The earliest image of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is His “hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The creation account includes the Holy Spirit’s role in bringing order and flourishing through His presence. The Spirit is found in the beginning “brooding . . . with bright wings.”1 Where tumultuous depths once dominated the landscape, now, on account of the Spirit’s working and God’s almighty word, there flows tranquil, life-giving water (see Ps. 104:10–13).
It is fitting that in the prophecies of the new creation and of the coming day of salvation, we learn that the Spirit will have a transformative role in this wondrous work. Whereas the people of God were once addressed as an “afflicted one, storm-tossed” (Isa. 54:11), when “the Spirit is poured upon us from on high,” the “effect of righteousness will be peace” (Isa. 32:15, 17). This is summed up in the promise, “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river” (Isa. 66:12, emphasis added). Just as in the record of the first creation, the Spirit in the renovated creation calms raging seas—that is, the Spirit descends upon the nations formerly at war with God, and from them makes a sea of shalom (“peace”).
Upon the firm grounding of the Scriptures, the Apostle Paul builds his case that the fruit of the Spirit includes peace. In striking contrast to the “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19–21), many of which include attributes of hostility and antagonism, the believer produces fruit that contributes to the binding together of the members of the body. Peace is both an internal characteristic of those who are in Christ and one that pertains to the external good of those who are “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
In our cultural environment of turbo-charged individualism, it is worth highlighting that the bulk of the characteristics the Apostle outlines in Galatians 5:22–23 are communally focused and exhibited. In the subsequent verses, Paul consistently uses plural modifiers to refer to believers: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus,” “If we live by the Spirit,” “Let us not become conceited,” (Gal. 5:24–26, emphasis added). Thus, I maintain it is impossible to exercise the gifts of “love, joy, peace . . . ” if we isolate ourselves from the communion of saints.
Put another way, the soil in which the Spirit produces His fruit is both in the inner person (our hearts) as well as in the visible body (the church). Notably, Paul will pick up the fruit metaphor in connection with the Spirit in the next chapter by exhorting the Galatians to sow to the Spirit (Gal. 6:8). This “doing good” in the realm of the Spirit is focused especially toward those “who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:9, 10). The yield and the harvest from the Spirit is not to be separated from our sowing to the Spirit, and neither can we sever the tie between what the Spirit works within us and its demonstrable results in the life of the saints around us.
Thus, the fruit of peace is much more than just a feeling. Deeper than a sensation and higher than mere awareness, the peace of Galatians 5:22 is about the life of the members of the new society that is the church. Peace is defined by the wholistic and integrated character of the body of Christ, “when each part is working properly” (Eph. 4:16). “One-anothering” is an essential part of the recipe. This shalom is on the other side of the canyon from the attributes of conceit, provocation, and envy (Gal. 5:26). It is marked instead by gentleness, watchfulness, and the readiness and responsibility to bear one another’s burdens (see Gal. 6:1–2).
Like an embassy in a country riven by strife, the church exists as a testimony to the presence of God’s mercy and peace (Gal. 6:16) in the midst of the present evil age (Gal. 1:4). But rather than being a castle where the drawbridge is closed and a large and impassible moat surrounds the residence, the body of Christ lives with an open gate, with the only condition of entry being belonging to Christ by faith (Gal. 3:29). As those baptized into Christ, we are made citizens of the kingdom ruled by the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).
All the bounty the Spirit provides is by virtue of uniting us to Christ. Put differently, there are no gifts the Spirit bestows upon us as members of the body that do not originally reside in the Head, the Lord Jesus. Christ is the vine in whom the branches are made peaceable (James 3:17) and peacemakers (Matt. 5:9). The church can be rightly seen as the garden that God has planted through the gospel, with every plant and tree deriving vitality and growth from Christ who is the root system. Paul, in writing to the Galatian church, urges them to hold fast to Christ, rejecting any fleshly forms of “Miracle Grow” or otherwise, because the goal of his ministry is Christ formed within them (Gal. 4:19). The fruit of peace is to be thought of as both gift and goal for those who have received the Spirit of Christ.
. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur.”↩
Ligonier Ministries