Appendix G
The Nine Powers of God, the Spirit, and the Spirit-Controlled Christian
Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Meekness, & Self-control
Galatians 5:22-23
In Galatians chapter 5 the Apostle Paul described the moral powers and attributes of God the Spirit. By this he also described the character of God and the powers available to the Christian. He wrote:
The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23).
Understanding these attributes is essential to understanding Christianity. Again, they are first and foremost the character of God and how He loves you. And they are a central theme of the Christian Essential studies. Accordingly, you must have your FOUNDATIONS and FAITH in these nine attributes of God in order to understand His love for you. Secondly, your experience of these powers of the Holy Spirit are the best measure of your Christian maturity and FREEDOM from the power of sin. Thirdly, these powers of the Holy Spirit are the essence of what Christ commands and the FRUIT we seek in serving God. Finally, exercising these powers is the most important thing for having godly and happy FAMILIES.
Unfortunately, because these powers and virtues are so absent in our world, and even the lives of Christians, many do not understand what they are. We attempt here to define them in a helpful way.
Love
“Love” is the unconditional power to be kind and patient with people. “Kindness” is the initiating part of love that serves the needs of others. “Patience” is the reactive part of love that responds with compassion to those who do not love you. Understand that love begins when liking ends. It is easy to love those who are attractive and nice to you. But how do you treat people who do not love you? Real love begins when liking ends. And this is a power that God has given you.
Love’s opposites are selfishness and anger. Selfishness is a focus on your own needs and wants instead of trusting God with these things as you love others. Anger is the selfish response to someone not fulfilling your needs or desires. Selfishness is as pervasive in humanity as the law of gravity. But God’s Spirit can miraculously enable you to defy the spiritual and emotional gravity of sin and “fly” above it all no matter what happens.
In the time and place that Christianity began, Greek was the language of the people. The Greek language had four nouns for love: erōs, philia, storgē, and agapē. Erōs is romantic, sexual love between a man and woman based on physical attraction. Philia is a warm, brotherly love between friends, based on mutual interests. Storgē is a natural love, especially between parents and children. Agapē is unconditional love, based on a decision made by the lover, and having nothing to do with the attributes of the one loved, even to the point of loving those who are otherwise repulsive.
It is clear that neither sexual, parental, nor friendship love is the kind of love that is the essence of Christianity. While these are by far the most common ideas of love in both the ancient and modern world, it is unconditional agapē that the early Christians virtually invented in order to describe a love that is different than all other loves.
Because of the supernatural and divine nature of agapē, it should not surprise us that the noun agapē was never used in any classical Greek literature that we know of before the NT. NT scholar Leon Morris wrote:
Why should the Christians use what was for all intents and purposes a new word for love? Because they had a new idea about the essential meaning of love. . . The older words were not suitable vehicles for conveying the new meaning.
The idea of unconditional and unwavering love was never invented by humans, but only became known through divine revelation. Therefore, its ultimate source is “God” who “is love [agapē]” (1 John 4:8). Agapē is exclusively a Christian word because it is an exclusive attribute of the Christian God and those He indwells. Accordingly, while friendship love (philia and phileō) is used about 30 times in the NT, forms of agapē are used over 250 times by NT writers.
Agapē love is different from all the others because it is unconditional, and therefore, unfailing love (cf. 1 Cor 13:7). Erōs, philia, and storgē all require a natural attraction based on the attributes of the person being loved. And because these things can change, these loves are fickle and unreliable. Agapē is sacrificial, undeserved, and unwavering love because it is unconditional love. Paul describes it well when he writes:
When we were utterly helpless, Christ came and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Rom 5:6-8)
God gave you His most when you deserved it the least. That is agapē.
Imagine the most disgusting and dangerous thing imaginable, and then imagine what it would take for you to hug it, kiss it, or eat it, and you are just beginning to imagine what agapē is. Disgusting and dangerous is precisely and naturally what sinners are to God. His natural disgust for them is demonstrated by His current wrath upon them (cf. Ps 5:4-5; 11:5; Eph 2:3), and His future eternal punishment of them in Hell. And sinners were dangerous to God the Son, some of whom personally killed Him, and all of whom ultimately put Him on the cross. Agapē overcomes disgust and danger, setting aside likes and even one’s life.
