The Fruits of the Spirit (and Their Meanings) in the Bible

The Apostle Paul describes “the fruit of the Spirit” as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23 NASB). These qualities reflect God’s character and the behavior of those living according to God’s Spirit.

When we participate with God, we’re like new branches that are grafted into a living vine, which begin to yield the fruit of that vine (see John 15:1-11). So if God is loving, patient, and always emanating peace, then as we participate with God, we will bear that same spiritual fruit, like love, patience, and peace.

We can better understand the nature and purpose of these spiritual fruits by exploring their source and the nuanced way they connect with other parts of Scripture.

By describing these characteristics as the fruit of the Spirit, the Apostle Paul is saying they come from the Holy Spirit, who is God. The Spirit cultivates them within us as part of God’s work of restoring all of creation. To learn more about who the Spirit is and the Spirit’s transformative work, watch this theme video about the Holy Spirit.

We cannot produce “spiritual fruit on our own; we can’t simply will ourselves to be more gentle or work harder to be more joyful or faithful. But Scripture does suggest that human beings somehow take part in providing the conditions for the growth of spiritual fruit. In order for the life of the vine to grow fruit in us, we have to firmly connect ourselves to the vine by pursuing God’s way of life over our own.

When writing his letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul expresses frustration because many are disconnecting from God’s way of life. Rather than trusting Jesus’ Gospel, they’ve begun to follow a “different gospel” (see Gal. 1:6-7). As a result, they’re accepting or rejecting one another based on human traditions and social status, instead of sharing and experiencing God’s gracious love with each other. They’re embracing a way of division that opposes God’s Spirit and works against the loving, unifying Gospel of Christ (see Gal. 3:28-29).

So Paul teaches them to return to Jesus’ real Gospel and to participate with (rather than oppose) the Spirit’s work, which provides the conditions needed for spiritual fruit to grow. Paul encourages people to “walk (or live) by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16). But what does that really mean?

Some traditions describe walking by the Spirit as a kind of personal surrender to the Spirit’s transforming work in our minds and hearts. As the Spirit changes our hearts, our behavior also changes, leading us to bear fruit. Other traditions suggest that walking by the Spirit is about choosing to trust God by following his instruction. For example, the choice to love and forgive our neighbor is also a choice to participate with God’s Spirit, which leads to more and more spiritual fruit.

However we understand the mysterious interplay between divine and human action, Paul invites us to cooperate with what the Spirit is doing in us, so that we can join in God’s work of restoring all things, including our own lives.

Paul’s fruit imagery echoes the tree of life in the garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3). And it recalls the metaphorical tree in Psalm 1, which suggests that people can be like strong trees that bear fruit in season if they are rooted by “streams of water” (Ps. 1:3).

The water in Psalm 1 symbolizes God’s torah, that is, God’s “law” or “instruction” (see Ps. 1:2). But elsewhere in the Bible, streams of water can also represent the Spirit (see Isa. 44:3), who empowers us to follow God’s teaching (Ezek. 36:26-27).

As we drink the nourishing water of the Spirit by trusting and following God’s instruction, we grow into strong trees of life, producing fruit that brings healing and wholeness to the world around us.

When Paul lists individual fruits in Galatians 5:22-23, he is not attempting an exhaustive list. He could have expanded it with characteristics like compassion and humility (see Col. 3:12) or steadfastness (see 2 Tim. 3:10).

But the nine fruits Paul mentions in Galatians offer a summary sketch of what life in the Spirit looks like, so let’s examine key details and nuances for each of the nine fruits that Paul outlines.

Love

Love tops Paul's list, which is not surprising because he frequently teaches that love is more essential to human life and spiritual flourishing than anything else. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, he compares it to other fruits of the Spirit to demonstrate the superiority of love, which, as New Testament scholar Ernest DeWitt Burton says, may suggest that Paul sees love as “the source from which all the rest flow.”⁽¹⁾

In the Bible, love is an enduring commitment to be with and to be for another person. In other words, love always chooses to act in ways that support their greatest good. Love often involves feelings of tenderness or affection but is not solely governed or defined by emotion. Most essentially, love is action.

