Fruit of the Spirit: Love
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Good morning, St. John’s! Over the next 9 weeks or so, we’re going to be going through the Fruit of the Spirit together. So to start, I just want to read these to us, and you can find them in your bible, or on your phone, or whatever you’re using in Galatians 5:22-23.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
This is the word of the Lord.
Before we get into this, I just want to point out a couple of things up front. These are not individual fruits. It’s the fruit of the Spirit. I never realized this until recently, but it’s kind of important. Since it’s the fruit, singular, of the Spirit, then everyone who has the Spirit within them will exhibit each of these characteristics.
But what does Paul mean by the Spirit. So, last week we celebrated easter. Jesus came, he live and taught, did miracle, then he was killed, and then he rose again. We’re here because Jesus rose. If he hadn’t risen, we could have all slept in and done something else this morning. But, he rose. He’s alive. And after the resurrection, he stayed with the disciples for 40 days and spoke with them about the Kingdom of God. And he says to them in Acts chapter 1, and this is my paraphrase, he says “hey, stay in Jerusalem and wait until the Father’s promise” which was the sending of the Holy Spirit. After this, Jesus ascends into heaven, and a short time later the disciples were gathered together, and they heard a sound like a violent wind, and they saw tongues like flames of fire come down on each of them, and in that moment they received the Holy Spirit. And so, after this moment, all who came and repented and followed Jesus received the Holy Spirit. And so, if you are a Jesus follower, you have the Holy Spirit of God living in you. Or, we have Jesus living in us through the Spirit.
And, since Jesus followers have Jesus living in us, His life becomes ours. His death and his resurrection become ours. Paul puts it this way in Galatians 2:20, where he says “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”
And so, as Jesus Followers, we should be becoming more and more like Jesus as we follow him throughout our lives. And the fruit of the Spirit is evidence that we are becoming more and more like Jesus.
And so, what we’re going to do for the next 9 weeks is just go through each of these one at a time, and remember, don’t think of these as parts where you can pick and choose which ones you want to have. As Jesus followers, we are to cultivate each of these characteristics in our lives.
And this brings us to the first one, which some say grounds all of the others, love.
Now, I want us to go back, before Paul, before the resurrection, and before the death of Jesus and I want us to look at a conversation he has with his disciples.
And you might know this story, but at the end, Judas had already betrayed Jesus, Jesus is close to being arrested, he gathers his closest follower together, the apostles, and he tells them, he says look “I’m now about to leave, and where I’m going” now imagine you’ve been following Jesus for three years , he says I’m about to leave, and where I’m going you can’t follow.” And that was like “what, we’ve been following you, that’s the thing you’ve said over and over again, and now you’re saying we can’t follow you, where are you going, we want to go too” and they kind of get stuck on this, and then he focusses in on the main thing that he’s been getting at in all of his teaching. He says
John 13:34
“A new command I give you: Love one another.” To which we’d say, that’s not new, I’ve heard that my whole life, and Jesus would say “I know you’ve heard that your whole life, I’m not finished yet. And then he ups the bar: “As I have loved you, you must love one another.” In other words, if you forget everything else I say, you are to love one another, and you are to love each other, not the way you love each other, not the way you think you should love one another, but the way that I have loved you, you’re to take your que from me. And he would say maybe “Matthew, you remember that day we walked up and you were collecting taxes, and Peter was ready to throw hands, but before he could throw hands, I said Matthew, before you’ve changed a thing, before you’ve changed what you believe about me, before you’r even sure what I’m about, Matthew, would you follow me? Would you join me? Remember that Matthew? yeah. Well, I want you to love these guys like I loved you that day. Nathaniel, remember what you said that day when you first heard of me? Nathaniel’s like “yeah… kind of Jesus.” Remember, you said “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You dissed my family, my town, my relatives. Remember that, Nathaniel? Yeah.... Remember what I said? I said Nathaniel, follow me. Remember when I preached that sermon and said eat my flesh and drink my blood and everyone got freaked out and left, and you guys were about to leave too, remember how I responded when you guys were about to abandon me? I chose not to abandon you. Yeah… we remember that. Okay, so when I say I want you to love as I’ve loved, that’s the kind of love I’m talking about. And then he said this, and this is the part that drove so much of what the Apostle Paul would teach to the churches he planted: By this, by this kind of love, everyone will know that you are my disciples, and disciple is a follower, this is where we get the word, by this kind of unusual love everyone will know you’re my disciple if you love one another. In other words, this is the mark, this is what people will see, this is how people will distinguish you, this is the thing that people will look at and see and feel and experience and go “Ohhhh, he or she must be a Jesus follower.” This is huge. This is the thing that Jesus wants to mark us as his followers. And Simon Peter responds “Simon Peter asked him” Lord, where are you going?” What? Yeah, you know that thing you said about ten minutes ago