Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…  I bet you could finish this list.  Commonly known as the Fruit of the Spirit, found in Galatians 5:22-23.  When we walk in the Spirit, allowing Him to control our lives, we produce these fruit.  It’s a simple (albeit not-so-simple) cause-effect relationship.  Spirit leads, fruit grows.

There are nine fruits listed.  Are they listed in order of importance?  I don’t believe so, because self-control, the last one, is an extremely important fruit.  It’s not like on the jelly jar where the ingredients are listed in order of prevalence.  However, I do believe that love is listed first for a reason.

Notice how it says the “fruit” not “fruits”. Fruit is one of those words that can be singular or plural.  I once heard a pastor, and I’m sorry but I have no idea who it was, who said that the fruit of the Spirit is love, and that all the other eight fruit listed are just a part of the description of love.  I’m not so sure if I’d go that far, but I will agree with this:  love is the main fruit.  For an explanation, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter.

In this chapter, Paul describes true, godly, spiritual love.  The first Spirit fruit listed in Galatians 5.  We can discover all the other eight fruit of the Spirit in verses 4-8.

⁴ Love is patient (patience) and kind (kindness); love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude (gentleness). It does not insist on its own way (self-control); it is not irritable (peace) or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing (goodness), but rejoices (joy) with the truth. (faithfulness) ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ⁸ Love never ends.

Some of these fruit, I believe, could fit in multiple places, but I simply listed the most obvious connections to me.  Love can be described by all the other fruit.  True, godly love will show joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Therefore, if we WERE examining a jar of “Fruit of the Spirit Jelly” (preserves, jam, spread, whatever your preference), love WOULD be the first ingredient!

Art Talk:

I made this page using the July Faith Art Box from Creative Retreat Kits, as well as the free coordinating printable that is available in the Creative Retreat Facebook Insiders Group.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you can “spread God’s love” around some today!