Fruit of the Spirit - Love
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Introduction
How many love songs are there?
All you need is love.
I want to know what love is.
Endless love.
The power of love.
Depending on where you look, more than 60% of all pop songs written are about love in some shape or form.
Love dominates the singles charts, and of course, you’ll find ‘love’ in almost every movie you watch too. There’s at least a relationship or a love interest in almost every film you watch.
Love is all around us…and yet so often in our day to day life, the love that we see and witness around us doesn’t resemble what we hear on the radio or see on the movies we watch. Why is that?
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Today’s fruit of the spirit is love. It’s the first on the list and it is listed first on purpose, because it is so important and critical.
But before we look at what love is, we need to look at what love ISN’T…and what love isn’t is this...
In the movies and in popular culture, love is the warm and gooey feeling that people have for each other. It’s almost sickening. The movies hype it up and show relationships and love that are completely unrealistic and damaging in a way - because that’s not what love is.
And anyone seeking out that kind of love will be let down after a few weeks of marriage - because marriage is hard. Love is hard work. Love isn’t this warm and gooey feeling but is something that we need to work at.
And love is more than what a man has for a woman or what a woman has for a man - love is bigger than that too.
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We’ve looked at this before and we’re not going into it in much detail, but in the bible there are more than one word for love. There are 4 main words for love...
Eros
Phileo
Storge
Agape
Eros is the word that is normally associated with this warm and gooey feeling that we have. Eros love is the love that a husband and wife have for each other. It’s a sexual love - it’s where we get the word, ‘erotic’.
Phileo love is the love that friends have between them. Think of David and Jonathan - they had a strong brotherly love as friends. That was phileo love.
Storge love is the love that we have for our families. So the love I have for Bethany and Naomi is different from the love I have for Kate. The love I have for my mum or my sister is different from the love I have for Kate. That’s familial love - it’s storge love.
And of course, the last word is used most often - agape love. Which is a self-sacrificial love. A love that gives of itself - that sacrifices its own desires for the desires of the other person. A love that sacrifices itself.
It’s most clearly demonstrated in Jesus himself who sacrificed himself (and in the Father who sacrificed his Son) in order to set the world free from the bondage to sin and give them eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
That’s agape love.
That’s the love listed in our passage today - both passages, actually.
The fruit of the Spirit is agape - love.
And in 1 Corinthians, it’s the agape love that is patient and kind and so on.
And this is in stark contrast with what the world views as love. Because the world’s view of love is a FEELING that I FEEL. ME.... It’s about what I feel, and if I don’t FEEL what I feel anymore then I don’t love you.
That kind of love is extremely selfish - it’s NOT agape love. It’s not really love at all.
But bring agape love into your marriage and even on those days when you don’t FEEL much love, you choose to keep going and keep loving, because agape love is not about what WE want or feel, it puts the other person first - it’s about how THEY feel.
It’s like what I said this morning…what’s in it for me? That’s the love that the world has… and it says, ‘what’s in it for me - what do I get out of this relationship?’
Agape love says, ‘what’s in it for them - what can I PUT INTO this relationship?’
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And this agape love is listed first, because love is kinda the basis of all the other fruit. David Jeremiah points this out in his book on the fruit of the Spirit.
Let’s read those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 and see how it relates to the other Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5...
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And now look at the next slide which I’ve tried to show how each of these, in some way encompasses the fruit of the Spirit...
[show slide]
So love is patient - patience is a fruit of the Spirit. Love is kind - kindness is a fruit of the Spirit. Love does not delight in evil, in which case it delights in good - goodness is a fruit of the Spirit. It rejoices in truth - there’s joy in some form. Love perseveres - there’s the faithfulness... And so on and so on.
So there’s a good reason why love is first on this list of the Fruit of the Spirit.
I’ve heard it likened to an orange. It’s like the fruit of the Spirit is like an orange. The individual segments of the orange are part of the one fruit and are the different aspects of the fruit of the Spirit - the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and so on… But what holds it together and is all around it is the skin, which is love.
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Now, the verse in 1 Corinthians 13 is speaking about how we love each other in the church. This verse is often used at weddings, and it’s a nice verse to use, because it’s true that even in romantic love, love is patient and kind and so on. But that’s not the context of this verse.
In chapter 13 of 1st Corinthians, Paul has just spoken about the spiritual gifts and the fact that the church is a body with different members and therefore different gifts. His point, very simply put, is that everyone has a gift - so use it and thrive in it, but don’t be looking at other people’s gift thinking, ‘I wish I had their gift.’
And he then writes this section on love - that it doesn’t matter how gifted you are, if you don’t love each other then your gifts are worthless. You could be speaking the language of the angels, but if you don’t love each other then you might as well be banging a gong, because that’s as much good as it will do!
