Fruit of the Spirit, in Colossians.

Paul’s list of the Holy Spirit’s fruit in Galatians is not comprehensive. There are other attitudes, traits, and emotions we ought to see in any Christian who follows the Spirit’s leading. Paul made more than one list. But because he didn’t specifically call the items in these lists “fruit of the Spirit,” we have to deduce they’re fruit.

And it’s pretty easy to make these deductions. Just go poking around his letters for lists of things Christians ought do, and ought never do. As the title of this piece tipped you off, there’s just such a list in his letter to the Colossians.

So put the worldly body parts to death: Porn. Uncleanliness. Obsessions. Evil desires and greed, which is idolatry—because of which, God’s wrath is coming to the sons of disobedience. You once followed it, and lived like that; now get all of them away from you. Like what comes out of your mouth: Anger. Short-temperedness. Evil. Slander. Trash talk. Don’t lie to one another. Get rid of the old human nature, with its doings; put on the new. Be restored in knowledge, with an image and foundation where there’s no Greek or Jew, circumcised or “foreskin,” German or African, slave or freeman. Instead, everyone is all in Christ.

So put it on, like God’s chosen people, holy and beloved, should: Merciful sympathy. Kindness. Unpretentiousness. Gentility. Patience. Mutual support. Showing grace to each other when anyone has a complaint about anyone, just like the Master showed you grace. Be like that.

Above everything love, which connects you completely. Christ’s peace must referee between your hearts, through which he called you into one body. Be thankful!

Christ’s teaching must richly live in you all, in every wise teaching, your warnings, your psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. In grace, sing in your hearts to God. Everything you do, say, or work—everything in Master Jesus’s name—do thanking God the Father through Jesus.

—Paul and Timothy,

A messy list.

We don’t always recognize this as a list of fruit (and a list of works of the flesh) because it’s a messy list. Paul went off on tangents. If you pare down the list, you get this:

Put to death: Porn. Uncleanliness, Obsessions. Evil desires. Greed. Anger. Short-tempered talk. Evil talk. Slanderous talk. Trash talk. Lies. Segregation.

Put on: Merciful sympathy. Kindness. Unpretentiousness. Gentility. Patience. Mutual support. Grace. Love. Peace. Thankfulness. Mindfulness of Christ.

That’s the condensed version. Paul’s list, in Colossians, is the expanded version. He wanted to point out how evil desires and greed are forms of idolatry. He wanted to remind the Colossians this was how they formerly lived—and weren’t to be that way now. He wanted them to stop differentiating themselves by ethnicity, culture, nationality, or status—and since they didn’t have a word for that back then, he had to describe it, whereas we would just call it “bigotry” or “prejudice” or, when put into practice, “segregation.”

We often wanna reduce the fruit of the Spirit to one-word descriptions. Sometimes ’cause it’s easier to remember. Sometimes ’cause it’s easier to redefine—you might remember how many Christians have taken it upon ourselves to teach joy is patience, not happiness, and in so doing cover up the fact they lack it. Well, when all we have is a single-word statement, like “You should have… unpretentiousness,” you can easily redefine that as “humility,” then easily redefine humility (admitting you’re no better than you are) as false humility (pretending you’re worse than you are), and there ya go: Free pass for hypocrisy.

That doesn’t work for Jesus, and shouldn’t work for us. We’re looking at these lists because we want to be fruitful Christians, not because we’re looking for loopholes. So let’s pay attention to what Paul really meant by these statements.

Fruit to put on.

Merciful sympathy (Greek, splángkna oiktirmú/“guts of intestines”). The ancients believed you thought with your heart, and felt with your guts. Different organs were supposedly the source of different feelings—love and anger in the liver, self-control in the kidneys, vengeance in the spleen—although the Jews tended to associate them with more positive emotions than the Greeks. They figured the intestines particularly made them merciful—’cause they might be sympathetic, but not necessarily merciful. We might feel as others are feeling, but not care to do anything about it. Well, that’s not Christian. We’re not meant to be all feeling and no action.