about you going somehwhere, yeah, where are you going? ANd Jesus is thinking, “okay, i’ve just given you the main thing” yeah we know, but where are you going? See, they’re just like us “yeah, yeah, yeah, love one another, love one another, but there’s this person at school that’s really getting on my nerves, like, or there’s this other thing that I’m dealign with” And again, this whole love oneanother thing we’ve heard it so many times, and Jesus is like, wait, this isn’t just a throw away, this isn’t areligous line, I’m telling you, I want this to mark you. And here’s this problem: In Christianity, and all other religions, the gravitational pull is always away from treating people well and towards some rule or ritual, or The gravitational pull of religion is toward rule keeping rather than relationship building. All religions are like this. And why? Because I am in controll of rule keeping. I would rather God love me because I’ve done this, and done this, and didn’t do this, and when I did this I always apologized, and when I did this I always asked for forgiveness, and when I did this I felt really badly about it, and when I did it again, I still felt really really bad about it, and I decided I think I’m just gonna keep doing it and feeling bad about it and ask God to forgive me, so i kind of create this religion where I can make things right with God so me and God are cool, but I can hate you. And it’s okay to hate you as long as I love God. And Jesus is like, I want to make sure this doesn’t go there. Because the gravitational pull of all religion is towards some ritual, and rituals are good, or some tradition, and tradition is good, or some sort of rule, and rules are good, all of these things that replace the priority of treating people well, and it gets so bad, and for so many people this is their story. So many people have been mistreated or looked down on or condemned or judged in the name of religion.
Some people have been mistreated in the name of Jesus. I mean, that could be some of y’all’s story. Maybe you’ve been mistreated in this church in the name of Jesus. Someone said to you “You can’t, or you can’t, or we don’t want you, or whatever,” and why not? Because the church says, or our church says, or Jesus taught, and so in essence you’ve been rejected by church people in the name of Jesus who died for you. Or, maybe you’ve been that one that’s done the mistreating. You’ve said, well jesus says this, or i think this, or i believe this, and so you’ve in the name of jesus or in the name of religion have mistreated someone else, or judged someone else, or condemned someone else. And I don’t know, I just don’t think that Jesus is fond of his follower who mistreat people who he died for. I mean, that’s just weird. And Jesus knew if I just leave these guys where it is, this is going to become one of those religions where they say “let’s just teach what Jesus taught, and let’s just try to do what Jesus did, and I don’t have to treat you nice, I just have to figure out a way or the formula to make Jesus happy with me. To which Jesus says, “let me just make things really clear,”The thing, the thing, that is going to distinguish you, the thing that is going to be a stamp on your behavior and a stamp on your lifestyle is the way you love other people, and I’m not asking you the way they deserve to be loved, I’m asking you to love them the way that I have loved you. And don’t you dare try to reduce this down to some rule-keeping tradition “well this is something I do on sunday afternoon, and i read my bible and pray,” don’t you ever try to replace the way you love people with some kind of ritual or tradition because that’s not the thing that I want to distinguish you as one of my followers.
In Christianity, it’s so easy to confuse discipline with discipleship. and again, discipleship is just a fancy word for for follow. But it’s so easy to confuse these two. As long as I have my disciplines, my prayer time, I’m going to church, I’m reading my bible, and I’m doing, and I’m not doing, and I’m so disciplined, we think that that somehow substitutes for actually following Jesus in how it relates to how we treat other people. Now, I hope you pray, I hope you keep coming to church, I hope you keep reading your bible or start reading your bible, but not so you can be more religious, not so you can keep a record of how spiritual you are, but so you can follow Jesus deeper and love others, love each other, in a deeper more authentic way. But, when you or if you focus on just doing these things, if we focus on just being religious and following rules, then the gravitational pull of that approach pulls us away from developing and maintaining relationships. Why? Because it’s much easier to check these things off of our list that it is to love people who are hard to love. Jesus said I’m not buying it, and this is the thing I want to be different about you.
Then, 22 years goes by, the Apostle Paul is now a Christian, he’s traveling all around the Mediterranean planting churches, preaching in synagogues, saying Jesus has come, he’s the messiah, and he’s done something incredible, and as he’s preaching one afternoon, the people riot, they pick him up and throw him out, and then 8 or 9 people sneak out at night and say we want to hear more about this, so he takes these people both Jewish and gentile, and then he’d start a church. And then he would get on a ship that none of us would even dream of getting on, and he goes across the mediterranean see, and he does this over and over and over, and he begins to write these letters so that he can coach or train the people in the churches he’s started, and he sees that they begin to do the very thing that all religious people do. They begin to come up with some formula or some tradition of here’s what we do and here’s what we don’t, and they begin to use their religion to mistreat people. And in so many of his letters it’s all about “okay, lets go back to the basics.”