Perhaps an illustration of agapē, no matter how inadequate, will help. It is natural for the positive and negative poles of a magnet to bond together. Likewise, when a person finds in another person what they want, whether it be the body of a lover, the companionship of a friend, the security of a parent, or the sense of significance that comes from having a child, certain kinds of love occur. But what if the negative poles of two magnets are directed toward one another? Or a person is no longer attractive or nice to another? They naturally and even rather violently repel each other. And the only thing that will bring them together is a force more powerful than the natural resistance occurring.
Agapē is such a force. It is not a natural love, but a supernatural one, overcoming the natural forces that pull two people apart. Whereas all other loves are founded on and limited to liking someone, agapē love does not even begin until liking ends. Love is easier if you like someone, but liking someone is not a necessary ingredient in the unconditional love of agapē.
This is why agapē is the only kind of love that you can have for your enemies. You will not like your enemies and those who hate you. But God commands you to love them. Agapē is the first kind of love that God had to have for you to even initiate a relationship with you. Relatively weak, ignorant, selfish, sinful, and yet proud humans, are not naturally attractive to an almighty, all-knowing, perfect God. It is only because of the force of God’s agapē that you can be brought together with Him at all.
Joy (Gr. chara)
“Joy” is the unconditional power to be cheerful in every circumstance. It is the ability to “rejoice always” (1 Thess 5:16 NIV). Joy has the amazing ability to be present even in the midst of sadness or grief. So even in the death of a loved one you need not “grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13 NIV), because that hope gives us joy.
It is helpful to distinguish joy from happiness. Joy is unconditional based on the unchanging promises and love of God. Happiness is conditional based on your current circumstances. Accordingly, God does not expect you to be happy at a friend’s funeral, or anything else that should make you sad. But He does expect you to always have joy no matter what.
Joy’s opposites are complaining, discouragement, and even depression. Because through the Spirit you have the power of joy, God says: “Do everything without complaining” (Phil 2:14). That is power! The lack of joy in your life reveals the lack of the Spirit’s control in your life perhaps more than anything else. How often do you complain and feel “down”? Notice that if the Holy Spirit is controlling you, you will be smiling!
Joy is not only a power of the Christian controlled by the Holy Spirit, but it is an attribute of God. Of course He is sad and even mad about all kinds of things on Earth. But He does not allow those things to steal His joy. God has constant joy about your life. He is grieved about sinful actions because they hurt your life (cf. Eph 4:30). But He never forgets all the ways you have loved and obeyed Him and that you will be perfect and with Him for all eternity. What God said to His OT people He would say to you: “The Lord your God is living among you. . . He will take delight in you with gladness. . . He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. (Zeph 3:17).
Peace (Gr. eirēnē)
“Peace” is the unconditional power to be calm in every circumstance. The Holy Spirit enables you to have “the peace that comes from Christ rule in your heart” (Col 3:15) no matter what is happening to you, or around you. That is a lot of power!
The opposite of “peace” is worry. This is the most common sin in Christians’ lives. It is a rejection of God’s most repeated command in Scripture: “Do not be afraid.” You can “be angry yet do not sin (Eph 4:26). You can lust and not sin (cf. Song of Solomon). But God commands you: “Do not worry about anything . . . experience God’s peace” (Phil 4:6-7).
God always has peace, which is why He is repeatedly called “the God of peace” in the NT. But this was not always true. In the OT God experienced a great deal of anguish over the sins of His people. But now, “since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Christ’s death on the cross not only gave you peace with God, but gave God peace about you.
In addition, God has peace about your life because He is never worried about anything in your life including: you losing your job, getting sick, suffering, and even dying. And He certainly isn’t worried about all the small stuff that seems so big to us.