Biblical authors explain that genuine love is grounded in God (1 John 4:7-8), who is love (1 John 4:16) and who works for the good of all creation. This divinely sourced, life-giving concept of love permeates the whole Bible.

The Exodus scroll portrays God as a divine rescuer, who sets enslaved captives free and welcomes them into a marriage-like relationship. God is with them and always acts for their greatest good, presenting a paradigmatic picture of God’s love.

In the New Testament, God’s self-giving love is most fully displayed when the divine Logos, or Word, takes on human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. To become human, God lowers himself from the heights of infinite-divine life into the suffering and corruption of our current earthly reality in order to heal humanity and all creation (see Phil. 2:3-11).

So love is about giving from one’s own life, or self, in order to care for another.

The Spirit empowers us to respond to God’s love by showing the same generous love toward one another (see 1 John 4:7-21). In fact, Jesus exhorts his followers to reflect God’s love not only to friends and neighbors, but also to opposers and enemies (Matt. 5:44). True love shows no partiality and treats everyone as God’s cherished creation, seeing that the image of God is breathed or “spirited” into every human being.

With that said, it is important to note that love is not ignorant optimism that turns a blind eye to corruption and evil. Love relies on the power of gentleness, mercy, and honesty to confront evil, so that we can right wrongs and break free from harmful patterns of behavior. And love offers forgiveness, never holding people’s wrongs against them and always working to restore relationships (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

Joy

Joy is a heart-swelling kind of delight. This spiritual fruit can grow out of gratitude for God’s many gifts or out of hope in God’s promise to make all things new.

Seeing God’s work around us, both in the miraculous (see Acts 8:6-8) and the mundane (Eccl. 2:24-26), can stir up joy. It erupts suddenly at an unexpected cancer-free diagnosis, and it blooms slowly while savoring the aromas of fresh-baked bread. A cool summer breeze kissing our skin can spark joy, and so can meaningful conversations with friends. Joy often comes through encountering goodness or beauty.

But joy is not dependent on good experiences or comfortable lives full of delight. We can also find joy even through hardship (see 2 Cor. 8:2). James invites us to “consider it all joy” when we “face various trials,” recognizing that hardship often accompanies the process of being formed into people who are “complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1:2-4, BibleProject Translation).

Now that doesn’t mean the cause of human suffering is good or that people shouldn’t grieve when hurting. But it is possible for joy to accompany any difficult circumstance when we trust that God’s ongoing work is happening and always bringing beauty from ashes (Isa. 61:3). It’s a different kind of joy, more like contentment than excitement, reminding us that tears are temporary on God’s path to a fully restored humanity.

Whether it’s that heart-swelling kind of delight born from good experiences, or the hard-won, peaceful sense of confidence in God’s promise to ultimately end all suffering (Rev. 21:3-5), real joy is a powerful fruit of the Spirit. It’s available to each of us, whatever circumstances we face. And we take joy in seeing glimpses of new creation emerging around us.

Peace

The Greek word for “peace,” eirene, refers to both internal peace in our hearts and relational peace with others. In Galatians 5, Paul doesn’t specify which he means, and he likely has both in mind. Jesus tells his disciples that even in the midst of trouble and persecution, they can be filled with peace because he has “overcome the world” (John 16:33).

So Paul invites us to bring all our concerns to God because he holds the world in balance and reigns supreme over all earthly rulers. This allows his peace to grow in our hearts and minds (Phil. 4:6-7) as spiritual fruit.

And Paul is also deeply concerned for relational peace and unity within the community, calling people to “pursue the things that produce peace and the building up of one another” (Rom. 14:19, BibleProject Translation). The Spirit empowers us to act as peacemakers, living in harmony with those around us and even entering into conflicts in order to create peaceful resolution.