And in Galatians chapter 5, like 20 verses before the fruit of the Spirit, Paul addresses this very issue. He says in 5:1 For Freedom, Christ set us free, (if you think of Christianity and you don’t think of freedom, you’re not understanding true Christianity) For Freedom Christ set us free, Stand firm then and don’t ( and here’s what Paul thinks of religion. Here’s how he would define religious rule-keeping and rule following) don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.” So, what happened is this group of Jewish Christians called the Judaizers came along to this church Paul planted in Galatia and were like, “hey, you gentile Christians need to be observing the Law. You need to be following all of the commandments and codes and rules that we Jews have been following for thousands of years.” And specifically in the context of Galatians, they were talking about circumcision. And we miss this when we casually read through it, but Paul is angry here. And so he keeps going, 5:2 “Mark my words! I, Paul, tel you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” Now, remember, Paul was a Jewish male, and so he himself was circumcised. Circumcision isnt the problme. In this conext, though, circucision represented the old law. Jesus had come with something new. And Paul is saying if you embrace cicumcision, you’re embracing the old covenant.
ANd then he says 5:3 “Again I declare to everyman who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.” This is a big deal. The whole law was huge. There were 630 plus laws, and Paul is saying, hey if you want to embrace the law, if you want to embrace the legalism, and if you want to embrace circumcision, get ready to embrace the whole thing. Get ready to eat right, dress right, follow the strict sabbath codes, and all 630 laws. But, God has sent Jesus and Jesus has brought something new, so don’t hang onto the old.
5:4 he keeps going “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” In other words, you Galatians are trying to earn your way. You’re trying to work for it yourself. And by doing so, you’re negating the work of Grace that God has shown to you through Christ. Grace is the hallmark of the Christian experience. Grace is God knowing everything about you, everything you’ve done or will do, every thought you have, and choosing to love you anyway. You don’t deserve it, and you cant earn it. As soon as you start trying to earn it, you’ve gotten rid of it.
Then he says 5:6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.” Then, the next thing he says is so wild and extreme, especially if you were a Jewish Christian during this time period. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing (or working) itself through love.” Again, this is the thing. The thing that matters and the thing that should mark us as Christians.
Because, circumcision, and for us, legalism, or keeping all the rules, and doing all the things we can to earn God’s favor basically goes like this “God, how am I doing?” Am I doing good enough? Am I working hard enough? Have I prayed enough, have I tithed enough? ANd it’s all about us, and we become so filled with anxiety over how God sees us, and we forget about those around us. We forget the command to love. And we end up places ourselves into this form of slavery, right back into the mess that Jesus has pulled us out of.
ANd Paul’s like, Okay, we gotta quit this. This legalism, this rule keeping is over, if you follow Jesus you’re in! You’re free. So quit worrying about earning God’s love, you can’t. He died for you, and since he died for you he’s for you. So, quit looking up and start looking around you. The thing, the command, the one thing that matters is how you love others.
And come on, all of us have met people who are big rule keepers. And Paul knew, and Jesus knew, okay if this goes there, here what’s gonna happen:
Leaders will become self-righteous, followers will become self-righteous and hypocrits. I remember in highschool, I was a pretty new Christian, and so my idea of following Jesus was rule keeping. And I wasn’t very good at the rule keeping so I was always beating myself up about it. I’m not very disciplined, and so you start throwing rules at me, or a formula or a “this is how you have to do it” thing and I’m guaranteed to fail. But, I had a friend who was really good at rule following. And I rememver, we were driving and speeding story with devon
And I was all like, Oh I guess I shouldn’t. I’m such a terrible Christian. God do you still love me? Again, we had missed the main thing. And when we miss the main thing, People get mistreated. And Paul knew this. And here’s what he says about the main thing:
5:13 “You my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But, (and this is an important but) do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh
See, the other side of legalism is license, or since I’m free, I’m just going to do whatever I want. Jesus has shown me grace, thanks dude, and I can keeep on sinning and do whatever. ANd paul’s like nope, we’re not going there either. Do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Use your freedom, your freedom from the bondage of legalism, to serve one another freely in love.
And then he says, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as your self. Wait, the entire law? One command? You mean I don’t have to obey all 630+ and keep a record of how many i got or didn’t get? right. You’re free. ANd you’re freedom in Christ gives you the ability to obey this one command: love. As you walk, as you grow, as you follow and as you become more and more like Jesus, you should be loving those around you. This should mark you. People should know we follow Jesus by the way we love.
And so, for the next few minutes, let’s look at what love is, and this will hopefully give us some thing to take away this week.
This next passage if super familiar, even non-Christians know this passage. And it’s one we read, and skim through, because it’s so familiar and it’s become a cliche, but we’re gonna look at it anyway, because in it, paul breaks down what Jesus meant by “Love others as I have loved you. And when you start to break it down, a lot of us aren’t really loving people.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. In other words, I could be saying the mose eloquent, sophisticated, poetic things, and stringing words together, but if I don’t have love, it’s like when you give a kid a drumkit, and they just go to town on the symbols. It’s loud, and there’s really no purpose to it.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Then Paul keeps going, and he begins to define what love is.