Why is God never worried about anything in your life? Because He will never allow anything to happen in your life that He cannot “work together for the good” (Rom 8:28). Everything that happens in your life can make you more like Christ, teach you about God’s love, or bring you great reward for all eternity if you trust and obey God. This why you can always experience the unconditional power of peace through the Spirit of God.
Patience (Gr. makrothymia)
“Patience” is the unconditional power to endure the sins of others with compassion. It is the responding part of love toward those who are not loving you. Sin against you costs you something and brings suffering into your life. Patience is enduring the cost and suffering of the sins of others. Which is why the best one-word definition for patience is “long-suffering.”
But the suffering of patience is done with compassion. An understanding that the person sinning against you is usually doing the best they can and are in some kind of emotional pain themselves. “Hurting people hurt people.” And that is true of the people who hurt you.
The only way you can be patient is to immediately forgive someone. Forgiveness is: trusting God to give you what someone has cost you. If you trust God to give you all the respect, protection, and love you need, then you will not need them from others. Nor will you hold it against them when they do not give them. Only by trusting God for these things can you patiently endure the cost and suffering that comes with the sins of others. And how do you know you have fully forgiven someone? You have the compassion of patience for them.
Because patience is being “long-tempered,” its opposite is being “short tempered” and angry. Angry about the respect, comfort, goal, hope, peace, or pleasure that someone cost you because of their selfishness or sin. But no one can make you angry. You let people make you angry because you do not forgive them by trusting God to give you what someone has cost you.
Patience is of course a primary and wonderful power of God. He endures the suffering you cause in the lives of others because of your sin. Paul said Christ displayed His “immense patience” toward him as the worst of sinners (1 Tim 1:16). The Greek words used here literally mean “total patience.” God has “total patience” for you too. And He does this with compassion because He has completely forgiven you and knows you really hate sin and are doing the best you can.
Kindness (Gr. chrēstotēs) & Goodness (Gr. agathōsynē)
These two virtues are practically the same. Kindness is the unconditional desire and power to bless others. In fact, the Greek word chrēstotēs literally means to “be useful.” Agathōsynē simply means a desire to do good to others. Kindness is the initiating part of love that seeks to find and serve needs in the lives of others regardless of who they are or what they have done. Jesus spoke of the supernatural nature of kindness and its unconditional desire to bless others when He said:
“Love your enemies! . . . In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. . . If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matt 5:43-48).
“What is desirable in a man is his kindness” (Prov 19:22 NASB). Kindness is living to bless and serve the needs of others. And this is why kind people have a lot of friends.
The absence of kindness is apathy. A lack of concern for the needs of others. An unkind person is not being useful, or a blessing to anyone. Which is why they have few if any friends.
God of course is kind and good. It was His kindness that concerned Him about your need, prompted Him to meet that need by sending His Son, and initiated a friendship with you. And He continues to be constantly seeking how He can bless you and be good to you. It is God’s unconditional kindness, goodness, and blessing that leads us to constant gratitude.
Faithfulness (Gr. pistis)
Faithfulness is unconditional commitment to a person or task. It is that part of “Love [that] never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1 Cor 13:7). The sin of people tempts you to give up on them. The difficulties of goals tempts you to give up on them. The power of faithfulness enables you to “stick with” people or tasks no matter what else happens. Loyal, dependable people are faithful.
The opposite of being a faithful person is giving up on people and goals. Of course there are times to end or pull back on a relationship. There are goals that turn out to be unwise. But there are people and tasks that God wants you to be unconditionally committed to, and faithfulness is the supernatural power from the Holy Spirit to do that.
Obviously, “God is faithful” (1 Cor 1:9). When He promises something, He always does it. He never gives up on anyone He loves and never gives up on anything He decides to do. He never breaks promises. The Bible says, “God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through? (Num 23:19). The answer is “never.”
Meekness (Gr. prautēs)
Meekness is the unconditional gentleness that comes from humility. Both prautēs in the Greek and meekness in English are difficult to define. Vine’s Greek Dictionary states regarding prautēs:
The meaning of prautēs is not readily expressed in English, for the terms meekness and mildness commonly used, suggest weakness, whereas prautēs does nothing of the kind. Nevertheless, it is difficult to find a rendering less open to objection than “meekness.”
