Why Isn’t Hope a Fruit of the Spirit?

The fruit of the Spirit are familiar: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22–23). I doubt Paul intended this list to be exhaustive, but at least two Christian virtues are conspicuous in their absence from this hallowed group: faith and hope.

Given that faith and hope are both brought about by the Spirit and that Paul writes much about these qualities elsewhere, their absence from this list may surprising. In this short post, we’ll explore this mystery.

Looking to Calvin and 1 Corinthians 13

Allow me a slight detour. Most know 1 Corinthians 13 as “the love chapter” from its presence at wedding ceremonies. This chapter ends with sweet words that raise an obvious question.‏

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Why exactly is love greater than faith and hope? The answer can be found in the text, but it is nicely summarized by John Calvin.

For faith does not remain after death, inasmuch as the Apostle elsewhere contrasts it with sight, (2 Corinthians 5:7,) and declares that it remains only so long as we are absent from the Lord. We are now in possession of what is meant by faith in this passage—that knowledge of God and of the divine will, which we obtain by the ministry of the Church; or, if you prefer it, faith universal, and taken in its proper acceptation. Hope is nothing else than perseverance in faith. For when we have once believed the word of God, it remains that we persevere until the accomplishment of these things. Hence, as faith is the mother of hope, so it is kept up by it, so as not to give way. […] Faith and hope belong to a state of imperfection: love will remain even in a state of perfection.

In other words, love is the greatest of this trio because it remains into the fulness of the new creation. We have no need for faith or hope in heaven—these are virtues we need only in anticipation of our future home. (Calvin is on solid footing, as 1 Cor 13:8 asserts that “love never ends,” and then the rest of verses 8–12 discuss what will and will not pass away.)

Not Needed in the New Creation

In light of this argument, we see that faith and hope do not belong among the fruit of the Spirit. Perhaps the fruit of the Spirit are those qualities the Spirit grows within believers that will be needed for our new-creation lives.

There is some evidence for this argument within Galatians 5. After listing the “works of the flesh” in Gal 5:19–21, Paul writes, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). There is a link between life in the future kingdom of God and these works of the flesh/fruit of the Spirit.

Love One Another

There is another explanation for the absence of faith and hope from the list of the fruit of the Spirit. Interestingly, Calvin also touches on this in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 13.

For every one derives advantage from his own faith and hope, but love extends its benefits to others.

Paul is relentless in Galatians to show that embracing the true gospel of Christ leads away from slavery toward freedom—the freedom to serve one another through love. (See my fuller discussion here.) The entire earlier paragraph of Gal 5:13–15 is about loving neighbor as self.

While faith and hope affect the way we interact with others, they are called “theological virtues” because they primarily involve our orientation toward God. The fruit of the Spirit are mostly needed for our relationships with others.

Convergence

In the end, these explanations converge. Faith and hope are not properly considered fruits of the Spirit because they aren’t necessary for our interaction with others, either now or in the age to come.

Faith and hope are gifts of the Spirit and they are essential to get to that new age! But they are the ship which takes us across the river and drops us on the far shore. We no longer need the boat for the singing and dancing and living to come.

(Note: I focused on hope instead of both faith and hope in the title of this post because so much of my recent writing has focused on hope.)

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