A lot of people don’t know that when the Bible lists the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Gal. 5:22-23, it’s only one fruit, not fruits.  So, when we ask how many fruits of the Holy Spirit are there, the answer is one. This is because in Greek, the word fruit is in the singular. The word for ‘fruit’ in Greek is καρπός karpós, and it is the nominative, masculine, singular. Nominative means it is the subject of the sentence. Masculine deals with gender; many languages have gender related to nouns. And “singular” deals with number. So, karpos is in the singular form. If it were plural, the form would be karpoi. So we can then interpret it thus: “but the one fruit of the Spirit is….”

Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  23 gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.”

So why does Paul the apostle refer to the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the singular and not plural? Some commentators think it’s because the word love, which is the first word in the list, encompasses all the rest of them. After all, the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. And because God is love (1 John 4:8) we can say the Holy Spirit is also love. Hence, the listing with love preceding all the rest might encompass the ones that follow.

On the other hand, it is possible that all of these items listed are the single fruit of what the Holy Spirit does in us. In other words, God the Holy Spirit gives us everything we need to walk rightly, because all of them are equally part of who He is. Since He is indwelling us (Rom. 8:9-14; Gal. 4:6), and He works in us, then the fruit is all the one work of Him who is in us.

This is encouraging to know that all we need is already provided in the Holy Spirit. The one fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control) is ours because He is in us. Therefore, we can live them all, even it if is not perfectly.