Study of Galatians Part 19 - Galatians 5:22-25

Last week, we heard of the first three Christian virtues or qualities in the cluster of the fruit of the Holy Spirit - love, joy, and peace - given by the Spirit so that we may live with hope and confidence in our Lord and remain close to Him and His promises in Christ, by His power. Next is a listing of fruit that enables us to live in a good and proper way with the people God has placed around us (Galatians 5:22).

The first quality is “patience.” This word can literally be translated as “long-suffering.” Living and dealing with other people can be both joyous and very difficult, with suffering and trouble involved at times, suffering along with them and sometimes because of them. The Holy Spirit enables us to seek to have endurance and steadfastness toward them, in our contacts in both the best and worst of times. “Patience” is hard to have in the difficult times; yet the Holy Spirit keep pointing us to Jesus and how much patience and love He has had to have toward us - never leaving us nor forsaking us, and continually forgiving us, as we heard last week.

The Spirit strengthens us to carry on with “patience” toward others, along with the next two qualities - kindness and goodness. God is the one who has first been kind (gracious and good) toward us, though we did not deserve that kindness. Jesus taught in Luke 6:35 that the Lord is even “kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” That is what the Spirit wishes us also to be, as “sons of the Most High.”

Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:31-32, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander (the works of the flesh!) be put away from you, along with all malice. Be ‘kind’ (same word as in Galatians 5:22) to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” The pattern is always the same. The Spirit helps us remember what God has first done for us in Christ and helps us act in the same way toward others, as hard as it sometimes is for us to do.

Paul then adds “goodness” to “kindness” as the Spirit’s fruit in Ephesians 5:22. Someone once called Jesus “Good Teacher,” and Jesus responded, “Why do you call me good? No one is good (same Greek word) except God alone” (Luke 18:18-19). Jesus, of course, was also perfectly “good,” as the sinless Son of God, but He responds this way because the person questioning Him thinks he is only a “teacher” and not the good and sinless Savior.

“Goodness” (uprightness, doing the right things, generosity) is therefore an inner quality that only God has in the fullest perfect way. Yet the Spirit can work in us and bring out in us at least some of that “goodness” in action toward others. For that is what this word means: “goodness” is actually doing some good to and for others. Think about the words of James in James 2:15-16. If we see people in need and say, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled” and yet don’t do anything to help them, “what good (what benefit) is that?” The Spirit works in us to help turn our faith into “goodness” that actually does some good.

The last three parts of the cluster of the fruit of the Spirit are “faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:23). The first word is the word usually translated as “faith,” but in this context, along with other qualities, virtues, it means “faithfulness.”

Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:13, about Jesus, even “if we are faithless, He remains faithful (same Greek word) — for he cannot deny Himself.” Jesus has perfect faithfulness toward His Heavenly Father and keeps all His promises. We struggle, at times, but Jesus, through the fruit of the Spirit, forgives us and strengthens us to be more faithful to Him and His Word and to other people around us.

The word “gentleness” often used to be translated as “meekness.” That word has taken on a very negative connotation, though, to many people. It has the sense of someone who is weak and always backs down and gets taken advantage of and stomped on by others. If you are old enough, you might remember people being called a “Caspar Milquetoast.” There was an actual cartoon series about such “A Timid Soul” who had that name, that ran from 1925-1953 in many newspapers. That “Caspar” was considered too gentle for his own good and  could never stand up for himself, and he was named for a meal of squishy toast in warm milk given to people who had a weak, upset stomach, to help with digestion.

In the Bible, though, this word for “gentleness” or “meekness” was used in a positive way by Jesus and is used to describe one of His great qualities. We would tend to think, “The strong and powerful (macho people) will inherit the earth.” Jesus said, “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5, as we heard last week). Jesus said of Himself, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle (meek) and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

“Meekness” in the Bible is connected with humility and courtesy toward and consideration of others. It especially means, as Martin Franzmann said, simply “trusting in the Lord above all and committing our way to Him and believing that He will vindicate us… and waiting patiently on Him and knowing that the steps of a man are from the Lord” and not from us and our scheming and plans. Franzmann pointed to Psalm 37 and particularly verses 39-40 (Franzmann, “Follow Me”, p. 37-38).

As others do with all this “fruit of the Spirit,” Franzmann pointed above all to Jesus and “His Messianic entry into Jerusalem with no means of power, no trappings of royalty, on a borrowed beast, with nothing and no one but God to depend on. He came as the meek King (Matthew 21:5), the meek Messiah.” He delivered the meek (who simply trusted Him by faith) by suffering and dying on the cross as a criminal, and only then receiving His mighty resurrection from the dead and return to glory. With “meekness” Jesus was actually the “Stronger Man” who defeated sin and Satan and death for us (Matthew 12:24-29). The Holy Spirit points us to all this and helps us to take up our own “yoke” of service to others, too, trusting that the Lord will ultimately judge with fairness and His mercy and rescue “the meek of the earth,” including us (Isaiah 11:1-5).

Finally, the Holy Spirt seeks to help us have “self-control” in all these things, helping us to hold our sinful passions and desires in check, by His power, and forgiving our failures, as we bring them to Him in repentance. Our old sinful nature was crucified with Christ on the cross (Galatians 2:20) and we receive personally the benefit of all that in our baptism and the gift of faith (Galatians 3:1-2, 24-26 and now 5:24).

The Holy Spirit is with us, too, in the daily battle of, as Luther says, remembering our Baptism and who we are in Christ and drowning those sinful passions and desires that trouble us. Paul put it this way in Romans 8:13: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit, you keep on putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” In Christ and in the Holy Spirit, we do live, and we march in step with the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:25).

(Hopefully, next week, we will get to what this all means in more practical terms in our lives. The Lord’s blessings!)