Fruits of the Spirit: Galatians 5:22-23

Here is the verse people are searching for, in the three translations this site quotes. The King James Version, first published in 1611: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

The American Standard Version of 1901: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law." The World English Bible: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

The verse break splits the list. Verse 22 runs from love to faith, and verse 23 holds the last two items and the closing clause, so a reference to 5:22 alone gets you seven of the nine. The capital M on Meekness in the King James marks where verse 23 begins, and this page keeps it as printed.

The nine Greek nouns, in order: agape, chara, eirene, makrothumia, chrestotes, agathosune, pistis, prautes, enkrateia. All three translations follow that order one for one. Where the English differs between them, the Greek underneath is the same word in the same position.

The Greek of verse 22 opens ho de karpos tou pneumatos estin. Karpos, fruit, is a singular noun. Strong's gives its basic sense as fruit, and the NAS Exhaustive Concordance on the same Bible Hub page counts it rendered crop five times in the NASB, which is a useful picture: one harvest with several kinds of produce in it.

Three verses earlier the noun runs the other way. Verse 19 begins "Now the works of the flesh are manifest" in the King James, and the Greek there is ta erga, works, plural. The verb is estin in both verses, because Greek pairs a neuter plural subject with a singular verb, so the contrast sits in the nouns. Read side by side, one list is a set of separate deeds and the other is a single fruit. The letter never comments on the switch, so a sermon that builds a large doctrine on it is offering an interpretation.

The Latin keeps the singular as well. The traditional Vulgate text of the verse begins Fructus autem Spiritus est, and est is singular. Thomas Aquinas, who taught the twelve-item count, answered an objection based on Romans 6:22, which speaks of one fruit, by calling fruit "generically one, though divided into many species" which are spoken of as so many fruits. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the plural, which fits Aquinas's way of counting.

So is it fruit or fruits? Fruit is the word in Galatians 5:22 in every translation on this page. Fruits is a fair English way to talk about the items one at a time, and the King James uses the plural elsewhere: "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them" in Matthew 7:20, and "the fruits of righteousness" in Philippians 1:11. In that second verse the Byzantine and Textus Receptus Greek editions print a plural and the Nestle, Westcott and Hort, and SBL editions print a singular, so even the plural has a manuscript story.

This is the live disagreement, and each side has a text in hand. Bible Hub prints nine Greek editions of Galatians 5:22-23, from the 1550 Stephanus Textus Receptus to the 2010 SBL Greek New Testament, and every one carries the same nine nouns. Modern Bibles translate from that Greek, Catholic ones included. The New American Bible Revised Edition on the website of the United States bishops prints nine, and so does the Nova Vulgata, the revised Latin Bible the Holy See promulgated in 1979.

The traditional Latin Vulgate reads differently: caritas, gaudium, pax, patientia, benignitas, bonitas, longanimitas, mansuetudo, fides, modestia, continentia, castitas. That is twelve. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, at paragraph 1832, says "the tradition of the Church lists twelve of them" and footnotes Galatians 5:22-23 in the Vulgate. Its English renders the twelve as charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity.

Set the two lists side by side and the extra three are easy to find. The Greek has one word, makrothumia, where the Latin has two words for a kind of patience, patientia and longanimitas, which the Catechism's English renders as patience and generosity. The Latin also carries modestia and castitas, modesty and chastity, which have no separate noun in any of the Greek editions Bible Hub prints. The Catechism presents the twelve as the Church's tradition and makes no claim about the Greek.

Aquinas defended the twelve in the Summa Theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, question 70, article 3. He suggested a link between the number and Revelation 22:2, where the tree of life "bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month" in the King James wording. Then he gave each fruit a place in an ordered account of how a person stands toward themselves, toward a neighbor, and toward the things below them.

In the same article he quoted Augustine, and the quotation cuts across both counts. Augustine, commenting on these verses, said the Apostle "had no intention of teaching us how many" there are, only that the works of the flesh should be avoided and the fruit sought. Aquinas, while defending twelve, conceded on that basis that more or fewer fruits might have been mentioned.

Line the three translations up by position and one word moves. In the King James, gentleness is the fifth item, and it translates chrestotes. In the World English Bible, gentleness is the eighth item, and it translates prautes, the word the King James and the American Standard both render meekness. Compare Bibles by English words alone and the lists seem to agree on gentleness. They agree on the word and disagree on which fruit it names.

Chrestotes, the fifth item, is kindness in the American Standard and the World English Bible. Wikipedia's article on the fruit of the Holy Spirit notes that old wine was called chrestos in Greek, meaning mellow or smooth. Prautes, the eighth, is mansuetudo in the Latin Aquinas read. He tied it to bearing a neighbor's wrongs with equanimity and said that meekness curbs anger.

