Fruit Is Singular

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” – Galatians 5:22

This verse seems grammatically incorrect: Paul says there is one thing, then lists nine things that it is. He calls these the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits of the Spirit, what could be called a “singular plurality” or a “collective singular.” Why?

Jonathan Edwards wrote a piece called “All The Graces of Christianity Connected” in which he argues that the graces of Christianity (like faith, hope, love) always go together, depend upon one another, and are to some degree implied in one another, because they are all from the same source, achieved by the same means, and meant for the same end. For example, he says that “There is not one conversion of the soul to faith, and another conversion to love of God, and another to humility, and another to repentance, and still another to love of man; but all are produced by one and the same work of the Spirit.” It is the one Holy Spirit that produces this one fruit in us—yes, there are different qualities of the fruit, but it is one fruit.

That’s how you know if you are bearing real fruit, rather than just being kind by your own efforts, or just being patient because that tends to be your disposition. The fruit that is from the Spirit always grow up together; you don’t get one part of it growing without all the parts growing. For example, Edwards says, we should examine our love by its faith. If we feel affectionate love for God, is it also a love that comes with a real conviction of faith in divine things? If it doesn’t, if it’s just a feeling we have, then that love won’t carry us far in duty or suffering. It’s not really love that is a fruit of the Spirit (I like his side-note, that this love is “very much like the affection which we may have towards a person we are reading of in a romance, and whom we at the same time suppose to be no other than a feigned person”).

Is our self-control marked by love, not by legalism? Does it lead us to deep joy, not resentment? Are we able to be patient with peace, not anxiety? Are we growing consistently in all of the fruit, together? Do we see how they all exist together, and work together, because they all come from and rely on the same source, the singular Holy Spirit? That is the difference between the true work of the Holy Spirit in us, and a mere list of values that we try to achieve on our own.