It has to be more than a happy accident that in both Hebrew and Greek–the languages our Bible was written in–the same word in each has the same three meanings. That is….

In the Hebrew, ruach means spirit, wind, and breath. The context dictates which word best fits.

In the Greek, pneuma also means spirit, wind, and breath.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, the very Breath of God.

Here’s a well-loved hymn….

Breathe on me, Breath of God, Fill me with life anew

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do.

Think of Adam, the newly formed clay figure of Genesis 2:7. The Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

In this life, I am often breathless. I am winded. I am dispirited.

I get used up so quickly. My natural reserves are so limited.

Life has a way of requiring all there is of us and calling for more. The people around us–even those who love us and whom we treasure–take and take and take, then ask for more. Unless we are constantly being replenished, we soon find ourselves spent and exhausted, with nothing more to offer.

Toward the end of his life, H. G. Wells concluded this was true of mankind as a whole, that we are played out, the world is jaded and without power to recover, and the only philosophy that makes sense is a disinterested cynicism.

However.

But God.

I love that God is the “Great However.” Over and over we read in Scripture of the mess man makes of things, and then we come to those two little words: But God.

Early in Romans, the Apostle Paul chronicles the depths of depravity and rebellion mankind has descended into over the centuries. Then, when it seems that we are utterly destitute and without hope, he writes: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Nearly a half-century ago, Scottish pastor extraordinaire James S. Stewart published a book of sermons that went by the title of the first one, “The Wind of the Spirit.” His text for that message was something the Lord said to Nicodemus who was trying to get a handle on the work of God in his day.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

Stewart’s outline on that declaration from our Lord has never been surpassed.

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We all could use a healthy dose of self-control these days. As I was telling my good-for-nothing, money-grabbing, self-indulgent, womanizing, utterly out-of-his mind brother-in-law the other day.

Oh. Excuse me. Sort of got out of control there.

(Apologies to my three brothers-in-law. Just illustrating a point.)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

The Greek word translated “self-control” is enkrateia, and usually refers to mastery over one’s desires and passions. (We pastors throw in the occasional Greek word just so our people will know that we know it. Whether it does any good or turns people off is another question.)

The best picture of self-control any of us will ever see in a lifetime is Olympic athletes. They discipline their bodies, they deny themselves social activities and foods everyone else is enjoying, they rise at unearthly hours and go to bed with the chickens–and they do it for four long years between major competitions–all for the privilege of standing on that world stage for a few moments and competing. The rest of us stand in awe.

Self-control. What a concept.

Self-indulgence–saying “sure, whatever you want” to our passions and hungers, our urges and desires, our impulses and temptations–is more what we are about.

The evidence of a lack of self-control can be seen in a hundred ways everywhere we go: in the overweight people all about us, in the speeders and risk-takers on the interstates, in the daily newspapers’ accounts of fights and shootings, and in the mirror.

The mirror, did you say? Yep. I see it in myself. You too, I’ll bet.

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility…. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Humility may be the most elusive of all personality traits.

If you think you have it, you probably don’t. If you think you don’t, you may well do. Other people are better authorities on whether you possess it, yet they’re not infallible.

The Bible says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (I Peter 5:5).

We’re told to humble ourselves (I Peter 5:6), but I can’t find anywhere in the Bible where we are encouraged to ask the Lord to humble us.

For good reason, I’m thinking.

When God humbles you, He does it with a strong hand. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, potentate of Babylon, once he decided that all the gains God had given him were the result of his own military genius, God decided to send him a healthy dose of humiliation. Next day, Nebuchadnezzar was out in the pasture, munching grass alongside the cows. Eventually, when he came to his senses and gave God the praise, the Lord restored his sanity. (Daniel chapter 4)

Lesson number 1 about humility: “You don’t want God humbling you!”

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness….

Some translations have “faith” and others “faithfulness.” The Greek word pistis doesn’t give us much help, since it is translated in a dozen or more ways. Sometimes “faith” refers to a body of doctrine, sometimes to confidence in Jesus, sometimes to the message of Jesus, and so forth.

