“The Scriptures witness to the fact again and again that full spiritual maturity is not reached by the initial act of turning to God, but continues after the believer’s conversion/justification. This process (of spiritual growth) towards Christian maturity has been referred to under different labels - usually sanctification, deification, and being conformed to the divine image - and the current chapter has examined the main biblical paradigms of spiritual formation with a view of their relationship to the fruit of the Spirit.

The principal argument of the chapter drew on a passage in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:1–3), which construes spiritual formation in terms of a transformation from being “fleshly” to becoming “people who live by the Spirit.”

This tenet was then related to the fruit of the Spirit, because the flesh–Spirit antithesis is also at the centre of Gal 5:19–23.

Paul’s vision of developing Christian maturity as a journey from a primarily flesh-bound towards an increasingly Spirit-bound existence.

This contrast has traditionally been interpreted as the believer’s struggle between two opposite tendencies, and we have seen that 1 Cor 3:1–3 adds to this picture a developmental dimension: growing spiritual maturity involves increasingly choosing the Spirit over the flesh; that is, the process results in an increased proclivity to attune to the Spirit in one’s daily conduct rather than to succumb to the temptations and influences of the flesh.

Within this paradigm, Paul paints in Gal 5 a graphic description of 2 poles of a fundamental human transformation process, spelling out in rich details the starting point and the final destination of moral/spiritual growth, with the latter represented by the fruit of the Spirit.”