Joel Quile's Blog

Here is part two from my Sermon called "The Root of the Fruit" about the fruit of the spirit. (See blog entry form Thurs, Dec 4th below)

2. It is Singular
No I’m not talking like the cell phone giant. I’m talking the opposite of plural. The fruit of the spirit is. Is not are. Now notice back up in verse 19. The acts of the sinful nature are. Those are plural.

I’ve heard people say botch it and call it the fruit fruits. I even heard someone the other day refer to this series as the fruits of the spirits. That was the first time I had ever heard of the Spirit being plural. It is important that we see the fruit as one thing. If we don’t then we think that we are spirit filled when we have only a part of the fruit. It is not a tree with multiple types of fruit or a bunch of grapes with 8 grapes. Think of the fruit of the spirit like an apple. The apple is made up of many parts but it is still just one apple. Without a stem an apple can’t be attached to the tree. Without skin the apple would rot faster. It has seeds and a core and vitamins and enzymes. You can’t say I have love, joy, peace (you just thought of a pizza didn’t you?), patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, but not gentleness or self-control right? Of course not. It is not like the spirit ran out of those. Sorry, fresh out of joy today – guess you’ll have to love others but be miserable while you’re doing it. No, make no mistake –the fruit is singular.