Definition
The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) refers to the character-forming outcome of the Holy Spirit’s operation in the believer: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Over against the gifts of the Spirit (charismatic capacities), the fruit represents the lasting, organic ripening of the character of Christ in the believer. Over the relationship between gifts and fruit, the eschatological dimension of the fruit, and the timing of its completion, there exist substantive differences of emphasis in the corpus.
Usage in the Corpus
George Warnock
Warnock gives the fruit of the Spirit a pronounced eschatological loading: it is the ultimate goal of the entire pneumatological program, the harvest for which God waits with great patience. “God says He is waiting for ‘precious fruit’… and has long patience over it till it receive not only the early, but the latter rain. Not only the ‘seed rain’ but the ‘harvest rain.’ Not only for the seed rain of conversion, but also for the harvest rain of the FRUIT.” The eschatological ripening runs from faith (seed) through hope (blade) to love (full corn): “In this realm even the gifts of the Spirit lose their significance, just as the moon loses its brightness in the dawning of the morn. The part gives way to the whole, the seed breaks forth into the blade, the ear, and the full corn. Faith proceeds unto hope, and hope buds forth in Love.” Love as fruit surpasses all gifts (1Cor. 13:10). [Warnock, Evening and Morning, Chs. 2-3 and 5]
Watchman Nee & Witness Lee
Nee/Lee understand the fruit of the Spirit as the organic outcome of contact with the indwelling Spirit — transformation from within, not moral effort. The Holy Spirit fulfills three functions that together produce the fruit: “If we spend the entire day contacting this living Person in the wonderful Holy Spirit, three things will happen inwardly. First, the life-giving Spirit will impart life (2Cor. 3:6)… Next, the Holy Spirit will continually liberate us (2Cor. 3:17). And finally: ‘But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit’ (2Cor. 3:18).” Transformation is the third and highest fruit-dimension. [Nee/Lee, The Economy of God, Ch. 2]
Stephen Jones
Jones connects the fruit of the Spirit typologically to the wheat-harvest: the Church as the second group (after the barley-firstfruits) that is sanctified through the Pentecostal experience and bears fruit. The Manchild as the corporate fruit of the Spirit is the eschatological apex: “The Holy Spirit must overshadow our souls and beget Christ within us. In the same manner as the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, a virgin, and she received a Son who was called Christ.” Bearing fruit is for Jones the ripening process whereby the Spirit forms Christ in the overcomers until they bear the fullness, and then births the mature, corporate Christ — the Manchild — into the world. [Jones, The Laws of the Second Coming, Ch. 14]