In the context of the fruit of the Spirit, I’m going with pistis referring to faithfulness, that is, fidelity and loyalty, the quality of being true and steadfast. Reliable.

The Holy Spirit in trust of your life and mine will consistently and increasingly make us true to the Savior, true to the Word, and true to each other.

A phrase every believer serious about his life in Christ would do well to commit to memory is this: A long obedience in the same direction.

The expression originated (as far as can be known) from Friedrich Nietzsche in his book “Beyond Good and Evil:” “The essential thing in heaven and in earth is…that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

That phrase–a long obedience in the same direction–later formed the title of a popular work by Eugene Peterson on Psalms 120-134.

That expression does not sum up what “faithfulness” means to followers of Jesus Christ, but it encompasses three essential parts: 1) obedience, 2) steady, tenured obedience, and 3) in the same direction.

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness…. (Galatians 5:22-23)

God will make you good.

Or at least gooder than you are now.

Looking at me, you might want to argue with that. After all, you don’t see a lot of goodness in me. My responses are: a) You should have seen me before and b) you ought to know what I would have been without Him.

Here is what I have learned about goodness through more than a half-century of living as a Christian:

1) Jesus is good. God is good.

2) I’m not. And you are not either.

3) The sanctification process–that growth into Christlikeness which the Holy Spirit initiates in every believer’s life from the moment of spiritual birth and continues until the nanosecond of our actual glorification–involves making us good.

4) You are not the judge of whatever goodness the Lord has managed to perfect in you to this point. Goodness seems to be like humility in this aspect, that the bearer has little idea of what extent he/she has attained this trait.

5) Therefore, there is a sense in which you can regain your virginity. So to speak.

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness…. (Galatians 5:22-23)

“Would the gentleman from North Carolina please yield the floor?”

“The gentle lady from California makes a good point.”

The U.S. Senate may be the last place in this country where people are recognized as being gentle. It’s a nice trait. “Gentle” means you are not bombastic, not mean-spirited, not rude or unkind or harsh.

My goal is to become more gentle in this life.

Various translations make this “kindness” and “goodness.” Same difference, I suppose, although there is something about “gentleness” that weighs heavily on my mind.

Did you hear about the preacher who was protesting a “gay and lesbian pride” march winding its way through the French Quarter? According to the reports, the minister was preaching to the participants in harsh and condemning tones. At one point, a woman decided that this angry man of God (we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt) needed a hug. So, she stepped out of the crowd, walked over to him, and kissed him.

He has filed charges against her. Accuses her of assault.

On my Facebook page, I pointed out that if that preacher doesn’t know the difference in a kiss and an assault, he has lots of problems. Within hours, I had fifty comments. Some took me to task for my levity, some pointed out that if the woman was HIV positive and had some kind of openness on her mouth, she could infect him. Others wanted to weigh in on the homosexual issue.

My concern was lost in the uproar. I was wishing the preacher had been gentler, kinder, nicer.

If the fruit of the Spirit is gentleness–and it is–then is it not true that whenever a follower of Jesus is anything but gentle and kind, we may conclude from their actions that they are not Spirit-filled?

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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

John Cameron Swayze crowned a long career in news and television work with a series of commercials he did for Timex watches. After subjecting a wristwatch to brutal treatment, he would retrieve it (from the hole in which it had been buried, the building they had just blown up, whatever), hold it up to the camera, and observe, “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

That’s you. That’s me. That’s the disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we do it right.

The Lord told His followers that as a result of their identification with Him they were most definitely going to “take a licking.” In one passage, for instance, where we are commanded to love our enemies, Jesus said we can expect to be hated, cursed, threatened, and spitefully used. If we are struck on the cheek–that sounds like a licking to me!–we are to turn the other to our assailant. If someone steals our cloak, we are to offer our tunic also. (Luke 6:27-30)

In order to love the person who hits me, hates me, curses me, and forcibly takes what is mine, I am going to be needing one resource that does not come as standard equipment with the human animal: restraint.

