Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

For the next two weeks I'm going to tackle the fruit of the Spirit. I'll look at one each day, but I want to make sure that I make it clear that the fruit are really an entity. It is a singular term "fruit" not plural "fruits". When we are living in the Spirit, this is what our lives look like. We exude all of the attributes of Jesus when we allow Him to be our very life. I find it sad that the attributes above tend to be things we try to attain. We try to have peace. We work on our patience. We attempt to be kind and gentle. We practice self-control. Paul is very clear in his writing. These attributes are fruit of the Holy Spirit in us, not goals to attain. The Holy Spirit embodies the good that is the fruit. It is the radical goodness of God that we see, as Dallas Willard said. Oh, what impact we could have if we would embody the Spirit of God! I kind of wanted to type "in-body the Spirit of God" because that's really what I mean and that's a word I want to make up. ;-) Enjoy our two week look!