).” In Galatians 5:2–4, Paul writes specifically about circumcision, a process that some early Christians thought Gentile believers had to undergo. Paul vehemently disagrees:

So, in addition to the list of vices Paul calls “works,” he also describes requirements of the law such as circumcision as “works.” In other words, he contrasts following the requirements of the law as fleshly requirements, with fruits of the Spirit as the result of correct Christian alignment with God’s grace. “Works,” then, are those actions taken by human beings when they are oriented toward their own desires, while “fruits” are ways of being which are cultivated by orienting oneself toward God.

Having described what the fruits of the Spirit are and what they are not, let’s look at a bit of the reception history of the concept. In other words, how did early Christians receive, interpret, and use the concept of “fruits of the Spirit” in different eras and places?

Reception History of the Fruits of the Spirit

We begin with the highly-influential 2nd-century Christian bishop and heresy hunter Irenaeus of Lyons. In his magnum opus Against Heresies, Irenaeus used the fruits of the Spirit not as individual virtues in need of analysis or polemic, but as evidence that the correct form of Christianity— his form, of course—had been and continued to be led by the Holy Spirit (which he calls “the Advocate” from the Greek word Paraklētos):

Note that the Holy Spirit here is described as rainwater which allows the fruit of the Spirit to grow in a dry land. Through this fruit of the Spirit, then, Irenaeus believes that the true church, led by the Spirit, is defined and united against those whom he calls heretics.

A couple of centuries later, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, used the notion of the fruits of the Spirit to emphasize the equality of each person of the Holy Trinity, possibly as an answer to the Arian heresy in which the Son and the Holy Spirit were said to have been created by the Father and thus subordinate to him:

For Ambrose, then, the fact that the fruits of the Spirit, which are inherently good, were produced by the Holy Spirit showed that the Holy Spirit was as much the source of goodness as the Father.

Finally, John Chrysostom, 4th-century bishop of Constantinople and highly erudite preacher, saw the fruits of the Spirit as evidence that while sinful actions were the result of humans acting apart from God, good actions were entirely a divine gift:

In other words, purely human action could only yield evil. Good actions, on the other hand, like the fruits of the Spirit, were all due to God’s grace.

By the way, we can contrast the “fruits of the Spirit” and the “gifts of the Spirit,” another notion found in Paul’s letters:

What differentiates “fruits” and “gifts”? Let’s look at this from the perspective of a modern church with ancient roots, the Greek Orthodox Church. On its educational website, the church provides context for well-known Bible verse content. It says that the gifts of the Spirit are abilities granted to each person by God, “given so each person can serve others in love. One might be called to teach, another to encourage, another to show mercy. Still, all are part of the same Body, the Church, working together.”

Fruits of the Spirit, on the other hand, “aren’t ‘skills’—they’re signs that the Holy Spirit is truly living in us… These are what blossom in a soul that’s being made new in Christ.” Gifts, according to this church, are for the purpose of serving others, while fruits are merely the result of living according to the Spirit, an indication that one’s focus in life is correct.

In the catechism of the Catholic Church, meanwhile, three additional virtues are added to Paul’s list of 9, for a total of 12 fruits:

Parallels and Precedents of the Fruits of the Spirit

Since Christianity emerged from Judaism on the one hand and the Greco-Roman milieu on the other, are there precursors to the idea of fruits of the Spirit in either or both of those traditions?

In the case of the Hebrew Bible, the answer is yes. For instance, in Isaiah 32:15–16, God says that Israel will experience disaster

This Spirit being poured out sounds a lot like the experience of Pentecost in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles after Jesus’ ascension. Furthermore, we see a similar reference in the mystical prophetic book of Ezekiel:

Notice that this passage doesn’t order the people to obey God’s commandments but says that the Spirit within them will cause them to obey. In other words, the indwelling spirit will grant the people obedience.

Parallels to the fruits of the Spirit as something granted by God are a bit harder to find in Greco-Roman writings. The reason for this is that Greek philosophy usually emphasized virtues as the result of human effort. However, there are minor areas of agreement between Paul and Greco-Roman thought.

For instance, Aristotle saw the highest virtue, contemplation, as associated with the divine part of human beings. It represented a form of perfect happiness that allowed a person to perceive the divine. According to the The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle thought that the divine acted upon human beings because it was “magnetic, drawing us, by its attractive power, to live the best kind of life possible for us.”

Meanwhile, Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, came to the conclusion in his dialogue Meno that virtue was a divine gift, not something that came through teaching or habitual action. However, most of Greco-Roman philosophy stressed the importance of human will and effort. The Stoics, for instance, pursued a state called apatheia (freedom from the passions) by actively aligning the human will with divine reason, a process which necessitated great effort.

Conclusion

The fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—are written about by Paul in Galatians 5. While they may seem at first glance to be simple virtues that can be developed by human effort, that was not how he saw them.

For Paul, these “fruits” were the results of orienting one’s individual and community life toward God rather than toward the “flesh,” the ego-driven desires which he believed were the result of the Fall. One could know that one was correctly oriented, then, when these fruits manifested as practical examples in one’s life and in relations with others.

Church fathers interpreted this idea in a variety of ways, from the fruits as evidence of following true doctrinal principles, to signs that God had taken over one’s life, since living by human effort alone could only result in evil.

While the prophetic books provide examples of the notion of God’s spirit poured out upon people resulting in abundance, Greco-Roman thought, with a few exceptions, mostly relied on human effort to manifest virtue. In other words, Paul’s thought was more aligned with Jewish thought than Greco-Roman philosophical concepts.