Or you could have such a prophetic gift that you can know all mysteries and all knowledge - God might be speaking words of knowledge to you about situations that could make a real difference to that situation, and you might have all the faith in the world…but if you don’t have love, it’s worthless.
Now, I was convicted here when I looked into this. I’m using my gift in teaching as best I can - and let’s say I could preach the best sermon ever preached. I mean, let’s say I can preach better than Tim Keller or Billy Graham…if I don’t love the people to whom I’m speaking, my sermons will be worthless. They will fall flat on their backsides and no good will come of them.
And that struck me - because some people are hard to love. You know that. I know that...but we’re called to love them.
But where the media shows love as a warm and gooey feeling - the reality is that love is not a warm and gooey feeling. In fact, love isn’t a feeling at all…love is a choice. Agape love is a choice. You CHOOSE to love someone, just as Jesus CHOSE the path to the cross.
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So how do we do that?
Well, read with me these words from 1 John...
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Now, look at verse 8 and verse 12...
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
God is love - GOD is love.
Remember what I said last week that the fruit of the Spirit comes from the Spirit himself. These are attributes of God that are manifested in us because GOD is in us.
Well, God is love. Which means that these attributes of Love in 1 Corinthians describe God himself...
In other words, God is patient, God is kind. God is not arrogant or rude. God does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.
This kind of love is a love that comes from God himself - and it’s why it’s a fruit of the Spirit, because it’s not the kind of love that WE can produce IN ourselves.
This kind of love is a love that comes from above and is evidence that God is living and dwelling with us.
And verse 12 of 1 John 4 tells us that...
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another - when people are looking on and see us loving each other and exhibiting patience, kindness, not envying or provoking each other. When people see us believing, hoping, enduring all things they are seeing the attributes of God himself.
So while nobody has ever seen God, when we love each other people catch a glimpse of him.
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Remember what I said earlier - that marriage is hard work and we need to work hard to love some people. That is true, because our love has become disordered love. It’s not pure, it’s marred with sin and selfishness - and so we have to work hard.
And we will always have to work hard to love some people. Some people are more lovable than others. But some people are darn right unlovable…but that’s what sets us apart from those who are living by the flesh.
Because those who are living in step with the Spirit are able to put that aside and choose to love the unlovable.
And what we need to have, to be able to do that, is the presence of the Spirit in our lives to help us to do this. Because this is NOT a natural thing. The natural thing is envy, rivalry, jealousy, fits of rage - the work of the flesh. And that goes against love - it’s selfish.
So our default position - our natural position is to be at war with each other.
It takes a supernatural love to overcome that - and it’s a fruit of the Spirit that only God himself can give us.
And God showed us how it should be done...
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God shows his love for us - he demonstrates what love is - while we were still sinners and his enemies, Christ died for us.
That’s the love of Jesus - that God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only son, to die, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
That while we were unlovable, he still loved us. This wasn’t a warm and gooey love that the media tells us is love - this type of love was a choice. And if Jesus chose to love us when there was nothing loveable about us - as a follower of Jesus, who lives as he lived and loves as he loved - we are called to do the same.
Because the world is looking on. The world is looking at us and watching…how well do these people practice what they preach? How well do they love each other? How well do they treat each other?
And since no one has seen God, the answer to those questions will determine how well we display Jesus to those who are watching.
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So are there places in your life where love is difficult? Are there people you know who are really hard to love? Is your marriage struggling - after years of marriage are you finding it difficult to love your husband or your wife? Love doesn’t give up - don’t give up on your marriage.
Where in your life do you need a fresh anointing of the Spirit of God to manifest himself to you through love? Where in your life do you need more love?
Ask God for it now.
Love isn’t a feeling - it’s a choice. Choose to love the unlovable.
But to help you along with this…to make it easier for you to be able to love those people whom you find difficult to love, you need the Spirit of God in you - you need to be walking in step with the Spirit of God.
Remember last week when I talked about the dance we have and the need to know our dance partner? Go deeper with Jesus. Bring your life before him and deepen your relationship with him. That’s why I’m doing this series in the mornings on discipleship. It’s not for the good of my health, it’s for the good of OUR health - our spiritual health. By discovering what it means to be a disciple and entering into that it will help us to walk in the way of our master and it will help us to keep in step with the Spirit of God.
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So, if there are places in your life where you need more love - ask Jesus to come and fill those places with his love first and then go out and show them love, even if it hurts…even if it’s hard to do. Do it in the name of Jesus Christ - for Christ’s sake, do it.
Think of it like this...the pain that Jesus endured on the cross because he CHOSE to show US love…that pain was a lot more than any pain that we might feel when we go out and love those who are hard to love or when we strive to make our marriages work.
Who do you need to love today?
19 We love because he first loved us.
Let’s pray.