“Gentleness” has been suggested, but prautēs describes a condition of mind. As “gentleness” is appropriate rather to actions, this word is no better.
It must be clearly understood that the meekness manifested by the Lord and commended to the believer is the fruit of power. The assumption is that when a man is meek it is because he cannot help himself. But the Lord was “meek” because he had the infinite resources of God at his command.
Meekness is the unconditional gentleness that comes from humility. Humility is an essential part of prautēs. Christian humility is knowing you are great because of God. Humility comes from having a firm identity in Christ, which is knowing who you are, and what you have, through being a child of God. Therefore, Christian humility is not having a low view of yourself. God is completely humble but be assured He thinks very highly of Himself. Humility is having an accurate view of yourself in relation to God. This results in actually having a very high view of yourself. Therefore, Christian humility is knowing you are great because of God. It is proud people that think they are great apart from God.
Meek people have nothing to prove to anyone. They do not feel the need to overpower other people or force them to do things. Meekness may be best understood by its opposites of being arrogant, harsh, and pushy.
It is amazing that God is meek. Jesus said, “I am humble [praus] and gentle [tapeinos] at heart” (Matt 11:29). And my goodness, if God can be humble and meek, then so can you.
Self-control (Gr. enkrateia)
Self-control is the unconditional power to choose your feelings and actions. This power enables all the other virtues of the Spirit, no matter what is happening. The self-control of the Spirit makes the other powers of the Spirit automatic and effortless.
Before having the Spirit of God, you were a slave to sin (cf. Rom 6:6). But when God came to live inside of you He gave you a power you never had before. The power to choose not to sin. You are not a slave to sin anymore. You have a choice. Through the Spirit you have self-control, the unconditional power to choose your feelings and actions.
The opposite of self-control is sin-control. It is losing control and giving up the power over sin that the Spirit gives you. A lack of the Spirit’s self-control will lead to bondage and addiction to things that the real you hates. This is spiritual defeat.
A lack of self-control results in another level of spirituality that falls short of the spiritual freedom and power the Spirit will give you. This is spiritual fighting. It is experiencing the constant and exhausting struggle to overcome temptation, be committed to spiritual disciplines, and love and serve people and God. It is feeling like you have to force yourself to do these things and you end up doing them in the power of the flesh instead of the Spirit. You do them out of a sense of duty, guilt, or fear rather than joy.
But Scripture says: “The Spirit God gave us . . . gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Tim 1:7 NIV). When the Holy Spirit controls you, His powers are automatic and effortless. There is no need to force yourself to have “love” and “self-discipline.” You just have them and they are a joy.
Self-control is power, and God is, of course, powerful. Because of His own self-control He says: “My decisions will stand. I will do whatever pleases Me” (Isa 46:10). And that is the power that self-control gives you. The power to do what really pleases you which is never sin.
These are the virtues of God and the powers of the Spirit. This is why they are all unconditional and unstoppable by any force, difficulty, or circumstance on Earth. It is because God is these things that He loves you. It because the Spirit lives in you, that they can be your powers when He controls you.
Table of the Character & Powers of God, the Spirit,
& the Spirit-controlled Christian
|
Power |
Definition |
Opposites |
|
Love |
The unconditional power to be kind and patient with people. |
Selfishness |
|
Joy |
The unconditional power to be cheerful in every circumstance. |
Complaining Depression |
|
Peace |
The unconditional power to be calm in every circumstance. |
Worry |
|
Patience |
The unconditional power to endure the sins of others with compassion. |
Anger |
|
Kindness Goodness |
The unconditional desire and power to bless others. |
Apathy |
|
Faithfulness |
Unconditional commitment to a person or task. |
Giving up |
|
Meekness |
The unconditional gentleness that comes from humility. |
Harshness Pride |
|
Self-control |
The unconditional power to choose your feelings and actions. |
Spiritual defeat & fighting |