The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”
The Fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19-26, Romans 5:1-8
We begin a new series today. The series is entitled ‘The Fruit of the Spirit’. We find the fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5: 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control”. We are going to look at each of these qualities in the coming months.
Paul has previously compared the ‘works of the flesh’ to the fruit of the Spirit. These include ‘hatred’, ‘fits of rage’, ‘dissensions’ and ‘factions’. These are our natural reactions that show themselves, usually when we are under pressure or feel things haven’t gone our way. Open any tabloid and you will see examples of hatred, rage, dissensions and factions. Not only on the international scene, but within local communities and families. Hatred seems to fill our world.
In stark contrast to all this Paul opens his list of the fruits of the Spirit with…
Love
Christianity is built on love. At its heart is the message God loves people. God requires people respond to His love, love Him supremely and so love their neighbours as they love themselves. Jesus condensed the teachings of the law and the prophets in 2 great commandments:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 38)
The message is clear. We must practice love in a world of hatred. God himself has shown His love towards the unlovely. If we are his children we are expected to show His love:
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10)
The very encouraging thing to understand is that the Lord has given us the means by which we learn to love. He has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters our hearts to produce the fruit of love. God does not expect us to love in human strength alone.
First, let us meditate the nature and extent of the love God has shown us.
The New Testament writers used a new word to describe the kind of love God has shown us. Agape love.
Agape love loves the unlovely. It is sacrificial, self-giving, unmerited love. It is love towards the unlovable. It is love whose source is in the heart of the lover.
Agape love is Calvary love. It’s the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life for his enemies. Who goes to a cross, put there by those who have rejected and despised Him. Who have cruelly dealt with Him. And yet He says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do…” (Luke 23:34)
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)
The Bible describes how we are naturally ‘enemies of God’, and each of us has gone our own way, each resents God’s challenge and rightful demand that we yield our lives to Him. But God has shown this most loving initiative in Christ. He has loved us though we are unlovely
R.B. Kuiper “The point…is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes an exceeding kind of love to love it at all”
Agape love loves the unlovely.
Our own righteousness is as ‘filthy rags’ in God’s sight. He does not love us because of anything attractive in us. Rather He loved us while we were still in our sins and shaking our fists at Him, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And Ephesians 2:6 states “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:6)
Paul could write from his own experience here. Formerly as Saul he pursued and persecuted Christians, even having them imprisoned and killed, such was his self-righteous hate. Until God knocked him off his horse and took the scales from his eyes.
Once a person has put their faith in Christ, he or she continues to know God’s agape love towards them. They have new eyes to see all they have is God’s provision. The reality of Creation, including the earth, which God made to be our home. We see every material blessing he has provided for us and give Him thanks. Our families and friendships. We see our work as an opportunity to serve him and other people.
Throughout our discipleship, as we live out our lives here, we know His loving presence with us, realised through prayer. Charles Finney wrote “Prayer bathes the soul in an atmosphere of the divine presence” And He has given us the Bible by which He guides us so we make wise decisions while we are here. Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
We face trials and problems in this life, as does the unbeliever. But as God’s children we know the Lord still loves us. Whenever Paul and Barnabas set up new churches in cities there was always a backlash of persecution against these churches. But those Christians knew that suffering did not negate the reality of God’s love for them. Rather, these gave them opportunity to discover more of God’s love. In Romans 5: 3-5 Paul writes “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
At those difficult times God pours his love and hope into our lives, to help us endure. We realise this is part of His strengthening of our character. We develop a confidence that God is in control and will see us through. So our hope is in Him and what He will bring about.
Through many years caring for our autistic son and a daughter with M.E, Elizabeth and I have been taught to endure and to keep our hope in God for them. God has blessed and provided for Michael and Judith here, but we don’t yet see what we want for them- their full healing. However the Spirit teaches us to trust God’s promises. Ultimately they will be the man and woman they were always meant to be when they are resurrected to eternal life, receive their new perfect bodies and be with Christ in glory.
And such is the exceeding measure of God’s love for us- that heaven is the destiny of every believer. The ultimate fulfilment of that hope he has planted within us here. Scripture tells us ‘in the coming ages’ He will show ‘The incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 2:6, 7)
So we want to know what the fruit of love is. We look first at God’s love for us!