Patience

Imagine someone with a nose stretched out like a flute, or perhaps an elephant’s trunk. This bizarre picture can help us visualize the idiom “long of nostrils,” which is a key image in the Hebrew Bible that represents patience. But what does “long of nostrils” have to do with being patient?

Like cartoon characters with smoke shooting out of their ears, in the ancient Hebrew imagination, smoking anger comes out of a person’s nose. And having long nostrils means that the angry smoke takes longer to appear. In other words, that person doesn’t immediately act in anger.

So the Hebrew idiom “long of nostrils” is often translated as “slow to anger” (see Exod. 34:6; Prov. 15:18), and early Greek translators used the root makrothum, or “patient,” to communicate the idea.

The New Testament says God is patient in bringing judgment because he is “not wanting for any to perish, but for all to move to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, BibleProject Translation). As God’s Spirit helps us see others like God does, we can find strength to also treat people with divine patience.

Rather than exploding with judgment or anger, we can participate with God and cultivate the spiritual fruit of patience, extending mercy to all, forgiving, and supporting people as they grow.

Kindness and Goodness

These next two spiritual fruits overlap. Early Greek translators used both khrestotes (“kindness”) and agathone (“goodness”) to represent the Hebrew root tov, which describes what is good, beautiful, right-functioning, and just.

Khrestotes is a narrower term, referring to “active goodness” directed “toward others.”⁽²⁾ God shows his khrestotes, or kindness, by offering humanity true life through Jesus (Eph. 2:4-7) and also by doing good to “ungrateful and evil people” (Luke 6:35).

So we can reflect God’s khrestotes through acts of love and generosity, especially toward those whom we may not believe deserve it.

Agathone, or goodness, is more generally about acting in ways that are pure and right, or following God, who is truly good (Mark 10:18). When God creates the universe, he sees that the world is tov, or good, at every stage of completion (see Gen. 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25). The spiritual fruit of goodness, in the biblical imagination, flows from the original nature of God’s entire creation, especially humanity. After God sets humans within his creation, he calls everything he has made tov me’od, which means “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

So when we trust and follow our creator’s instruction, we are cultivating the spiritual fruit of God’s original goodness breathed into all creation.

Faithfulness

In the New Testament, the Greek word pistis often refers to “trust” or “faith,” and it can also mean “faithfulness” (see Rom. 3:3). For biblical authors, faith and faithfulness are two sides of the same coin, capturing ideas like fidelity, reliability, trustworthiness, and allegiance.

Having faith does not mean simply believing in or agreeing with statements about God (see Jas. 2:19). Faith is active, and it requires dependence on God, a sense of trust so deep that one chooses to walk in God’s ways.

Early on we said that the fruits of the Spirit describe God’s own character, and biblical authors consistently portray God as faithful, dependable, and trustworthy. God is never depicted in the Bible as random, chaotic, or motivated by changing passions. So when we receive God’s Spirit and learn to depend on his way of life above our own fluctuating passions, we also become more trustworthy and faithful.

When Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane before he is put to death, he expresses his good human will to avoid suffering and death. Jesus pleads: “take this cup from me,” which is his way of asking to be relieved of the painful responsibility he faces. And yet, his choice to remain faithful is greater than his desire to survive, so he concludes his plea with a commitment: “not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Jesus chooses to do God’s will, whatever the cost, and this might be the clearest picture of faithfulness in the Bible. When we choose to walk the same path as Jesus by submitting our own will to God’s will through the power of the Spirit, we cultivate the spiritual fruit of faithfulness too. As God has been faithful to us (1 Cor. 1:9), we respond with faithful commitment to God and to others.