4 Love is patient. It’s not pushy. It chooses to move at the other person’s pace. It doesn’t push other’s to match your pace. It does what God, our heavenly father, has done for us. God has accommodated to our capacity. Love accommodates to other’s capacity. To be loving, we need to accomodate to other’s capacity. We need to slow down or in some cases speed up. We need to move and lean into the diection of others. God moved at our pace and we’re to do the same for others. And so, we need to exercise our patience muscle, and this is so frustrating. And I can guarantee that all of us will have a chance to exercise that muscle sometime before the day is over. Love is patient. If you’re pushy, stop! To love, you have to be willing to move at the pace of those you love.
love is kind. Now, kindness sounds soft and weak, and we’ll actually spend time one this in a couple of weeks, but kindness is actually an expression of strength. Unkindess is weakness because it means you can’t control yourself. The definition of kindness is loaning your strength to someone else rather than reminding them of their weakness. It’s doing for others in the moment what they cannot do for themselves. It’s love’s response to weakness. This is what Christ did for us! Paul talks about it in Romans, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love allows others to shine. It steps out of the spotlight, even if it’s deservign of the spotlite, and it’s not threatened by other’s success. Love is able to celebrate the accomplishments of others without having the tendency to one-up them. And we’ve seen this. We’ve done this. Because, when we don’t feel good about ourselves, when we’re not secure in what Christ has done for us and who we are in him, it’s hard to let others feel good about themselves. When I feel the most insecure, I compare myself to others, and I become envious of them, and I’ll sometimes try and find ways where I can knock them down a little bit. Just to make me feel better. And I might not do this outwardly, but inwardly I’m pulling them apart. Because I’m envious, and not loving. What it means for me, and what it means for us if this is the case is that there’s something we need to work on. There’s something we need to deal with in the presence of the Lord.
5 It does not dishonor others, it does not behave dishonerable, it does not behave indecently. You know what honor is? What it means to really honor someone? To honor someone means you value them above yourself. Paul says this in Philippians “In humility consider others more significant or more valuable than yourself.” Are they more valuable? no, but we need to treat others that way because that’s what God in Christ did for you and for me. This, again, is what it means to love.
Love is not self-seeking, in other words, it’s not selfish. It puts the interest and needs of others first. Come on, imagine if we did this in our homes. Imagine if we put the needs of our spouse ahead of ours. Imagine if we put the interests of our brothers or our sisters or our parents ahead of ours. This would probably solve most of this issues or problems in our day to day relationships. And this is what love does. It puts others needs ahead of ours.
Love is not easily angered. Love listens and responds rather than reacting. We’ve all reacted to something out of anger towards someone else. It’s never good. To not be easily angers means we pause, and listen, and reflect, and then we have a response to whatever sitatuation or conflict we find ourselves in. So here’s the question we need to ask. Or, if you’re brave, maybe ask someone close to you: but, are you easily angered? or ask, Am i easily angered? And think about it. Do i just react constantly out of anger, or do i listen and respond?
Almost done here
it keeps no record of wrongs. And this one, all of these actually, are so hard. But this one, especially if you’re a defensive person is so hard. Because anytime there’s conflict, or anytime there’s some kind of issue, we go to the filing cabinent and we start pulling things out, well on this day, you said this, and you did this, and we never overlook and we end up never forgiving. And this is so important, because, agian, this is what God has done for us. And what he calls us to do for others. ANd GOd knows our sins, he knows what we’ve done wrong, but he’s never like “John on October 8th 2016 you …” He remembers, but doesn’t hold it against us. And that’s how we should live as well.
And then Paul starts to close it off and we’ll end with this:
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, when you protect you’re keeping bad things out. In the context of our relationship with each other, with our families, with our friends, love keeps bad things from coming into it. That can be gossip, it can be a bad habit, it can be any number of things that come in and destroy our relationships. But love protects. It wathches over. And then Paul closes with this
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love chooses to see the best, love chooses to hope the best and believe the best, and love chooses to keep pressing forward, through conflict, through difficulty, through hardship. Love keeps going.
And when you throw all of this up there, it’s like, there’s no way I can do all of this. If I grade myself, I’m probably at a C maybe a C-, maybe a b on a good day, But how are we expected to be able to do all of this and be all of this, and love others as Our savior loved us?
If you follow Jesus, he lives in you. And every day, we are to be cultivating this fruit. ANd it’s this process that will take our whole lives. And we’re able to do it through Christ working in us, his spirit empowering us, and through going to him every single day and asking him to continue to grow this in us daily as we follow him.