By Mark A. Horne
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23
This week we embark on the descent of our study of the fruit of the Spirit with the first of the last triad of gifts, faith. One may remember when we began this study, we mentioned that the gifts of the fruit can be nicely “packaged” in groups of three. Lange reminds us, “Nevertheless some sort of order may be observed. The catalogue falls into three groups of three each. The first of these comprises Christian habits of mind…. The second gives special qualities affecting man’s intercourse with his neighbor…. The third, again general in character like the first, exhibits the principles that guides a Christian’s conduct.”[1] So we might ask, with this idea in mind that the last three gifts may fall under the category of conduct, what does faith have to explicitly do with conduct? This is where I think Hendriksen helps us out.
“Finally, the apostle mentions the three graces that conclude the entire summary. First is faithfulness. The word that is used in the original is often properly rendered faith. However, here occurring after “kindness” and “goodness,” the rendering “faithfulness” would seem to strike a more consonant harmony. It means loyalty, fidelity.”[2]
~ William Hindriksen
We should explore this definition a little more. The word Paul uses here in the Greek is pistis. As used in Scripture, it usually refers to one’s belief or faith in God, in His Son, and in His Gospel by which one is saved through grace. In Ephesians 2:8-9 Paul uses this same word this way, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” However, we need to make a note about context. The pistis that Paul is describing in the Ephesians passage is not the faith that one has in and of himself. Rather, it is a faith given to him or her by God in order to believe, to be redeemed, to be saved. The person is a “new creature” with a regenerated heart. Therefore, this fruit in man is predicated on the truth about God – His faithfulness.
One of my favorite stories and good illustration of what this kind of faith is comes from my favorite missionary. When John Paton was translating the Scripture for the South Sea islanders, he was unable to find a word in their vocabulary for the concept of believing, trusting, or having faith. He had no idea how he would convey that to them. One day while he was in his hut translating, a native came running up the stairs into Paton’s study and flopped in a chair, exhausted. He said to Paton, “It’s so good to rest my whole weight in this chair.” John Paton had his word: faith is resting your whole weight on God. That word went into the translation of their New Testament and helped bring that civilization of natives to Christ. Believing is putting your whole weight on God. If God said it, then it’s true, and we’re to believe it.
So, when a believer manifests the Ephesians 2:8-9 character in a Galatians 5:22 way – this fruit of the spirit, this trait then affects interpersonal relationships, he or she is becoming a “partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), acting in godliness or Christlikeness. Even as a child exhibits family resemblances, loyalty, trustworthiness and fidelity; a believer presents to others an accurate (Spirit empowered) manifestation of the unseen God (Mt 5:16).
In a word this component of the fruit of the Spirit describes one’s trustworthiness, loyalty, reliability, adherence, constancy, dependability, devotedness. Another synonym is the word fidelity (from Latin fides = faith, fidere = to trust). This is strict, careful, continuing and exact observance of duty, or performance of obligations.[3] Barclay even picks up on this idea of fidelity when he states, “this word is common in secular Greek for trustworthiness. It is the characteristic of the man who is reliable.”[4]
The person with this quality keeps his word, his promises, and his vows. This sense is conveyed in Titus 2 where Paul is speaking of believing slaves as “not pilfering, but showing all good faith (Titus 2:10KJV = fidelity) that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.”
Jesus castigated the Pharisees for their lack of this attribute “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (pistis); but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others” (Mt 23:23). God looks for faithfulness among the children of men and grants the seed of it to His own people.
Again, Hendriksen gives us some insight. “Since in this very letter Paul complains about the lack of loyalty toward himself which had become evident in the conduct of many of the Galatians (4:16), we can see that mentioning this virtue was definitely in order.”[5]
However, Paul was never one to seek position or be in the spotlight. Paul always turned the spotlight on Jesus. For Paul, it was not so much disloyalty to himself as to the gospel, to God, and to his Savior that was lacking among the Galatians (1:6-9; 3:1; 5:7). Sanderson gives us some understanding concerning this manifestation of the fruit of the spirit. He states, “In fact, we may say that without faithfulness we cannot be called children of God. David describes the citizen of Zion in Psalm 15, ‘He speaks the truth in his heart…. He swears to his own hurt and changes not.’ The faithfulness God has worked in His children is something of which the world knows nothing.”[6]
Therefore, faithfulness to God and to His will is the virtue which Paul is commending as a fruit of the Spirit. This does not exclude but includes loyalty toward others.[7] Witherington puts it like this, “In a list such as this pistis in all likelihood does not refer to faith, but rather to faithfulness, and so it is once again an attribute of God (Ro 3:3) now predicated of the believer. More importantly for our discussion, Paul sees it as the paradigmatic term to describe the self-giving action of Christ, in particular referring to his voluntary surrender to death on the cross in obedience to God’s will and plan. The faithfulness of Christ is to be likewise mirrored by Christians. This term in Greek literature refers to trustworthiness, a person who acts in good faith, and it is perhaps likely that the Gentile Galatians would hear some of these sorts of overtones here, especially in view of the two terms which follow this one and conclude the list.”[8]
Timothy is a good example for us. When Paul was in prison, he desired that the church in Philippi would have someone to minister to them and convey their testimony to him accurately (Phil 2:19ff). Paul decided that Timothy should and would be the one to carry out this task. Timothy would be genuinely faithful to this church of new believers. He would love them, hear their problems and bear their burdens.[9]
Our faithfulness should not be an outward-only show, but an inside virtue that exudes towards others, because the object of the apostle is not to speak of the feelings which we have towards God, so much as to illustrate the influences of the Spirit in directing and controlling our feelings towards men. A true believer is a person who is faithful. The Christian is faithful as a man or woman; faithful as a neighbor, friend, father, husband, wife, son, daughter. He or she is faithful to one’s contracts; faithful to one’s promises. No person can be a Christian who is not thus faithful; and all pretensions to being under the influences of the Spirit, when such fidelity does not exist, are really downright deceitful.
Also, we should not allow circumstances to keep us from our determination to be a blessing to others. In our faithfulness we should reach out to others, and like Timothy, have a genuine concern for their welfare. Above all, our faithfulness should not rest on another’s faithfulness. In other words, we should not stop being faithful when someone isn’t faithful to us. When our faithfulness, our pisits, is a fruit empowered by the Holy Spirit then we have a reserve that continues long after others let us down.[10] The ability to serve God faithfully through the years and through the temptations of life is not something we achieve by some innate will within the person. Like all of the others we have studied, it comes from the Spirit.
[1] Lange, John P. Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal & Homiletical. Translated from German by Philip Schaff. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968, p. 139.
[2] Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001, pp. 225.
[3] Hurt, Bruce. https://www.preceptaustin.org/galatians_522
[4] Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Pres.
[5] Hendriksen.
[6] Sanderson, John W. The Fruit of the Spirit: A Study Guide. Philipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1985, p. 120.
[7] Hendriksen.
[8] Witherington III, Ben. Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
[9] Sanderson.
[10] Ibid, p 121.
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