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Fruits of the spirit Word Search

This fruits of the spirit word search hides words like love, joy, peace to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy fruits of the spirit vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

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SELFCONTROL
GENTLENESS
GALATIANS
PATIENCE
KINDNESS
GOODNESS
PEACE
FRUIT
LOVE
JOY

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

The hardest handshake

Munich, Germany

In 1947, in a church basement in Munich, Germany, Corrie ten Boom had just finished speaking about God's forgiveness when a man stepped forward with his hand out. She recognized him at once: a former guard from Ravensbruck, the camp where her sister Betsie had died. He said he had become a Christian and asked Corrie to forgive him. For a long moment she could not lift her arm; she had survived his cruelty. Praying silently for help, she finally reached out and took his hand. She later wrote that a strange warmth seemed to flood her in that instant. The former prisoner and the former guard stood there, hands clasped.

A swap in the death block

Oswiecim, Poland

In July 1941, at Auschwitz near Oswiecim, Poland, guards chose ten men to starve in a bunker after a prisoner escaped. One of the condemned, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out for his wife and children. A Franciscan friar named Maximilian Kolbe stepped from the lines and quietly asked to take the man's place, explaining he had no family. The startled commander agreed. Kolbe died in the bunker weeks later; Gajowniczek survived the war and lived into his nineties. For decades afterward he traveled to tell the story of the stranger who chose to die so he could go home. He said he could thank Kolbe only with his eyes.

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Did you know?

love: Love poetry in the Song of Songs compares hair to goats descending a mountain, making an unexpectedly farmyard compliment.
joy: Rejoice always has just two words in Greek, while Jesus wept has three, reversing the short-verse comparison familiar to English readers.
peace: Isaiah's peaceful animal scene pairs the wolf with the lamb, rather than the lion-and-lamb pairing often remembered from pictures and sayings.
patience: The Greek makrothumia literally means long-tempered, the slow fuse that refuses to flare up against people.
kindness: An early writer welcomed calling Christians Chrestians: the mistake echoed a Greek word for kindness, turning scorn into a compliment.
goodness: The Good Samaritan's hero belongs to a community at odds with Jesus' listeners, making kindness cross a familiar religious divide.
galatians: Galatia took its name from Celtic Gauls who invaded Asia Minor around 278 BC, settling in modern central Turkey.
gentleness: Paul's group is called gentle in some Bible translations and infants in others, because ancient Greek copies differ by one letter.
faithfulness: John's Gospel begins several sayings with a doubled amen, giving a word usually heard after prayers a place at the beginning.
selfcontrol: Renaissance artists sometimes pictured self-control as a woman mixing water and wine, turning an abstract virtue into a visible act of moderation.
fruit: Paul uses a singular word for fruit, then lists several qualities, picturing a shared harvest rather than separately named crops.
spirit: The Hebrew word ruach can mean wind, breath, or spirit, linking an invisible presence with something felt in moving air.
forgiveness: Jesus' answer about forgiveness appears as seventy-seven or seventy times seven, depending on how translators read the same Greek wording.
compassion: The Greek splanchnizomai locates compassion in the bowels, which ancient writers saw as the seat of deep emotion.
longsuffering: Longsuffering is an older translation of patience, while the Greek behind it suggests being long-tempered rather than quick to anger.

Trivia

In which New Testament letter does Paul list the fruit of the Spirit?
Galatians (chapter 5, verses 22 to 23).
Is the word fruit in Galatians 5:22 singular or plural in the original Greek?
Singular (karpos).
Paul contrasts the fruit of the Spirit with what opposite category earlier in the same chapter?
The works of the flesh.
How many qualities are named as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians?
Nine.
The region of Galatia was named after migrating people from which European group?
Celts, specifically Gauls.

Trivia · 1 / 5

In which New Testament letter does Paul list the fruit of the Spirit?

Galatians (chapter 5, verses 22 to 23).

In their words

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.
C. S. Lewis

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
1 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV)

Is this fruits of the spirit word search free to print?

This fruits of the spirit word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like SELFCONTROL, GENTLENESS, GALATIANS hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

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