Pistis, the seventh, is faith in the King James and the World English Bible and faithfulness in the American Standard. The same Wikipedia article notes that the word describes both people who are trustworthy and people who believe. In a list about how people treat each other, faithfulness is a defensible choice, and Aquinas made the same move centuries earlier, reading fides first as fidelity toward a neighbor and only then as belief in God.

Enkrateia, the ninth, is temperance in the King James. Temperance also became the name of the movement against alcohol, which can mislead a reader today. The Greek word means mastery of yourself in general, and the American Standard and the World English Bible both print self-control. The fourth item, longsuffering in two translations and patience in the third, is makrothumia, a word the Wikipedia article describes as the restraint of someone who could take revenge and does not.

The letter is addressed "unto the churches of Galatia" at Galatians 1:2 in the King James, and chapter 5 argues against its readers being circumcised to secure their standing. The King James wording: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." A few verses later the chapter names what does count: "faith which worketh by love."

Then comes the turn that sets up the fruit. The King James, verses 13 to 15: "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." The warning about biting suggests the argument had already turned personal.

Verses 16 to 21 set flesh against Spirit and list the works of the flesh. The list is heavily social. In the King James, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, and envyings sit beside the sexual and religious sins. The King James and World English Bible lists open with adultery and the American Standard list does not, which matches a split in the Greek: the Byzantine, 1904 Greek Orthodox, and Textus Receptus columns include the word moicheia, and the critical editions leave it out.

Read in that setting, most of the fruit describes how people treat each other. Love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and meekness all need another person to happen. The chapter closes on the same note, in the King James: "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another." The clause against such there is no law also sounds different once you know the whole letter is an argument about law.

A second verse carries the phrase, and it turns up when you search the King James for it. Ephesians 5:9 reads "(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)" in the King James Version, and the World English Bible agrees: "for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth". The American Standard Version reads "(for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth)".

The difference is one Greek word. Bible Hub prints nine Greek editions of the verse. Pneumatos, Spirit, is the reading in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text, the 1904 Greek Orthodox edition, and the Scrivener and Stephanus editions of the Textus Receptus. The SBL, Nestle, Westcott and Hort, and Tischendorf editions read photos, light. The verse before it tells readers to walk as children of light, so either reading fits the paragraph. The World English Bible sides with the King James on this one.

Whichever reading you follow, Ephesians gives three items where Galatians gives nine. Goodness, agathosune, is the one Greek word the two lists share. When people ask for the fruit of the Spirit Bible verse, they almost always mean Galatians 5:22-23, and Ephesians 5:9 is the useful second witness.

The fruit of the Spirit often gets mixed up with the gifts of the Spirit, and the texts keep them apart. 1 Corinthians 12 lists gifts and stresses that they are distributed: "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit" and on through healing, miracles, prophecy, and tongues, with the Spirit "dividing to every man severally as he will." Different people receive different gifts.

The fruit list has no such division. Galatians 5 addresses the whole congregation, and verse 25 applies it to everyone who claims the Spirit at all: "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." The next chapter of 1 Corinthians makes the link from the other side, saying that prophecy and knowledge without love amount to nothing.

Catholic teaching adds a third category. Paragraph 1831 of the Catechism names seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord, and points to Isaiah 11.

The King James text of Isaiah 11:2 names six, "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD", and Wikipedia's article on the seven gifts explains that the seventh comes from the Greek Septuagint, which renders the first mention of fear of the Lord as godliness. The Catechism calls the gifts permanent dispositions and the fruits perfections the Spirit forms in a person.

The Gospels use the picture of fruit in two ways. In John 15 fruit comes from staying attached to the vine. The King James text of verse 4: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." In Matthew 7 fruit is the evidence you can see from outside, the way to tell a good tree from a corrupt one.

The most common way to use this verse is as a checklist, and it is a hard list to score well on. Nine items, and most people can name the three they are failing this week. The grammar pushes against that use. The subject of the sentence is the fruit of the Spirit, and nothing in verses 22 and 23 is an imperative. The commands in the chapter are about walking by the Spirit, serving one another, and not biting.

Fruit language also takes time for granted. Galatians 6:9 in the King James: "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." A grower who inspects a young tree every morning is measuring the wrong thing. If you want a practical way in, pick one of the nine and watch for it in a single relationship for a month. Patience with one coworker is a specific test, and so is kindness toward one relative.

Some people turn this list on themselves in a way that gets heavy. If reading it leaves you convinced you are rotten, or a church leader has used it to tell you your faith is fake, take that to a person. Call your pastor or priest by name, or a licensed counselor. If you are thinking about harming yourself, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a free, confidential call or text away at 988, at any hour, anywhere in the United States. No church has approved PrayWithJesus.ai, and it has no authority to teach.