The Greek word “makrothumia” is literally “long-tempered.” (makros = long; thumos = temper) Various translations call it longsuffering, as well as forbearance and patience.

Let’s stick with “longsuffering.” That word says it as well as any.

Longsuffering is self-restraint. When being provoked, one does not lose control and dish out the same kind of treatment he/she has received.

Perhaps a good way to emphasize what the word means is by thinking of its opposites. Here is my short list of the reverse image of longsuffering.

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Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. (John 14:27)

My young friend Josh Woo is visiting his parents’ homeland of Korea while on summer vacation from his studies at the University of Southern California. Today, I read the email he sends occasionally to friends and family. Over the weekend, he visited the DMZ, that “demilitarized zone” marking the border between North and South Korea, part of the settlement which ended the Korean War in 1953. Josh sent several pictures, including one showing a sign with the number: 21,172.

“That’s the number of days since the Korean War ended,” he said. Then he surmised, “This probably means that in their minds that war is not really over.”

I expect he’s right. What we have here is a truce, an agreement to disagree. For each of those thousands of days, relations between these two nations and its people have been strained.

What we do not have is peace.

When I went off to my freshman year of college, that truce was five years old. I recall our history professor, Mae Parrish, lauding the agreement that ended that war, calling it a mark of maturity among nations. Rather than a fight to the death, rather than demanding “unconditional surrender” of one side or the other, the combatants agreed to disagree.

That’s about the best we humans can do sometimes. And, let us be quick to say, it’s a far cry better than slaughtering our young men and women to make a point or have our way.

But let us not call it peace. Peace is something else altogether.

Scripture knows three kinds of peace: with God, within ourselves, and between one another The implications for Christ-disciples are enormous.

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In the 1950s, Frank Lovejoy was a popular movie and television actor. Wonder how someone decided to join those two fruit-of-the-Spirit qualities into one name. And wonder if anyone has tried it with any of the others. Is anyone on the planet named Gentlenessgoodness? Faithfulnesshumility? Probably not.

No question but the first three qualities that make up this Christlikeness–love, joy, and peace–are the best-known and best-loved of the nine. I suspect ten times as many sermons have been preached on these three than all the remaining six combined.

Joy is the flag flown from the castle of your heart to show the king is in residence.

I would have thought C. S. Lewis’ book “Surprised by Joy” dealt with his meeting Joy Davidman Gresham who became his wife. Instead, its subtitle gives it away: “The Shape of My Early Life.” The joy which took this Oxford professor of English literature so by surprise arrived when he put his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He had built up such an army of misconceptions regarding the Christian life that when it arrived, he found it to be nothing like anything he had anticipated. He was unprepared for the joy.

“Joy,” Lewis later wrote, “is the business of Heaven.”

If it is–and who can doubt that, based on so many revelations of Scripture–then, for a believer to experience joy is to have a “foretaste of glory divine,” as the hymn puts it.

In thy presence there is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

Our Lord Jesus said, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10).

Do you find it strange that the one described in prophecy as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) would devote so much attention to making sure His followers experienced joy in a full and permanent way?

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…. (Galatians 5:22)

Recently in a McComb, Mississippi, coffee shop, a lady whom I had just sketched felt she had to tell my pastor friend and I about her switch to another religious system from the Baptist church of her youth. She said, “Every Sunday the priest preaches about love. No matter what the sermon is on, he manages to mention it in some way.”

We said nothing. And even though I know better, what I felt was, “Oh, great. He mentions love. Well lah-de-dah.” You’ll be glad to know I did not speak that. I’m glad to know I instantly rebuked myself for even thinking it.

The simple fact of the matter is that love is a biggie. Love is the very nature of God, we’re told in I John 4:16. Anyone who takes God seriously is not allowed to cavalierly dismiss the subject as unworthy of their attention.

No New Testament writing is so saturated with love more than the First Epistle of John. It is no stretch to say that those who know the Lord Jesus Christ will themselves be saturated with love.

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