Our love for God-
In worship
“Enter his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever” (Psalm 100:4, 5)
The fruit of the Spirit love- will first be seen in our desire to worship Him- for who He is and all He has brought about for us. This will entail a full hearted adoration of God- ‘to love God with all the power within us’ and thanksgiving for all He has brought about for us, materially and spiritually in Christ. Our worship of Him will express a ‘delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder’ as one writer put it. True worship, by the Holy Spirit comes out of this new relationship with God, who we now love and trust as our Father, and is no longer fixated on external form or ritual.
In obedience
1 John 5:3 states “This is love for God to obey his commandments” (1 John 5:3)
So love as a fruit of the Spirit will show itself in obedience to God’s commands. God’s commands are always for our good. For example He has given us His ordinance of marriage between a man and his wife for a lifelong commitment (Genesis 2: 23, 24, Mark 10:6-9). So love is not a feeling that it should undermine that command by taking part in some form of sexual immorality. The world says that is love, but it is not. Jude in his letter warned of false teachers who had slipped into the church – ‘ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality’ (Jude verse 4). God’s wonderful grace by which we know forgiveness of sins, relationship with Him, and the gift of eternal life, is not to be taken as a reason to continue in sin- grace is not a license for immorality. These same false teachers are with us today. Jude says of these teachers their ‘condemnation was written about long ago’
Love is not at odds with holiness. Love understands the reasons for the holy commands of God, love sees the benefit God has for us in following His commands
But when we fail, love means that we can come in confession, knowing He will forgive us on account of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
A love that informs all other types of love
There are other Greek words for love. There is ‘Eros’- sexual attraction and interest. ‘Storge’ which describes family love, and there is ‘Philia’ which refers to a love for someone because of the loveliness of the one who is loved.
I would recommend to you C.S Lewis book ‘The Four Loves’ He explains about these natural loves, but warns that if they are not reinforced by the agape love we have thought about, then they become idols and destroy the worshipper
Lewis writes about Affection. Even here he warns of the danger of idolatry where the one who gives, gives because they ‘need to be needed’
He writes of a fictional character called Mrs Fidget. “Mrs Fidget died a few months ago. It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh…Mrs Fidget very often said she lived for her family. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. She did all the washing true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and hot meal at night. They implored her not to provide this. They liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family…”
You get the idea.
The natural love of affection, whether within a family or not, is not enough. We need the much higher love to guide it. Agape love, which truly desires the good of the one loved, and is truly sacrificial in that it ‘works towards its own abdication’. Doing away with one’s own ‘need to be needed’
The Bible shows clearly how Agape love should inform family relationships
“Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:22)
“Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25)
“Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph.6: 4)
Loving your neighbour
The fruit of love is seen in Jesus teaching about the Good Samaritan. Having established the importance of loving ones neighbour as oneself, Jesus was asked ‘Who is my neighbour?’
The Samaritan comes across a Jewish man who has been beaten by robbers and ignored by a Jewish priest and a Levite. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, the Good Samaritan is moved with compassion, and looks after the man, binding up his wounds and pays for the man’s care. He showed mercy towards the beaten man Jesus says. So here is the great practical example of what the fruit of love looks like in practice. It has been the inspiration for many hospitals and charitable organisations.
GK Chesterton makes the quip ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people”
Agape love forgives:
We must forgive others their sins against us.
Jesus in The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us” and He adds “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matt. 6: 12, 14, 15)
This is very costly. To forgive is one of the hardest voluntary choices we can make. Forgiveness refuses to keep reviewing the hurt. It repudiates open revenge. It refuses even the polite schemes to get the other back. David Augsburger writes “Forgiveness is difficult because it is costly. The cost may require us to risk further hurt by exploring the injured relationship with someone who caused the injury to begin with. The cost may be that we will have to absorb pain without any satisfactory release and restoration. The cost may require us to accept further rejection…”
The call on us in such circumstances, is to forgive the other, as the Lord has forgiven us our sins (See Parable of the Unmerciful Servant Matt. 18: 21-35)
Conclusion
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love we are talking about is seen supremely in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for our sakes on the cross. Agape love loves the unlovely and goes on loving us for all eternity. As C.S. Lewis writes ‘On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him’
To think about showing such a fruit ourselves- towards God or man- makes us realise afresh our dependence on the Lord and the work of His Holy Spirit within us. To love the other sacrificially, and when they are unlovely, is beyond our natural reactions and ability. But that is the fruit the Lord is determined to work into our lives. So we must pray and be sensitive to His leading as we learn to love in such ways.
D L Moody wrote this “A man may be a good doctor without loving his patients; a good lawyer without loving his clients; a good geologist without loving science; but he cannot be a good Christian without love.”