Read Part 1 and Part 2 (Abide in the Vine)
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23) {emphasis mine}
Love: Our Favorite Trait of God
We all love studying God’s love and grace. It is comforting and encouraging. On the other hand we generally hate studying God’s holiness and wrath. It is uncomfortable and convicting. If we don’t accept and know both sides of God’s character, we can’t truly know God. Yes, He is a loving God who sent His son to die on the cross to take away our sins, but He is also a holy, wrathful God. Having His son take our sins on His perfect self and die a horrific death on the cross doesn’t make sense if you don’t have a holy God who can’t abide sin, who is so holy that He can’t be in the presence of sin and must judge it and punish it fully. Jesus took our sins upon Himself so He could take the punishment we deserved. He then gives us His perfect, sinless righteousness so that is what God sees instead of our filthy, sinful selves. This is the perfect combination of love and holiness.
Amazingly, this holy God has shown such love that He not only covered our sins, but He also filled us with His Spirit. He freed us from the chains of sin and empowered us with His character, so we can bear the fruits of His Spirit.
An Empty, Dirty Glass That Needs Cleaning & Filling
We are like an empty, dirty glass. First He cleaned us and then He filled us. He fills us with His love until we overflow and His love flows out and upon those around us.
Many of us, however, want to produce fruit by ourselves. We are like a travel mug with a tight lid that doesn’t let His love in or out, but unfortunately we like it because at least it isn’t messy. Be the open glass over flowing with the love of God.
and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”(Mark 12:30-31)
The greatest commandment is to love God and to love others. God’s mercy led Him to share His love with us so we can obey this command. Since this was God’s greatest command, it was also His first gift.
Obedience Creates Love
One way that God says we learn to abide in His love is through obedience. Obedience leads to the fruits of the Spirit.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. (John 15:10-11)
If we want to obey we must know God’s commands. He shares His commands in the Bible. In addition to providing His commands of what to do and what not to do, maybe even more important, is that the Bible shares who God really is. To truly love God, we must know who He is.
Too often we define who we think God should be. We make Him in our own image. We make Him less than holy, like ourselves. We make Him less self controlled, like ourselves. We make Him more petty, like ourselves. We, the created creature, do not have the right to define who God is, but He does have the right to define who we are and who we should be. We need to love and worship God for who He truly is and we can’t do that if we don’t know His word, the Holy, “God breathed” Bible.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
The Love Chapter
Of course a discussion on love cannot conclude without mentioning 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
The first 3 verses tells us some reasons that love is so important, but if we really want to know what love is, it is described in verses 4-7 both as what it is and what it is not. I’ve included two different translations (other than the NASB that I normally use) to help clarify a few of the ideas conveyed, since Greek is a little bit more concise and precise than English, these verses are clearer in the original language.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ESV)
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV)
Love is patient and kind. It is not jealous, prideful, or arrogant. It does not dishonor others, seek its own good, or cause irritation & resentment. It helps us to endure hardship (including when others do not act lovingly towards us). It causes us to have trust and hope. It helps us persevere. Love is the very essence of being Christ-like.
No Love Without Truth
We all love the warm fuzzy side of love, but one of our biggest problems when we emphasize love is we forget that God associates love with truth and discipline.
He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently. (Proverbs 13:24
but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ (Ephesians 4:15)
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. (1 John 3:18)
Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart (1 Peter 1:22)
Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. (2 John 1:3)
it [love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (1 Corinthians 13:6) [clarification mine]
It is not love to encourage a person to continue to believe a lie or to act in a sinful way. We are not loving a person if we withhold a truth to make them comfortable.
Benjamin Franklin said with regard to poverty, “I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
I would say about love and truth, “I am for loving the lost sinners, but...I think the best way of doing good to the lost, is not making their sin easy and comfortable, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more the public condones sin, the more sin they commit, and of course became farther from faith in Jesus. And, on the contrary, the more God’s commandments and the truth are shared in love, the more they understand their need for a Savior and the more they turn to Jesus.”
Don’t confuse permissiveness for love. It is the opposite of love. It is not loving for a parent to allow their child to eat only sweets because that is what the child wants. It is not loving for a doctor to encourage a patient to continue smoking when he knows that smoking leads to cancer and other health problems. It is not loving to encourage the continuation of sin or the continued belief in lies. A loving person tells the truth. “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)
Many of the twelve step programs that teach how to recover from an addiction say the first step is to realize you have a problem. Sinners won’t seek a savior if they don’t realize they have a sin problem. They won’t seek the truth if they don’t understand that they believe a lie. They won’t repent and trust Jesus if they haven’t been told the truth about sin and Jesus. We have to speak the truth if we want to show love.
Of course, how you tell the truth makes it loving or unloving. You can share the truth in a way that is loving and encouraging. Some people, instead of being overly permissive, error on the opposite extreme and speak the truth in the most hateful, condemning manner that is more of an attack on the person than on the sinful behavior or the lie. Loving truth is not permissive and it isn’t a personal attack. It is lovingly leading them to the truth for their good and not so we can “win”.
Love isn’t just about our interaction with God and with others. It is even more.
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. (Proverbs 12:1)
It is also about our values and what is valuable to ourselves.
Greatest Fruit
I believe love is listed first in the Galatians list of fruits of the Spirit because it the most important fruit. The fruit that all Christians must bear. The fruit that leads to growth in oneself and allows us to help disciple and grow others. It is spoken of as the Great commandment
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Love is also the fruit that lasts forever.
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
The greatest of the fruits of the Spirit is love because love never ends.
Read Part 4 (Joy)
Trust Jesus.
your sister in Christ,
Christy
FYI, my following posts will continue going through each of the individual fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5
Bible verses are NASB (New American Standard Bible) 1995 edition unless otherwise stated
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