What is Spiritual Fruit?
By Elisa Morgan
You’re in the produce section of your neighborhood grocery store. Just for a minute, lay your list aside and look. In bins and boxes, piled high, stacked neatly, arranged in alternating bands of color, are fruits of every imaginable flavor and type. Focus on the fruit.
Apples mirror your reflection in their polished surface. Within their crunchy fruit, their seeds make a star-shaped design when cut in half horizontally. Grapefruit exude a tangy, sweet aroma, their skin thick and spongy. Bananas perch delicately, bunched by fives and sixes, yellow skin dotted with brown sage spots. Strawberries wear their seeds as a cloak. Pineapples guard their syrupy sweetness with a prickly exterior. Coconuts challenge any fruit eater to break through their barrier to get to the good stuff.
Fruit. Varieties of smells and shapes and sizes. All nutritious. All sweet. Each distinct. Each unique.
Fruit is the result of growth. It’s the evidence that a plant or a vine or a tree has been rooted and established, fed and nurtured, watered and staked and pruned to the point of reproducing. Spiritual fruit is what results in our lives when we root ourselves in a relationship with God. When we live a life connected like this with God, He grows His nature in who we are and fruit results. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Consider the opposite for a moment. In the New Testament, the book of Galatians lists certain qualities resulting from a life disconnected from God. The writer, a follower of God named Paul, lists putrid produce like “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, and…orgies,” (Galatians 5:19-21). Not too pretty! Not what we’d pinch and smell and select to take home to The Fam for the week! As Paul says, they are “obvious,” (vs. 19) and this list is just illustrative and not even complete (vs. 21). These characteristics result from a life lived on our own, separate from God and stuck with only the best we can be.
Ah, but then Paul describes the results of a life lived in connection with God, a life lived in a healthy direction, a life that makes a difference today for tomorrow. A fruitful life. The fruit of the Spirit is the produce of the Spirit, “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control,” (verses 22-23). Here is attractive, appealing fruit we want in our lives, we welcome into the lives of our children and grandchildren and we desire in the lives of those in our world.
The fruit of the Spirit are those God-like qualities that make us look like Him. Rather than “doing” words, they are “being words.” They are His nature exhibited in our personalities. When we plant ourselves in a relationship with Jesus, day in and day out, the result of that relationship is the fruit of His characteristics in us. The fruit of the Spirit is what we look like when we’re like Jesus.
For most of us, such a definition can be unsettling. Looking and acting like Jesus? That might be a very good thing…but would our own character traits fade away? Would God replace the “me” we know with some saint-like replica that more closely resembles what we believe Jesus to be? Our edgy enthusiasm tamed to a controlled warmth. Our tough determinism melted to a driven discipline. We picture a robot-like being – only holier. We pull back and wonder, will we even recognize ourselves if we live such a fruit-filled life? The question haunts, will I still be me?
Remember, the fruit of the Spirit is not about being nice. The fruit of the Spirit is indeed God’s characteristics. But it is God’s characteristics exhibited in our own unique personalities. Being like Jesus means showing these spirit fruits – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control – as expressed in our own personalities.
“Peace” in your own skin might look like a calm version of a caffeine addict, whereas in the skin of your friend it may look more like a way laid-back chill. “Joy” might appear as stillness in you but more like a whooped-up party in your sister.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. These are the fruit of the Spirit. These are God’s qualities exhibited in our personalities. These are what we look like when we look like God.
Excerpt from Fruitful Living: Growing a Life that Matters, by Elisa Morgan. Copyright 2025, Our Daily Bread Publishing
Elisa Morgan's latest book is Fruitful Living. She is the cohost of the podcast, God Hears Her. She is also the cohost of Discover the Word and contributor to Our Daily Bread. Her other books include Christmas Changes Everything, You are Not Alone, When We Pray Like Jesus, Hello, Beauty Full, and The Beauty of Broken. Connect with Elisa @elisamorganauthor on Facebook and Instagram.
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