The Fruit and the Gifts: What the Spirit Grows and Gives
7 June 2025 · 1 min read · Understanding the Bible
The Spirit's work in believers runs on two tracks: fruit he grows and gifts he gives. Confusing them causes endless trouble; distinguishing them brings health. Fruit — love, joy, peace, longsuffering — is character, grown in everyone. Gifts — teaching, helping, giving, healing — are tools, distributed variously.
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
Gifts: tools for the body
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit — and every distribution is purposeful: the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. Every believer is gifted; no believer has every gift; all gifts exist for the body's building, not the holder's platform.
The Spirit divides to every man severally as he will — comparison and gift-envy quarrel with the Giver's own choices.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Why love sits in the middle
Between Corinthians' two great gift chapters stands the love chapter — deliberately. Gifts without fruit, Paul says, amount to sounding brass: tongues, prophecy, and mountain-moving faith minus charity profit nothing. Fruit is the qualification for wielding gifts safely.
So the order of pursuit: covet earnestly the best gifts, yes — but follow after charity first. Ask the Spirit for both: tools for serving, and the character to carry them.
