THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: LOVE!

THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: LOVE!

Gal 5:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

1 Cor 13:4-8

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never faileth:

1 Cor 13:8

13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

          Yesterday we considered the fruit of the Spirit as a cluster. Today we will begin to examine the various “grapes” individually. We begin where Paul begins in Galatians with love. Every time I think of the topic of “love” as it is generally presented in church, I imagine ladies in Victorian dresses seated beside bored and burly husbands in camouflage. However, all we have to do is catch a glimpse of Jesus hanging on the cross to understand that love is not for the faint of heart. Real men love Jesus!

          Paul begins with love because the other eight are really an extension of love. The Greeks had no less than five words to define our English word love. The love referred to here is agape  and Adam Clarke says that it is “an intense desire to please God and do good to others.”  But divine love defies a crisp definition because God’s love is alive. It is dynamic and not static. God’s love is what it needs to be at the moment of need.

          We go astray when we forget that the context of Galatians 5 is a comparison between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. Yesterday we said that a machine in a factory works, and builds a product, but it can never manufacture fruit! Fruit is born of life and fruit always presents itself after its kind. I see many who are trying to please God by a meticulous, even obsessive, adherence to a list of rules. We must resist the urge to mimic the qualities of spiritual fruit by human labor.

          The goal of the Holy Spirit is to reproduce Jesus in the life of the believer. We are to be like him in the way that we love. This love is self-sacrificing. It considers the comfort and condition of others instead of ourselves. Divine love is personally engaged! The word in the King James Version is “charity” and we know that charitable contributions can be as impersonal as a payroll deduction benefiting the United Way. In that kind of charity we simply throw money at human suffering without getting our hands dirty. Jesus illustrates true charity with the story of the good Samaritan who saw a need and interrupted his life in order to make a difference.

          The love that Christ commands is not easy, even for people who are blessed with great natural warmth of heart. And it is not impossible, even for those of us who tend to be crabby and short-tempered. For Christian love is not a vague feeling of affection for someone. It is rather a condition of the heart and will that causes us to seek the welfare of others-including people we don't particularly like, and even people who have done us wrong.

   Louis Cassels (1922-1974)

Dear Lord, let me love today in the same ways that you have loved me. AMEN