Kindness (khristótita). Kindness is goodness of heart, compassionate generosity, a tendency to treat others well, graciousness. Christians should be the nicest people around.

Unpretentiousness (tapeino-frosýnin/“lowered in one’s understanding”). Often translated “humility,” but humility means we put submission into practice, and take others into consideration. Unpretentiousness means we don’t practice pretense: We don’t presume we’re smarter or better than we are. We don’t walk into a room figuring we’re the smartest one in it. Nor the holiest, nor the most spiritually mature, nor the most deserving of honor. Jesus advised us to take the lowest seat, and let others decide whether we deserve a better one. Not that we always do deserve better—and you’re gonna get really bitter if you’re only faking unpretentiousness—but it gets far more done for the Kingdom when we recognize we don’t have to have the best seats, the nicest titles, the most praise… or the last word.

Gentility (pra’ýtita). Gentility is quiet, friendly behavior; or emotional self-control. Our emotions mustn’t turn on a dime, or go to extremes.

Patience (makrothymían/“long-suffering”). Patience is control of one’s anger, frustration, disappointment, and other hostile emotions. We must never lose our cool.

Mutual support (anexómenoi allílon/“holding up one another”). Christians are far too quick to tear each other down, and it needs to be the other way around. When someone stumbles, we help them up. When someone can’t stand, we lift them up. When someone merits praise, we praise them. Fruitless Christians scratch and bite at one another, but fruitful Christians ask, “How can we help?”

Grace (kharidzómenoi/“giving favor”). Grace is God’s generous, forgiving attitude towards us, and we need to pay it forward, and be gracious to one another like God is gracious towards us. Show it when anyone has a complaint—and Paul doesn’t specify whether the complainer is a Christian or pagan. But considering how we were pagans when God first showed us grace, it absolutely applies to pagans. Grace to them too.

Love (agápin). Love has patience, behaves kindly, practices gentility, doesn’t boast, and all the other things Paul defined it as. And since God is love, it reflects his character—and should reflect the character of his followers—better than anything.

Peace (eiríni). Specifically, Christ’s peace. Peace is knowing our place under God, and submitting to him in the way he wants us to. Paul’s solution to disputes between Christians of different “hearts,” or minds, is simple: We all want to follow Jesus, and he’s infinitely more important than our disputes. For his sake, we take others into consideration, instead of bull-headedly demanding our own way.

Thankfulness (evkháristoi). Christians ought to demonstrate gratitude for the many blessings God gives us. We ought never adopt the attitude, already so common among us, of, “God promised me all these things… so where are they? I want what he’s promised. I claim those promises.” Ever seen a parent tell their child, “You can have a cookie after dinner,” then rescind that cookie after the child behaves horribly at the dinner table? And yet the ill-mannered kid insists, “I want a cookie! You told me I could have a cookie after dinner! You promised!” That’s what Christians look like when we get fixated on God’s promises: Some of them have strings attached, but we indiscriminately assume—and wrongly preach—none of them do. We aren’t thankful for his every blessing; we’re irritated ’cause God isn’t behaving enough like a magic genie. Whereas a fruitful Christian always appreciates everything God benevolently grants us.

Mindfulness of Christ (O lógos tu Khristú enoikeíto en ymín plusíos/“the word of Christ must be housed among you all richly”). This doesn’t just mean, as it’s so often interpreted, that we need to memorize bible verses and quote them all the time. It means everything we do and say must be based on Jesus’s teachings. And richly—it should be everywhere, ridiculously obvious, impossible to miss, and doesn’t even need to be preached aloud: People see it in us. It’s the basis for what we teach, what we sing, what we say, what we do. It’s the basis for life. If you can’t tell a Christian by their lifestyle, that’s a fruitless Christian.

Yep, there’s fruit of the Spirit all over the New Testament. Keep looking for it.