I want to think with you this week on the podcast about what Paul calls the fruit of the

Spirit in Galatians 5.22-23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no

law. I think we'd agree that these words are worth memorizing and I'm going to repeat

them every day this week. But I think it's also interesting that for some people these are

favourite verses. I'm not sure that's always been true of me and so it's a good thing

for me and I hope it's an encouragement to you that we spend some time thinking about

them. It's interesting isn't it that Paul calls these different qualities that are

nine of them. He calls them fruit, fruit in the singular, not fruits in the plural. Although

earlier on in this chapter he'd spoken about the works plural of the flesh, not just the work

of the flesh. And I rather think that he's suggesting that all of these qualities belong

together. They're meant to grow on the same tree as it were. You can't really develop

one of them fully without having all of them. At the same time I wonder if the reason he

calls them fruit is because they take time to grow and they need to be nourished. It's

interesting I think isn't it that he uses a horticultural metaphor here, not a mechanical

one. These qualities can't be artificially produced. They need to be developed in us by God's grace.

When I think of these words in Galatians chapter 5, I often am reminded of two comments made

by two rather remarkable Christian ministers. The first is a comment made by the great 18th-century

Anglican minister, Charles Simeon of Cambridge. And he made it about a young man whose name was

Henry Martin, who became a very great missionary and translator of the scriptures. He was a brilliant

young man. He was the outstanding mathematics graduate of his time in the University of Cambridge.

And he became a missionary and died as a young man. But Charles Simeon who befriended him once

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