Gentleness

The Greek word prautes is translated as “gentleness,” which involves acting tenderly or softly and having an attitude of humility.⁽³⁾ The biblical authors often portray God with images of superior strength and sovereign power. But they also use images like a mother bird protecting her chicks under her wings to suggest that, while infinitely powerful, God’s strength can be seen in his gentle and tender care for his people (Ps. 91:4; Isa. 31:5).

Isaiah 40:11 shows us God’s tenderness as a shepherd who gathers lambs in his arms, carries them close to his heart, and leads the nursing mothers along. And when the prophet Elijah encounters God, he expects the divine presence to show up in a powerful earthquake or glorious fire; instead, he finds God in a gentle “whisper” (1 Kgs. 19:12).

Later in the New Testament, when God takes on human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, he does not announce his kingship with trumpets or grandiose fanfare, with soldiers or war horses. Jesus enters Jerusalem as a “gentle” (praus, related to prautes) king, riding a young donkey (Matt. 21:5), as foretold by the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 9:9).

And when Jesus speaks to weary and overburdened people about life with him he says, “Come to me … and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle (praus) and humble in heart, and you will find rest” (Matt. 11:28-29, BibleProject Translation).

Jesus reminds us that true power is revealed not by dominating others with violent might but by caring for others and setting them free—giving peaceful, healing rest by treating people with gentleness.

After Jesus departs, God’s Spirit continues inviting people into a way of gentleness. The Apostle Paul, for example, draws a contrast between visiting the Corinthian church “with a rod” of correction versus coming “in love and a spirit of prautes,” or gentleness (1 Cor. 4:21). Paul chooses gentleness (in this case at least). And just a few verses after outlining the fruit of the Spirit, Paul calls people to confront wrongdoers not with force but “in a spirit of prautes” (Gal. 6:1; see also 2 Tim. 2:25).

When we choose paths of gentleness, we benefit from—and offer others—true spiritual fruit that God produces within us.

Self-Control

Successful athletes model self-control by avoiding desirable things that would harm their bodies. While they may crave the satisfaction associated with cookies or cake, they discipline themselves to eat vegetables and lean protein instead. They may desire relaxation, but they push themselves to train hard. By exercising control over their bodies, rather than allowing their desires to control them, they prepare themselves to compete well.

Paul encourages the Corinthian church to apply that same kind of disciplined self-regulation when pursuing God’s ways (1 Cor. 9:24-27). We exercise self-control when we turn away from what Paul calls “works of the flesh,” that is, futile attempts to find self-fulfillment by prioritizing our own desires while neglecting our neighbors (Gal. 5:19-21).

Pursuing satisfaction for our own desires often looks like the best path to freedom. But without self-control, we end up getting controlled by those ever-changing desires. Jesus and the New Testament authors see the good life as found in living with love for God and neighbor in every situation. Although it may seem counterintuitive, exercising self-control gives us true freedom.

God created us in his own image, and, from the beginning, he’s been teaching us to reflect his divine character. We do this by bearing good spiritual fruit as we do what’s right in God’s eyes and care for his creation and everyone in it. When we serve ourselves and do what’s right in our own eyes, we reflect a corrupted image of God. Because God is not at all self-centered; God is pure love, always working for the good of others.

As human beings, we cannot lose God’s image, but we often end up distorting it, and this allows God’s spiritual fruit to wither and die. We mistakenly exchange the good life for something as valuable as a rotten apple.

But biblical authors invite us to trust that when we live in the way of Jesus—who bears every spiritual fruit—we also participate in the Spirit’s work. God renews his own image within us (see 2 Cor. 3:18).

So walking by the Spirit creates the conditions necessary for God to cultivate within us the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the priceless fruit that brings healing and life to everyone.

1. Ernest DeWitt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, International Critical Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 1988), 314.
2. Gordon Fee, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 450.
3. On humility as a key aspect of this Greek root, see the discussion of the related adjective praus in "The Powerless, Grieving, and Unimportant (The Beatitudes Pt. 2)" podcast.